ABSTRACT
Governmentalist research has been as attracted to the nineteenth century as to the contemporary world. There are both historical and methodological reasons for this. Historical, in that the nature of politics and political authority is transformed after the Enlightenment: The population becomes a political object for the first time as it emerges as the source of the production of truths. Methodological, in that a population has to be defined conceptually as well as how it could be operationalised. Politics, power and knowledge become entangled.
