Metabolic politics: A comparative synthesis

Abstract New arrangements of power are emerging in response to the turbulence generated by the quest to improve life and render it productive. This paper specifies such arrangements by developing the concept of metabolic politics: an apparatus that shifts from discipline to power regulating material, bodily, and environmental transformations. The dominant function of metabolic politics is to render the transformative capacities of living bodies and the circulatory dynamics of materials into object‐targets of governance. Through a comparative analysis of regulating pollution from industrial poultry units in Britain and India, the paper identifies logics of a metabolic politics and distinguishes these from the biopolitics of populations. Metabolic politics entails interventions targeting a milieu rather than deviant populations; its actions are directed at transformative capacities of bodies in addition to improving their productivity; its modes of governance operates via regulation and not just discipline; and its techniques of operation proceed through modulation instead of enclosure. Metabolic politics is a transversal form of power. It is situated and historically contingent, rather than uniform and universal. As a response to crises generated by the industrialisation and cheapening of life, metabolic politics furnishes vital insights into the administration and governance of the contemporary living and material world.