Skip to content
ADVERTISEMENT
Sign In
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Virtual Events
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
  • More
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Virtual Events
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
    Upcoming Events:
    An AI-Driven Work Force
    AI and Microcredentials
Sign In
Lingua Franca-Circular Icon

Lingua Franca

Language and writing in academe.

Birth of a Neologism: Will ‘Biominorities’ Stick?

By William Germano May 29, 2018
rohingya-crisis_650x400_81504783230
The sociologist Arjun Appadurai used the term “biominorities” when writing about Rohingya refugees.

Thinking about Foucault’s conceptual inventions is always an opportunity to test what language can do.

To continue reading for FREE, please sign in.

Sign In

Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.

Don’t have an account? Sign up now.

A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.

Sign Up

rohingya-crisis_650x400_81504783230
The sociologist Arjun Appadurai used the term “biominorities” when writing about Rohingya refugees.

Thinking about Foucault’s conceptual inventions is always an opportunity to test what language can do.

One of his most resonant concepts is biopower. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term as “the power of a political entity to control and regulate the lives of its populace.”

Foucault’s point, though, is that biopower isn’t just any such power at any point in time. It’s a form of political control that arose after we stopped believing in the divine right of kings or acceded to other centralized authority based in a single person.

ADVERTISEMENT

The OED’s first citation, from the 1978 publication of Foucault’s History of Sexuality, reminds us that “the beginning of an era of ‘bio-power’” was marked by “an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugation of bodies and the control of populations.” Kings and such could be subtle, but not as subtle as biopower.

Even in 1978, biopower would not have been the first neologism to append bio- to an unanticipated word or concept.

The British Isles have long offered their consumers laundry detergents with bio as a selling point. Bio here means that the product relies on biodegradable enzymes to do the heavy lifting. The OED traces biodegradable back to 1959, when it was deployed to predict the market arrival of detergents that could decompose.

There is an astonishingly long list of words that have absorbed bio as a prefix. Most are scientific, but not all, and increasingly even scientific concepts – like biome – have moved out into discourses beyond the lab.

The most recent entry into the bio lexicon is the term biominorities, put forward by the anthropologist and sociologist Arjun Appadurai, writing in the publication Scroll.in about genocidal practices in the present day.

ADVERTISEMENT

It’s a trenchant political post. Its subjects — Gaza, the Rohingya region of Myanmar — go well beyond the parameters of this language blog. But we might still use biominorities to consider here how language reconfigures what we mean when we look at the world.

One of our most distinguished global thinkers, Appadurai writes knowing that he’s inventing and investing a term with power. “By biominorities,” he explains, “I mean those whose difference (ethnic, religious, racial) from the national majorities is seen as a form of bodily threat to the national ethnos.”

Much can and surely will be written about Appadurai’s concept, its viability, and what happens if the term is applied to situations beyond those on which he focuses.

Here let me only point out that the neologism biominorities surprises the reader. It asks us to consider minorities within a population 1. “as a body” and 2. as that “body” is perceived as a threat — a “bodily threat” at that — to the imagined, collective “body” of the dominant, self-defining ethnic majority.

Discussions about bodies always seem to be about both something real and something imaginary. The body of the divinely anointed king (cue the concept of the king’s two bodies). The Hobbesian compact in which all social participants join collectively with the king as their head. The Foucauldian understanding of the postmonarchic state as bristling with surveillance — an unseen, distributed system of power with which a government controls our bodies and our lives.

ADVERTISEMENT

As political theory, critical analysis, and sometimes even efforts at diplomacy continue to move forward, we will see whether the neologism biominorities sticks, and whether it can refract the harsh light of ethnopolitical tension in new and productive ways.

Maybe we can even imagine not imagining bodies as other than what they are.

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

More News

Photo illustration showing internal email text snippets over a photo of a University of Iowa campus quad
Red-state reticence
Facing Research Cuts, Officials at U. of Iowa Spoke of a ‘Limited Ability to Publicly Fight This’
Photo illustration showing Santa Ono seated, places small in the corner of a dark space
'Unrelentingly Sad'
Santa Ono Wanted a Presidency. He Became a Pariah.
Illustration of a rushing crowd carrying HSI letters
Seeking precedent
Funding for Hispanic-Serving Institutions Is Discriminatory and Unconstitutional, Lawsuit Argues
Photo-based illustration of scissors cutting through paper that is a photo of an idyllic liberal arts college campus on one side and money on the other
Finance
Small Colleges Are Banding Together Against a Higher Endowment Tax. This Is Why.

From The Review

Football game between UCLA and Colorado University, at Folsom Field in Boulder, Colo., Sept. 24, 2022.
The Review | Opinion
My University Values Football More Than Education
By Sigman Byrd
Photo- and type-based illustration depicting the acronym AAUP with the second A as the arrow of a compass and facing not north but southeast.
The Review | Essay
The Unraveling of the AAUP
By Matthew W. Finkin
Photo-based illustration of the Capitol building dome propped on a stick attached to a string, like a trap.
The Review | Opinion
Colleges Can’t Trust the Federal Government. What Now?
By Brian Rosenberg

Upcoming Events

Plain_Acuity_DurableSkills_VF.png
Why Employers Value ‘Durable’ Skills
Warwick_Leadership_Javi.png
University Transformation: a Global Leadership Perspective
Lead With Insight
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Jobs in Higher Education
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • DEI at The Chronicle
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Group and Institutional Access
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2025 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is academe’s most trusted resource for independent journalism, career development, and forward-looking intelligence. Our readers lead, teach, learn, and innovate with insights from The Chronicle.
Follow Us
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin