Biopower, genetics and livestock breeding: (re)constituting animal populations and heterogeneous biosocial collectivities Lewis Holloway*, Carol Morris**, Ben Gilna* and David Gibbs* Genetic techniques have become increasingly prevalent in livestock breeding, associated with new types of knowledge-practice and changes in the institutional and geographi- cal relationships related to animal husbandry. This paper examines the value of Foucault’s concept of ‘biopower’ to theorising livestock breeding and the implications of the rise of genetic knowledge-practices in agriculture, developing the concept to apply to nonhuman animals and to situations where humans and nonhuman animals are co-constituted through particular knowledge-practices and corporeal meetings. It focuses on the idea of ‘population’ as a central component of biopower, and relates this to conceptualisations of biosocial collectivity. Reacting to the inherent humanism of Foucault’s outlining of biopower, the paper argues for its relevance in relation to non- human populations, and for heterogeneous conceptualisations of biosocial collectivity. Drawing on research with UK beef cattle and sheep breed societies, the paper explores how, in practice, populations are constructed in relation to the production of particular sorts of truths concerning, and particular modes of intervention in, the lives of non- human animals. It explores how heterogeneous biosocial collectivities are constituted around these interventions. The emergence of genetic techniques is shown to transform the processes constituting populations and heterogeneous biosocial collectivities, and this is discussed in terms of a new inflection of agricultural biopower associated with novel interventions in the lives of livestock animals. key words UK biopower genetics livestock breeding population biosocial collectivity *Department of Geography, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX email: l.holloway@hull.ac.uk **School of Geography, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD revised manuscript received 12 February 2009 Introduction An increasing ‘geneticisation’ of knowledges of life (Gannett 1999; Haraway 1997; Keller 1992 2000; Rose 2001) has stimulated critical interest in the social, political and ethical implications of genetic understandings of and interventions in lives and bodies. Although the global phenomena of biosci- ence and biotechnology have been the subject of far-reaching and critical analysis (e.g. Braun 2007; Parry 2004; Rose 2001 2007), at the same time for some writers it is at the relatively small scale, in localised knowledge-practices and power– knowledge relationships, affecting specific groups of individuals in particular places and times, that the implications of geneticisation should be studied (Spencer and Whatmore 2001; Greenhough 2006; Greenhough and Roe 2006; Michael 2006). For some too, the prevalent focus of social scientific research on biotechnology on human life should be extended to encompass considerations of how bio- technologies transform the lives and bodies of non- humans, and perhaps in particular, nonhuman animals (see, for example, Bowring 2003; Franklin 2007; Haraway 1997; Morris and Holloway 2009). The ways in which geneticised knowledges are Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 34 394–407 2009 ISSN 0020-2754 Ó 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation Ó Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2009