Foucaults Disciplinary Society and Today's Social Control - Research Paper Example

To what extent does Foucault’s work on the disciplinary society help us to understand social control in today’s society? Starting from the early dawnof human civilization to late 17th or early 18th century, the term “social control” mainly used to imply that a ruler or a sovereign would interpret motive and actions of his subjects in a generalized manner and accordingly methods will be applied so that such motive of actions can be restrained from violating social harmony or process of social governance of the ruler or the sovereign. Waves of intellectual movement and traits of cultural renaissance, occurring since mid 18th and throughout the 19th century, were gradually introducing change in the existing scenario and approach of a state or a system of governance towards controlling behaviorist approach of citizens in order to control the issues of a harmonious social existence so that all citizens can enjoy their respective basic rights to the best extent possible. Finally, inception of 20th century intellectual enlightenment and implementation of post modernist thoughts within the domain of Western socio-cultural existence gave birth to an altogether new perspective regarding social control and disciplining the inhabitants of a disciplinary society. During the context of discussing relevance of Foucault’s contribution in order to understand different aspects and traits of social control in a disciplinary society, it becomes important to receive an overview of certain basic concepts. The actual realization of philosophy behind disciplinary society becomes crucial within scope of this discussion. Generally speaking, the term “disciplinary society” observes a particular social context as a combination of various social organs or institutions and its interaction with inhabitants of the society in such a way so that an ambiance of harmony prevails. Most importantly, in odder to maintain this peaceful and righteous existence both, institution and individuals, realize as well as respect their rights and respect others as well. Accordingly, they will fulfill their respective rights being conscious about their duties towards a mutual existence and in this process the situation of disciplined existence will prevail, “Disciplinary society is that society in which social command is constructed through a diffuse network of dispositifs or apparatuses that produce and regulate customs, habits, and productive practices.”1 However, automatically the most relevant question can be raised that how the issues of social control is asking so much of attention in this aspect? Before coming to answer this question one thing needs to be realized that the concept of “disciplinary society” is an ideal and there is always a huge gap between an ideal and practical situation. It is assumed that while inhabiting within the arena of disciplinary society a human being will behave just in the manner that is expected from him and at this very point the relevance of social control comes into force as from the perspective of criminology it presumes that “all people have the potential to violate the law and that modern society presents many opportunities for illegal activity.”2 Keeping in mind this observation, it becomes clear that achieving the ideal of disciplinary society becomes also impossible unless proper methods are citied by a system of governance regarding social control. Since the early dawn of human civilization, several methods have been cultivated by different administrative systems so that such natural inclination of individuals towards commission of crime can be controlled and the issue of social control can be maintained. However, despite all these approaches people’s tendency towards criminal indulgence has not reduced; rather different forms of criminal activities have been flourished and is still flourishing. In this context, efforts of Foucault, to sort out a flexible system of governance becomes relevant becomes highly relevant. Foucault, through his observation, has repeatedly emphasized on genesis of such a system that would maintain the principles of social control from an open and deconstructive perspective, which means that the system will deconstruct and reconstruct its methods of approach with a close observation of changing socio-cultural situations. His works clearly speak in support of the observation that on most of the occasions, the system of social control deviate from its actual aim and rather than proper exercise of correctional methods, those become source of oppression, ultimately giving birth to increasing criminal tendencies among common people. Thus, Foucault is of opinion that rather than observing human beings as part of a system and apply the methods of disciplining equally to all of them, it would be more relevant if they are recognized as individual social bodies and respective methods of controlling their actions is cultivated. Background: Compared to the earlier approaches to social control in a disciplinary social context, the Foucauldian observation presents an entirely different and revolutionary approach to the problem that reflects over genealogy of punishment, which was thought to be strengthening foundation of system of control, pointing out flaws of the system itself. At the same time he also has pointed out to the fact that the flawed