Practical Biopolitics of COVID-19

Practical Biopolitics of COVID-19: Indonesian and Russian Experiences consists in applying biopolitical theorizing – in particular, the concept of practical biopolitics – as a framework for studying different experiences and policies of tackling health and medical crises. The book explains how the COVID-19 pandemic transformed the enormity of interconnections between life and politics, and the ensuing challenges for political actors in Indonesia and Russia.. Practical biopolitics as a concept includes different regimes of care and protection, along with different techniques of governing human lives and administering healthcare, conditioned by the self-securing and self-sustaining public “conduct of the conduct”. Practical biopolitics is a sub-field of that, which comprises analysis of specific policy practices and administrative and managerial tools, and the measures that governments apply to fight health threats. The book raises a number of questions: how did the COVID-19 state of global alert transform the conceptual vocabulary of politics? How different national experiences of crisis management during a pandemic might be compared with each other, and how these comparisons might be theorized in terms of national sovereignties, good governance, and public policy, and foreign policy?

Author Biography

Andrey Makarychev is Professor of Regional Political Studies at the University of Tartu Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies.

I Gede Wahyu Wicaksana is a senior International Relations lecturer in the Department of International Relations Faculty of Social and Political Sciences Universitas Airlangga in Surabaya, Indonesia.