Bio-politics and the birth of sexual reform?

During the last period of his life, Foucault became increasingly interested in a field known as bio-politics. There are several ways to define this tricky term, but one understanding of it that have been rather important to me is Foucaults thought on  why the biopolitics were created. According to Foucault the late 17th and early 18th century marked a new era, when states to an increased degree became aware of the population as a resource that could be re-developed and mastered, thus improving a countrys financial and cultural assets. This is a crucial point, since it would explain how population management became a part of state policy. 

The idea here is that states need to manage their population in order to make it grow which throughout history have manifested differently were perhaps one of the modern eras main points is a form of governmentality in which citizens should conduct their behavior according to the states wishes. This is for instance rather clear in the various forms that welfare politics have taken, were an individual is supposed to monitor themselves and take part in government programmes in order to be lifted out of welfare. 

One idea that relates closely to the notion of biopolitics is the rise of sexual education in the early 20th century, which also happens during an era when the modern welfare emerges. The general narrative of the early sexual reform movements were that they were formed out of neo-malthusian ideas were poverty were seen as the result of the working class having to many childrens. By using contraceptives this would no longer be the case, and hence the working would be lifted out of poverty. During this same period the workers movement took form in many european countries, which aimed to improve the living standard of the working class. Even though this movement were still influenced by religous and normative ideas about sex, it would in many countries sooner or later embrace the sexeducation movements ideas. 

The idea that the lack of contraceptives were the source of the working class poverty is something that can be criticized, since this idea is still part of a capitalist regime were the explotation of labour were seen as unproblematic, even though this was the root core. However it have been showed that upper-class women in the US had knowledge of contraceptives and also could buy them at great expense since they were prohibted and thus only sold at the black market. In Sweden this history is rather different since the legislation sourrunding contraceptives were not aimed at criminalizing the use of them, but rather to criminalize how the information about them were spread. 

In linkage with bio-politics it is rather clear that this legislation did not only follow a pattern of population control but also that contraceptives were instrumental in this control. For instance information on contraceptives were criminalized during the same period as the swedish state prohibted child labour and women nightlabour, which thus created a shortage in the workforce.  During the 1930's, which was the hay-days of eugenics, contraceptives were however once again allowed. One of the key arguments made by the proponents of contraceptives were that they could play an instrumental role in the refinement of the population by stopping unwanted groups from reproducing. Thereby, contraceptives could once again be utilized as a way to fullfil the states wishes which during this time had gone from ideas on the need for a stable workforce to the notion of eugenics. 

One of my sources from the
swedish debate on sexual reform 

In my own ongoing research-projects this notion have been quite troublesome for me to handle. As a social historian I am rather fond of people organizing to changing society for the better. Social change can according to me never be understood as the mere consequence of people in power giving people the power, but rather as a the result of people taking the power. However, in the case of the emerging sexeducation movement I have come to the conclusion to myself, since this is not something that is easily proven for a peer-reviewed journal, that sex education and contraceptives follows a pattern of the states wishes. This is also something that follows the line of Charles Tillys work on political mobilization, were states can either support or suppress mobilization for a certain cause. In the case of the Swedish sexual education movement, we can see a pattern were many parts of the state - except for the national church of Sweden - during the haydays of eugenics came to embrace the idea of birth control. This do however not make the movements irrelevant, since they still were formed out of the best of intentions. But in writing history, one should also ask themselv the follow question: what is in the best interest for whom? And what happends when these interest align with those in power?  

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