system of control to a great extent also has given birth to different forms of crime. Punishment, which is actually aimed at introducing correctional features within a social system, due to its flawed application, is very frequently interpreted as exercise of power of domination over an individual by an institution. As most of the people believe in such interpretation of punishment, consequently, they actually attempt to discipline and supervise themselves; but due to such oppressive approach, on the other hand, certain situations also emerge where individuals revolt against such system of coercion or repression, automatically increasing the rate of criminal activism to a great extent. Thus, Foucault has founded his theoretical observation on three pillars, namely madness, discipline and governmentality. In his famous book, Madness and civilization: a history of insanity in the age of reason, Foucault has made an ironic observation that what actually has been suggested or referred as “madness” or “insanity” is an integral part of human civilization; however, the modern notion of reason or logical approach is so limited in its scope to explain the spontaneous urge of human creativity that aspects associated with madness or insanity is often related with limitation of human intellect. Foucault observes, “In learned literature … Madness or Folly was at work, at the very heart of reason and truth. … what literature and art have already taken up: the intermingled themes of the Feast and of the Dance of Fools. Indeed, from the fifteenth century on, the face of madness has haunted the imagination of Western man …. But in less than a half-century, it has been sequestered and, in the fortress of confinement, bound to reason to the rules of morality and to their monotonous nights.”3 The modernist approach regarding freedom of human speech, expression, thoughts and movement, despite the fact, has taken a highly liberal approach and also has repeatedly asserted the fact that every human being should be provided with the facilities to express their respective opinion without any coercion or repression from any individual or community or social institution, finally has failed to justify its own approaches. Through oppressing the traits of insanity with so-called reason, the modernist society actually has contributed to the aspects of social coercion and oppression. Modern criminological approaches have unanimously aggressed to the point that commission of crime or people’s involvement in criminal activism is not an isolated or individual process; rather there are several socio-cultural, political and economic issues that contribute in the entire system. In Foucault’s discussion, madness and methods of its control by the modern system emerge as a metaphor through which he actually attempts to show that how spontaneity of human actions are smothered on a regular basis by a social system. Foucault’s ironical observation of the system reaches its climax as he shows how a society does nomenclature and categorizes human actions, “Yet, it must not be forgotten that the “insane” had as such a particular place in the world of confinement. Their status was not merely that of prisoners. In the general sensibility to unreason, there appeared to be a special modulation which concerned madness proper, and was addressed to those called, without exact semantic distinction, insane, alienated, deranged, demented, extravagant.”4 Foucault’s analysis of the “history of insanity” provides a reader with detailed observation of the kind of inhuman treatment that a person with “insane” tag during this post Renaissance period used to encounter. Despite the fact that centers of treatments and asylums were mainly developed for the purpose correcting traits of insanity but the methods those social institutions used to apply for the purpose of correction, with the progress of time, reached the pinnacle of violence. At this point he has observed most practically that “When practices reach this degree of violent intensity, it becomes clear that they are no longer inspired by the desire to punish nor by the duty to correct.”5 Actually those practices remain within the hands of a social system as methods of punishment and exhibiting the superiority of its power over common people. In this context, Foucault’s reflection over power becomes important within scope of the discussion. Idea of Power and “Discipline and Punish” Foucault’s understanding of power and its application through methods of punishment have received a vast treatment in Discipline and Punish. In this book, Foucault has suggested that power has three basic features, namely, “First, power is productive. It not only expresses the repressive, exclusionary force of a system’s constraints but also creates new domains of knowledge and practice. Second, power is not located in any single control-center; it is dispersed throughout the social system in innumerable local seats of power. These seats interact with one another but do not form a unified system. Third, although it is intimately related to systems of knowledge, power is more than the play of signifiers and signifieds within such systems. It is ultimately the formative action of one body to another.”6 While analyzing the genealogy of punishment and how application of power over bodies by a system has gradually shirked from its actual aim, Foucault has provided a