Considering the recognition that there has been a for-profit turn within security provision, but less specifically on what type of product security is, a better understanding of privatized security as a product can be gained through analyzing its similarities with other privatized products and services; namely, health(care). As it is conceptualized in my research, both health(care) and security are the main objects and subjects of focus when it comes to the biopolitical state. As such, biopolitics, health(care) and functioning of the population are the common links between security and health(care). Further to this, within the literature on biopolitics and health(care) there has been a move from biopolitics to biocapitalism. To date, biocapitalism has been framed strictly within the ‘biopolitics as health(care)’ sphere as a sector in which the optimization and health of the population is one of politics and profit. There is an ‘economics of vitality’, whereby health is downloaded onto the private individual as they purchase goods and services in the private market; self-help and self-health. In addition to the individual level and consumption of health products, health, biopolitics and biomedical research has moved from taking the human body as a whole to its molecularization and partitioning – from pharmaceutical developments to the human genome project. Not only are these developments for the ‘good of the (healthy) population’, it is a source of significant funding and profit intertwined with a re-articulation and understanding of what it means to be human and healthy. Through elaborating and analyzing the biocapitalism of health(care) and the biopolitical links, similarities and deviations between security and health(care), a better understanding of the biocapital elements of security can be had. That is, understanding it as a particular type product.
