 Foucault’s short but influential discussion of biopower also first appears at the end of The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1. Foucault contrasts it to what he calls sovereign power: a form of power that was historically founded on violence—the right to kill. It was exercised mainly by “deduction” (taking something away): it consisted of the right to appropriate a portion of the nation’s wealth, for example by imposing a tax on products, goods and services, or by demanding a portion of the subjects’ time, strength, and ultimately life itself. The obligation to wage war on behalf of the sovereign and the imposition of death penalty for going against his will were the clearest forms of such power. But Foucault claims that the West has undergone a profound transformation in its mechanisms of power since the seventeenth century. Deductive and violent sovereign power has been gradually complemented and partly replaced by biopower, a form of power that exerts a positive influence on life, “that endeavors to administer, optimize, and multiply it, subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive regulations” (1976 [1978: 137]). This era of biopower is marked by the explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the control of populations: techniques that, for example, coordinate medical care, normalize behavior, rationalize mechanisms of insurance, and rethink urban planning. The aim is the effective administration of bodies and the calculated management of life through means that are scientific and continuous. Mechanisms of power and knowledge have assumed responsibility for the life process in order to optimize, control, and modify it. The exercise of power over living beings no longer carries the threat of death, but instead takes charge of their lives.