considerable focus on the late eighteenth and early 19th century penal system, generated as a product of Enlightenment period. Despite the fact that contemporary penal system of social control attempted to incorporate several humane traits within its scope and attempted to make the system of punishment more as a system of cure; rather than as a source of applying inhuman methods as means of social control, at the same time, it was automatically associating itself with older methods of “pain and torture and spectacle.”7 The genealogy of power and punishment also clearly distinguishes between old and new system. Compared to the earlier times, when capacity to punish was exclusively relied on the sovereign body and also was a public spectacle so that people become aware about the power of state to apply legal enforcements, in the modern situation public display of punishment has cased, giving birth to the closed door punishment system, such as, prisons and correctional homes. “In penal justice, the prison transformed the punitive procedure into a penitentiary technique; the carceral archipelago transported this technique from the penal institution to the entire social body.”8 What actually Foucault wised to suggest that there are different forms of power in a social context and punishment is one of the major manifestations of the power, “Punishment is a functioning of a power that is exercised on those punished, and more generally on those being supervised, on madmen, children, those struck at a machine, etc.”9 Emergence of imprisonment as one of the major forms of punishment has attracted considerable amount of focus from Foucault. He opines that starting from the ancient times, the system of imprisonment has remained as an important source of individual disciplining and through the “carceral continuum”10 it infiltrates several other institutional authorities that are aimed at “supervise, transform, correct, improve”11 an individual. Ideally, capacity of a social system or a sovereign to punish an individual contains the same purpose as that of curing his/her criminal behaviorist tendencies so that the issue of social control is properly maintained within the domain of a disciplinary society. However, adoption of the carceral approach during the post enlightenment period within the arena of social governance has actually led to neutralization of “…legal power to punish”12 just the same way it also “ ‘legalizes’ the technical power to discipline.”13 At this point one important question starts haunting a reader that how this power of punishing a social body becomes natural and universally accepted. Foucault himself also has raised the same question and answers by keeping in mind the theories of contract that a “juridical subject”14 within scope of such contract automatically provides the power to others that “he himself possesses over them.”15 Due to this process, a communication between disciplining power and legal power becomes stronger and on most of the occasions, both these powers complement each other by providing a system of governance the right to punish an individual, “It is highly probable that the great carceral continuum, which provides a communication between the power of discipline and the power of the law, and extends without interruption from the smallest coercions to the longest penal detention, constituted the technical and real, immediately material counterpart of the chimerical granting of the right to punish.”16 Thus, Foucault’s genealogy finally presents an analysis of the development of carceral system, leading to methods of control and finally to the development of modern penology. However, despite all the changes, which have been made within the purview of legal system during the Enlightenment period and later on certain traits of that system also have been passed in the cultivation of modern criminology with the aim for better social control within a disciplinary society, there is no denial of the fact that actual purpose of punishing that is to cure or rehabilitate an individual has not been mostly successful. The novel form of law, which has been developed with fusion of “legality and nature, prescription and constitution, the norm” has failed to provide a system with a stable method of social control and proof in support of this observation becomes clear as we witness “dislocation of the judicial power” and their respective dilemma in the context of solving a particular situation, related to social control or giving directives regarding cure or rehabilitation of people, who contribute to violating the norms of disciplinary social existence. Foucault has made the situation clearer through his observation that “Their (Judges) immense ‘appetite for medicine’ which is constantly manifested – from their appeal to psychiatric experts, to their attention to the chatter of criminology – expresses the major fact that the power they exercise has been ‘denatured.’”17 Consequently, the ideal of social control remains in a disciplinary society remains unattained. Though he has repeatedly emphasized over the fact that his notion of power, in the modern social context, does not essentially mean power to punish or to torment social bodies within the domain of social existence, but in reality the situation has actually turned to be so, far removed from the actual purposes of correcting or educating through punishment. Governmentality: