GPT

When Foucault talks about populations, he’s not just referring to a collection of people in a neutral, demographic sense. Instead, he frames populations as an object of governance—something to be managed, optimized, and controlled through techniques of power and knowledge.

This idea emerges most clearly in his work on biopolitics, where he distinguishes between older, sovereign power (which worked through the right to kill or let live) and modern power, which operates by regulating life itself—what he calls making live and letting die. Populations become the target of biopower, meaning they are subjected to statistical analysis, public health measures, economic policies, and surveillance mechanisms designed to shape their productivity, health, and behavior.

Key aspects of how he frames populations:

• As an object of knowledge – Populations are analyzed through statistics, censuses, epidemiology, and economics, making them legible to state institutions.
• As a site of intervention – Governments don’t just rule individuals; they manage populations through policies on birth rates, disease control, urban planning, and social programs.
• As a target of normalization – Unlike sovereign power, which punishes or excludes, modern power seeks to shape norms—what is "healthy," "productive," "deviant," or "risky."
• As a foundation for governmentality – Populations become the basis for a new form of power that operates not through direct coercion but through the shaping of environments, incentives, and self-discipline.

For Foucault, then, populations are not just passive masses but constructed through knowledge systems and governance techniques that define what it means to live, thrive, or be at risk. It's less about ruling over people and more about managing life itself.