Power, Space, and the Body: A Critical Assessment of Foucault's Discipline and Punish

Abstract

The work of Michel Foucault has recently been subjected to considerable scrutiny. This paper is an examination of his book, Discipline and Punish, which describes an historical transformation in the exercise of power. The themes (section 2) and the significance (section 3) of the book are discussed in terms of Foucault's conception of history and power. In the rest of the paper, its implications are examined more closely, through four categories: ‘institutions’, ‘the economy’, ‘law and the state’, and ‘struggle and strategy’. Under these headings are discussed the connections and contradictions between Foucault's analysis and more conventional Marxist or Weberian approaches. Although Foucault's perspectives cannot be ‘incorporated’ within such theories of power, they are far from being completely incompatible with them.

Accumulating populations: bodies, institutions and space

“…In an attempt to answer this question, let me turn to the writings of Michel Foucault, and speci®cally to his classic treatise Surveiller et Punir, published in French in 1975 and translated into English as Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison in 1977 (henceforth DP). This is a well-known text which is one of the staples of late-twentieth century Western social and cultural theory, and it has already been the inspiration behind much research in human geography, including the enquiries into institutional geographies just mentioned (see also Philo, 1989a;Driver, 1990Driver, , 1993Driver, , 1994Ploszajska, 1994), as well as contributing to various (re)theorisations of power and space (Driver, 1985(Driver, , 1992Hannah, 1992Hannah, , 1997aHannah, , 1997bKoskela, 2000;Sharp et al, 2000). This is not the occasion to review the remarkable architecture of this book, nor to explore at length the dual conceptual and substantive critiques directed at it, but it is necessary to offer a thumbnail recounting of its contents before using it as a lens through which to view the links between Kantrowitz's survey of Stateville and the concerns of population geographers.…”

Hegemonía, gubernamentalidad, territorio. Apuntes metodológicos para una historia social de la planificación

“…Aunque estos marcos de referencia pueden ser presentados como episodios sucesivos en la interacción reciente entre teoría e historia social, merece la pena establecer un diálogo entre ambos con el n de perfeccionar y matizar el análisis que pueda resultar de su aplicación. Este eclecticismo se inscribiría en el proyecto más amplio de combinación de las perspectivas marxista y foucaultiana para una comprensión más integral de las dinámicas históricas y políticas (Jessop 2001;MacDonald 2002), en particular con vistas a la producción de una geografía histórica de las con guraciones de poder y su proyección sobre la población (Driver 1985;Sevilla-Buitrago 2012). Se trata, desde luego, de un eclecticismo arriesgado 3 , pero como intentaré demostrar los resultados potenciales justi can plenamente este matrimonio a priori ilícito.…”

Disciplining De Facto Development: Water Theft and Hydrosocial Order in Tijuana

“…The bourgeoisie reserved to itself the fruitful domain of the illegality of rights" (Foucault, 1977, page 87). Punishment was a bodily practice, including biopolitical techniques to differentiate, regulate, and mark the 'good' citizen from the 'bad' (Driver, 1985;. The unequal treatment of water theft by poor urban dwellers versus the rich refl ects this imbalance.…”