Keeping the entire situation in mind and failure of actual interpretation as well as perception of power in modern social context, Foucault is of opinion that the situation can be changed; rather it is under desperate need of change and necessary steps required for such change can be generated through reorganizing. In his essay “Governmentality” he has discussed these aspects with particular reference to history that how functioning of government institutions have changed gradually within the purview of social governance. He has explained in the very introduction of the essay that by the term “governmentality” he means, first, association of institutions through which he exercises its power and its complex forms over a particular section of population, political economy as its knowledge and cultivation of different instruments to ensure social security. Second, the tendency, within Western social discourse, which has remained preeminent over different forms of governance, namely disciplining, sovereignty etc. that has led to origination of different governmental instruments of control and origination of different forms of knowledge regarding governance and third, consequences of the process which helped the Middle Age system of justice to change in an administrative state during 15th and 16th century.18 Thus, Foucault’s understanding and interpretation of the term “governmentality” is quite pervasive and it encompasses within its scope detailed means of social control within a disciplinary society. Emergence of criminal activism, which also receives a great deal of incite due to different socio-political and economic aspects, is one of the major sources behind violation of social control in a disciplinary society and in this context, governmentality techniques are of great interest as those actually provide us with a “powerful framework for analyzing how crime is problematized and controlled.”19 Thus, such observation clearly elucidates that governmentality is a method of disciplining and in this context Foucauldian definition of discipline becomes relevant, as he suggests, “ ‘Discipline’ may be identified neither with an institution nor with an apparatus; it is a type of power, a modality for its exercise, comprising a whole set of instruments, techniques, procedures, levels of application, targets; it is a ‘physics’ or anatomy of power, technology.”20 While reflecting over the term “governmentality”, Foucault has specified the threefold meaning that the term holds for him. At the same time he also has suggested that a system of governance has a target population for which it aims to cultivate various security instruments keeping in mind the knowledge of political economy. At the same time, depending over such knowledge, reaction and treatment of a state varies towards its inhabitants in different ways. However, one of the primary aspects of proper governmentality is that government of a state or any form of governmental authority should remain ignorant about requirements of the citizens and it should try to satisfy expectations of citizens to the best extent possible. Flexibility of the structure is one of the basic issues that can ensure this goal and can prove it to be committed towards best interest of common people. Every state has its own problems and limitations and values attributed towards citing of those problems can mainly be done in two ways, “… the one form, immediate, affective and tragic … there is a second way of overvaluing the problem of the state, one that is paradoxical because it is apparently reductionist: it is the form of analysis that consists in reducing the state to a certain number of functions ….”21 Foucault has observed in the initial paragraphs of his essay that Middle Age state of justice took an administrative form during 15th and 16 century and in this transformation can be observed as an instance of reducing a state to a certain number of functions. However, it was not until 18th century that implication of proper governmentality was realized and Foucault has identified it “as a singularly paradoxical phenomenon.”22 Ultimately, such observation from Foucault has led him to define a state and the process of its survival, “…if in fact the problems of governmentality and the techniques of government have become the only political issue, the only space for political struggle and contestation, this is because the governmentalization of the state is, at the same time, what has permitted the state to survive.”23 Such vast is the scope of governmentality for Foucault that he suggests, “… the state can only be understood in its survival and its limits on the basis of the general tactics of governmentality.”24 While reflecting over the genesis and types of states from historical perspective, Foucault has classified the entire process in three stages, first, the state of justice, “born in a territoriality of feudal type and corresponding in large part to a society of the law – customary laws and written laws .... Second, the administrative state … corresponds to a society of regulations and disciplines. Finally, the state of government, which is … defined by … the mass of the population …. And this state of government … would correspond to a society controlled by apparatuses of security.”25 Thus, in the modern context, realization of a government regarding political economy of its population becomes one of the