Cómo aplicar el concepto de biopolítica en ciencias sociales: apuntes para una propuesta metodológica

The ageing population provides new and hitherto unseen societal challenges. The discourse of ageing often position the many people living into old age as potentially catastrophic for the cohesion and economy of societies. This calls for biopolitical techniques that change how old age is lived and how the life course is perceived. In the first part of the article, the author demonstrates how the field of ageing and old age has been formed in the 20th century, and explores how different disciplines of ageing research in the latter half of the century began to understand ageing as more malleable and evitable than previously thought. This coincided with demographic changes during the period, in which people lived longer into old age, and lived more healthily and actively. In the second part, the author focuses on the active ageing policies formed around the turn of the millennium, which are informed by ageing research that overall position activity as rejuvenating. He shows how the EU and the WHO active ageing policies differ in their makeup and the ageing theories they draw on, and illustrates how the policies in different ways potentially unmake old age and radically question what it means to be old.A pesar de su innegable éxito, el concepto de biopolítica dista mucho de teneruna definición clara y precisa. De hecho, casi podríamos decir que cuenta contantas interpretaciones como autores se han decidido en su uso. Partiendo deeste hecho, el propósito de nuestro artículo será triple: en primer lugar, tratar dedefinir el concepto de biopolítica, en su conexión con otros conceptos clave delvocabulario foucaultiano como gubernamentalidad o biopoder, así como apuntarciertas precauciones analíticas para su uso. En segundo lugar, proponer unapropuesta metodológica capaz de aplicar esta definición de la biopolítica a uncontexto histórico determinado, diferenciando cuatro condiciones de la vidahumana: la económica, la parental, la política y la ideológica. Y finalmente,ofrecer un breve ejemplo de aplicación de esta máquina hermenéutica sobre uncaso particular, en concreto en la España del primer franquismo, en el periodocomprendido entre 1939 y 1959