Practical Biopolitics of COVID-19: Indonesian and Russian Experiences

Practical Biopolitics of COVID-19: Indonesian and Russian Experiences consists in applying biopolitical theorizing – in particular, the concept of practical biopolitics – as a framework for studying different experiences and policies of tackling health and medical crises. The book explains how the COVID-19 pandemic transformed the enormity of interconnections between life and politics, and the ensuing challenges for political actors in Indonesia and Russia.. Practical biopolitics as a concept includes different regimes of care and protection, along with different techniques of governing human lives and administering healthcare, conditioned by the self-securing and self-sustaining public “conduct of the conduct”. Practical biopolitics is a sub-field of that, which comprises analysis of specific policy practices and administrative and managerial tools, and the measures that governments apply to fight health threats. The book raises a number of questions: how did the COVID-19 state of global alert transform the conceptual vocabulary of politics? How different national experiences of crisis management during a pandemic might be compared with each other, and how these comparisons might be theorized in terms of national sovereignties, good governance, and public policy, and foreign policy?

Table of Contents:
Introduction Chapter 1. The Practical Biopolitics of the Pandemic: A Multifaceted Theory Chapter 2. Practical Biopolitics in Russia: from Pandemic to War Chapter 3. Anti-Pandemic Crisis Management in Indonesia Conclusion

About the Author :
Andrey Makarychev is Professor of Regional Political Studies at the University of Tartu Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies. I Gede Wahyu Wicaksana is a senior International Relations lecturer in the Department of International Relations Faculty of Social and Political Sciences Universitas Airlangga in Surabaya, Indonesia.

Review :
“The politics of the pandemic remains one of the most intriguing issues in today’s complex world. Practical Biopolitics of COVID-19 investigates how the pandemic came to be played out politically in Russia and Indonesia, offering invaluable evidence to advance our understanding of how Covid became a political illness at a time of democratic decay. A very revealing read.” “In this highly creative engagement with state responses to Covid-19 leading into Russia's war on Ukraine, Makarychev and Wicaksana profoundly challenge traditional distinctions between sovereignty and governmentality, normalization, and exceptionalism. Applying their concept of "practical biopolitics" to the cases of Indonesia and Russia, they masterfully expose the different strategies of power in health security policies. This book will make readers fundamentally re-think their assessment of the role of the state in today's risk societies.” “This is an innovative and intellectually astute undertaking to assess the usefulness of theoretical concepts such as biopolitics and governmentality even outside of the liberal, Western context where they are usually applied. The analysis of illiberal Russian and Indonesian political practices during the exceptionality of the COVID-19 pandemic is timely, interesting and well argued, as are the authors’ views on how pandemic-time experiences have contributed to the further development of disregard of human lives so evident in Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine.”