Biopolitical Leviathan : understanding state power in the era of COVID-19 through the Weberian-Foucauldian theory of the state

GJERDE, Lars Erik

doi:10.3167/th.2024.7117803

Biopolitical Leviathan : understanding state power in the era of COVID-19 through the Weberian-Foucauldian theory of the state

dc.contributor.author	GJERDE, Lars Erik
dc.date.accessioned	2024-05-30T08:07:52Z
dc.date.available	2024-05-30T08:07:52Z
dc.date.issued	2024
dc.description	Published online: 01 March 2024	en
dc.description.abstract	The coronavirus pandemic made the biopolitics of infection control the core object of states around the world. Globally, states governed spheres usually free of state control, implementing various restrictions, closing down society in the process. This is possible due to the state’s capacities to act through and over society, grounded in the state’s powers. I argue that while the pandemic has led to useful and interesting statecentric Foucauldian literature on the politics of COVID-19, this literature has not fully taken the theoretical lessons of the pandemic into account. Explicating these lessons, I discuss how the pandemic invites us to reconsider the Foucauldian approach to the state. The purpose of this article is to combine the Foucauldian theory of power with a Weberian state theory based on Michael Mann’s work on the state and the sources of power, so to lay the foundations for a Weberian-Foucauldian theory of the state.	en
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf	en
dc.identifier.citation	Theoria, 2024, Vol. 71, No. 178, pp. 48-74	en
dc.identifier.doi	10.3167/th.2024.7117803
dc.identifier.endpage	74	en
dc.identifier.issn	0040-5825
dc.identifier.issn	1755-2567
dc.identifier.issue	178	en
dc.identifier.startpage	48	en
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/1814/76899
dc.identifier.volume	71	en
dc.language.iso	en	en
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dc.publisher	Wiley	en
dc.relation.ispartof	Theoria	en
dc.relation.isreplacedby	https://hdl.handle.net/1814/76963	en
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess	en
dc.rights.license	Attribution 4.0 International	*
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/	*
dc.title	Biopolitical Leviathan : understanding state power in the era of COVID-19 through the Weberian-Foucauldian theory of the state	en
dc.type	Article	en
dspace.entity.type	Publication
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