most important sources to apply the instruments of social control in a disciplinary society, finally leading to criminal justice system and modern penal procedures. Prior to the development of modern criminology and penal system, there used to be disciplinary punishment system. However, the shift from disciplinary punishment to criminal justice, has been speculated by scholars like Bottoms, would contribute to more effective means of social control and at the same time, he also has argued that such effective implementations of social control “within the general society outside the criminal justice system” is perhaps the ‘last resort’ in social control.26 If we shift to Foucault’s observation regarding methods of social control, keeping apart the methods of disciplinary punishment, we see that he has sorted out three basic models of control, namely, monarchial, juridical, and carceral. He also has identified a common moral link within each of these methods of control which has given these methods the status of situation of justice.27 The basic aim of criminal justice system is to ensure protection of morality or a moral process and proper implementation of governmentality which aims at enforcement of social order, in the other way, also seeks the protection of morality. Thus, any such forces, incidents, or commissioners of such incidents that are responsible for violation of moral order, should be removed from the system and later on, through a method of educating or soul-training, attempts will be made to make them realize about the importance of maintaining morality and social harmony. Consequently, under light of the principles of social control the birth of prison can be explained. However, despite the fact that modern criminology has come up with such ideology behind imprisonment, in the earlier times, prison used to act as an effective method of governmentality to threat people with the fear that commission of criminal actions can lead them to such a situation and rather than efforts to correct their tendency, the early system wished to keep people away from criminal actions through the method of social humiliation. Foucault has observed that existence of people within a social system is also equal to such imprisoned existence, “The carceral texture of society assures both the real capture of the body and its perceptual observation ….”28 Moreover, he also has criticized the method of imprisonment that no matter how much modern criminology has attempted to idealize the system of imprisonment but due to rigid social “mechanisms and strategies of power,”29 and failure of governmentality, the system of imprisonment has remained as “…an instrument of rejection or repression in the service of a state apparatus....”30 Conclusion: Foucault, thus, has established his arguments about social control in a disciplinary society on three foundations, namely, madness, analysis of power and governmentality. Madness has emerged in his analysis as a reflection of human spontaneity and he also has criticized the modern human rational as it in name of reason, on several occasions, oppresses human reactions and spontaneity. In this analysis regarding idea of power, Foucault has stated though on most of occasions the term “power” is used as a means of oppression, but power is not essentially corruptible or oppressive; rather if intended it can be used for the purpose of individual correction or guiding them towards the right direction. In a disciplinary society, while applying the methods of social control, power is mostly applied in order to restrain or confine people from committing such acts that would disturb the principles of natural justice or traits of morality. Foucault, thus, has interpreted power as a prevailing entity, which exists in all layers of social presence and compared to the earlier or conventional understanding of power, he has decentralized and generalized it. He also has emphasized on the fact that unless the idea of power is properly interpreted and perceived by people, application of the methods of social control would never achieve the expected rate of success; thus, in the modern social structure and scope of governmentality it is highly important that idea of power is properly realized both by systems or institutions of governance as well as common people. References Craig, E. (1998). Routledge encyclopedia of philosophy, Volume 1. London: Taylor & Francis. Foucault, M. (2001). Madness and civilization: a history of insanity in the age of reason. Ed: 10. Connecticut: Cengage Learning. Foucault, M. (1977). “The carceral”. Criminological perspectives: essential readings. Ed: 2. London: SAGE Foucault, M. “Governmentality”. (2003). Criminological perspectives: essential readings. Ed: 2. London: SAGE Garland, D. (1997). “ ‘Governmentality’ and the problem of crime: Foucault, criminology, sociology”. Criminological perspectives: essential readings. Ed: 2. London: SAGE Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2001). Empire. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Shearing C.D. and Stenning, P. (1885). “From the Panopticon to Disney World: The Development of Discipline”. Criminological perspectives: essential readings. Ed: 2. London: SAGE Siegel, L.J. (2008). Criminology. Ed: 10. Connecticut: Cengage Learning. Tunick, M. (1992). Punishment: theory and practice. California: University of California Press. Read More