Biopolitics and risk: the new logic of global capitalism

Abstract

In April and May 2008, Brazilian and worldwide media were dominated by two discussions: the global food supply crisis and the role of biofuels in rising prices and global hunger. Both of these debates were about the old problem of population size versus food production capacity, but they took place within a specific political universe: the proximity of the WTO’s Doha Round, which was considered crucial for the definition of more favorable rules for the free trade of agricultural products. In this article, for which we have selected a series of reports on the supply crisis, biofuels and trade tariffs published by the newspaper O Globo during the aforementioned period, we will analyze the media debate about the relationship between hunger and risk of social instability as a symptom of today’s biopolitics.