Institutions and Institutional Power
Randal Johnson in Walker and Chaplin (1999)
Social control - links into psychoanalysis and the gaze
How society/the social situation we are raised into controls our actions, our actions are pre determined by societal controls. Society affects our consciousness.
2 different kinds of institutions -
Institutions in a physical form the army, the police, the government etc.
Institutions that have organised practices such as the family, marriage etc.
People who make culture don't exist independently, they are working within a complex institutional framework that authorises what they do, how they do it, what is good/bad, and legitimises the practice.
Need to first understand the cultural framework to have a correct reading.
Discipline is not just punitive, it is productive. It makes us into docile, controllable bodies.
Michel Foucault - French Philosopher
1926-1984
Foucaults two important works to focus on:
Madness and Civilisation
Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison
One of the projects of Foucault was to deconstruct strict binarisations(?) that you find in contemporary society such as good/bad, sane/insane, hetero/homosexual.
The Great Confinement (late 1600s)
Houses of Correction aimed at curbing unemployment and idleness.
Before the great confinement people considered to be insane were allowed to live with society, there was no division or separation within society in relation to them. They were often considered as 'the village idiot'. Late 1600s bought a new sensibility, where people who were considered socially useful were stigmatised as socially useless, and buildings were built to contain them. They acted as factories/prisons, they threw the mad in there, the criminals, drunks, vagabonds, the diseased, single mothers. They were given a task of work, and forced to work. They were physically beaten if they did not cooperate.
A crude way to make the unproductive productive. Used as a form of moral reform - through the modesty of work. This continued until gradually in the 18th century these houses of correction became seen as a mistake. Inside the houses of correction the deviants would corrupt each other. The criminals and insane people corrupted those previously deemed sane or well behaved.
1800's gave birth to the Asylum, the specialised institution to correct the insane. Worked in a different way - instead of physical violence as a tool to get people to do you what you want. The inmates were tactically reduced to minors. If they behaved appropriately, the inmates were rewarded and celebrated, and if they behaved badly, they were chastised by a paternal figure.
The attempt to control the population through physicality then grew into subtly training people using behavioural techniques. Modifying people's attitudes, and the way they think and respond.
Foucault sees this a more modern form of discipline. From the emergence of the specialist institutions come new forms of knowledge - biology, psychiatry, medicine etc, which legitimise the practices of hospitals, doctors and psychiatrists.
Foucault aims to show how these forms of knowledge and rationalising institutions like the prison, asylum, hospital, the school, now affect human beings in such a way that they alter our consciousness and make us internalise our responsibility. Taking responsibility for our own discipline. Someone then acts a certain way to be praised/rewarded by society, as opposed to being singled out or stigmatised for a negative reason.
Early discipline served as a visible and grisly reminder of the ultimate power of the state. Capital punishment - crude, physical, plays on a human's fear
Hung drawn and quartered - barbaric techniques used to control and scare.
Modern disciplinary society such as School/Prison etc - sophisticated techniques, conditioning people subtly rather physically.
Revolves around the mental, not the physical. Used to improve - performance, capabilities, socially useful.
Foucault quote 1981 in O Farrell 2005:102
A form of discipline he called panopticism.
Jeremy Bentham's Design the Panopticon, proposed in 1791
Images of Panopticon.
Proposed as a multi functional building, could be anything - workhouse, prison, hospital etc. Many were hospitals and prisons when they were built.
Rotunda design, on the side of the building there are cells where an individual would be placed over a number of floors. Each cell is open from the front, and lit from the back by a window, faces the centre of the building. The perfect institution.
Produces a specific mental effect. You are constantly staring into a central observation tower which was being constantly supervised. You have no view of fellow inmates, only the supervisors. Produces an entirely different effect to the dungeon.
Dungeon - locked away, hidden, able to forget about them. 'mass social repression'
Panopticon - Light, visible, basically being exhibited. Deviants are the object of scrutiny and study.
The effect of the panopticon is that because you are constantly being watched by someone who expects you to behave a certain way, ultimately, you never behave badly. You cannot rebel as you would be caught out, so hence there is no point in acting upon bad behaviour. Noone to share thoughts, emotions with, like an internal torture device.
Ultimately prevents bad behaviour by singling the individual out with a sense/anxiety they are being constantly watched.
'The Panopticon internalises the individual conscious state that he is always being watched...'
Power functions automatically - creates a system where the inmates are always controlled. Once this happens, you don't need anyone in the Panopticon to supervise as they internalised the responsibility.
Often no supervisors were present, but the sense of being watched was by then in built, creating an automatic response and behaviour.
This theory is transferred into modern society.
Panopticon is not just an institution, it acts as a means of surveillance, or a laboratory to study people in.
Allows supervisors to experiment and study you. Makes people in the panopticon more productive, such as prison inmates who were rehabilitated and reformed.
Creates an 'institutional gaze'. In the same way the patriarchal gaze makes women act up to the male ideal of femininity. The institutional gaze makes us act in the interest of the institution without forcing it.
What Foucault is describing as a transformation is describing is a transformation in western societies from a form of power imposed by a ruler to a new mode of power called Panopticism.
The panopticon is a model of how society organises its knowledge, its power, its surveillance of bodies and its training of bodies.
Examples
The open plan office. Effectively a panopticon as noone is out of the view of the superiors. Presented as a way to work more successfully as a team. Actually much less social because you cannot act in a way you would in a social context because you are aware that your behaviour is being watched. You begin to discipline yourself and work, or at least pretend to work.
The Office - TV Documentary crew. People within the office begin to act up to how they think they should be seen.
The design of open plan bars - open plan bars make everything visible to bouncers and bar staff as opposed to traditional booths were you are somewhat hidden. People begin to act more responsibly and conform.
Google maps/Street View
CCTV cameras
Lecture theatres similar to Pentonville Prison
Register is another form of panoptic surveillance - on a deeper level classes are attended because you understand that you would become susceptible to a form of disciplinary action.
We are aware that we are being constantly recorded.
Power is not just about punishment, but productivity.
Self regulation. We are not being controlled, but we are controlling ourselves.
Relationship between power, knowledge and the body.
'Power relations have an immediate hold upon it [the body]; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs' (Foucault 1975)
Forces us to improve ourselves. To physically become better. Produces what Foucault calls docile bodies - no resistance, we are obedient bodies who are self monitoring and self correcting. More physically adept than a normal body. The solder is a perfect example of a docile body, who will carry out orders without question, and with maximum efficiency.
'The cult of health' You go to a pub and you are advised on health statistics, how much you should drink etc, public campaigns such as 5 a day, images in magazines of what your body should look like, tv shows based on health that provide health advice. Without anyone forcing us, we begin to train ourselves, eat healthier etc. Most gyms are open plan, creates a sense of competition and motivation as you are being supervised and judged.
Tory govt raised pension age, used health advisories as a way of creating healthier older workers.
Foucault and Power
Not a top down model like Marxism
Power is not something that someone can have over someone else - it is a relation between different individuals and groups, only exists when it is being exercised.
The exercise of power relies on there being the capacity for power to be resisted.
'Where there is power there is resistance'.
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