Michael Foucault's Discipline And Punishment : Book Analysis

Change over time; that is a common theme with everything in the world. The concept of punishment is no different in that regard. In the 16th and 17th century the common view for punishing people was retaliation from the king and to be done in the town square. In what seemed to be all of a sudden, there was a change in human thinking, the concept of punishment changed to a more psychological approach compared to a public embarrassment/torture approach. The following paragraphs will discuss the development of prisons and what in fact gives people gives people the right to punish; as well as the overall meaning and function of prisons. The work by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison will help with the arguments

There are many problems with gangs in prison. These gangs cause problems and threaten the well-being of others who don’t fit into their mindset or beliefs. This problem has been going on for a long time, and has cost the prison system a lot of money throughout the country.

A gang is an organized group with a recognized leader whose activities are either criminal or, at the very least, threatening to the community. (Walker, 2011) Throughout history there have been some infamous gangs that have gotten media attention and others that have gone under the radar. One of the more underground gang structures are prison gangs. The Nuestra Familia may not be in the news as much anymore compared to other gangs, but they are nothing to be taken lightly. Prison gangs have been around since the late 20th century and only seem to be getting stronger if nothing is going to be done to prevent them. Gangs in prison have members in and out of prison. One of the more popular gangs that has been gaining steam recently is

“Gangs have morphed from social organizations into full-fledged criminal enterprises” (Thomas, 2009, para 5). Gangs are highly sophisticated and more dangerous then ever. The number one reason to join a gang is money; and 95 percent of gangs profit comes from drug dealing

The reality of prison gangs cannot be over look. Many inmates join gangs for safety and protection during their incarceration. “Prison gangs is an organization which operates within prison systems as a self-perpetuating entity, consisting a group of inmates who establishes and organize chain of commands” (Pyrooz & Mitchell). They also are governed by an established prison code. Research has shown that prison gangs have effects on non-gang members and the prison system. I will examine ten articles that explore the effects of prison gangs.

Michel Foucault states in Discipline and Punishment that “the Panopticon is a marvelous machine which, whatever use one may wish to put it to, produces homogeneous effects of power” (Foucault 188). Examining the evolution, physical characteristics, and psychological effects of the Panopticon allows one to understand the mechanism by which the Panopticon produces power.

In Part 3 Chapter of Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Foucault indicates that modern discipline and obedience is not a trait that humans have developed naturally. Instead, he suggests that this is the work of societies around the world, explaining that through institutions such as schools, hospitals, and prisons, society has, in a way, “brainwashed” us to become the ideal person.

This bodily subjection is what the french philosopher Michel Foucault calls political anatomy. In a summary of Foucault's Discipline and Punish, the term political anatomy is explored, “We should think of the body politic as a series of routes and weapons by which power operates.” This power is wielded by women but not for women. Oppressive practices have become routinely exercised, for example: the act of putting on makeup everyday just to be considered presentable, attractive and worthy. This body politic is also evident in the subconscious constriction of one's body language and the shrinking of oneself to adhere to the submissive ‘nature’ of femininity. Sandra Lee Bartky further explains the effect of discipline on the female body: “The disciplinary practices of

Power can be thought of as the way people affect the actions of each other. Specifically, it is the ability to force or cause a free individual to perform an action he or she would not have done normally, thereby altering his or her free will. The manner in which this is done depends on the relationship or the power relations between the free individual and the imposer of power. Although power exists in every human relationship, the state is in a unique position to wield power over large swathes of the human population within its domain, and does so through the power to punish. However, power relations between the state and the general populations have changed greatly throughout human history. Foucault opens Discipline & Punish with a grisly

Have you ever been at a stoplight and wondered why everyone obeys the rules even though there are no police officers around? Foucault stated that the dominant class uses various disciplinary techniques to control individuals and maintain order in society. Throughout human history, we can see a certain kind of evolution occurring in the way we punish individuals for committing deviant acts. For the majority of human history, punishment has consisted of brutal public displays of punishment, where individuals were tortured in front of large crowds of people. Recently, these public displays of punishment have been viewed as barbaric and unethical, resulting in the creation of our new forms of punishment. The current penal system has transitioned

Have you ever heard the saying, “information is as good as gold?” Well in today`s modern society, technological information has open up a new era of information. People are now able to access and communicate with one another faster than any time before. However as good as it may sound there are some downfalls. We live in an age where people share personal information online and not think about of the consequences of having their private information used as a means power and control. In the book “Discipline and Punish”, written by an outstanding theorist Michael Foucault explains several forms of disciplinary power. Foucault illustrates a comprehensive understanding of the prison system and his work on the explanations of punishment and its evolvement from the public display, to

This is a summary of Michel Foucault's seminal work on the history of criminal punishment and social discipline as it transformed from punitive to correctional models during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

As Beccaria attacked the use of excessive punishment and emphasizing the role of the individual, more utilitarian punishments came into practice. Hard labor began to be viewed as a popular sanction. During the end of the 1700s, imprisonment also emerged as its own separate form of punishment, rather than simply a holding cell. Although imprisonment was intended to be a more humane form of punishment versus physical torture and execution, not all prisoners believe that it is. Many prisoners considered incarceration as a worse punishment than death or physical torture because it served as persistent agony. It was also argued that incarceration could be viewed as a slow death sentence (Kann 2005:9). Contrary to this argument, Foucault

Whenever he punishes his children, he says they commit sin and he puripies them bu punishment in order to maintain disicipline. Foucault’s Discipline and Punish describes several techniques to achieve discipline. He states that anyone can achieve discipline, “discipline proceeds from the distribution of individuals in space.” (DAP 141).

The eighteenth century saw various calls for change of punishment. The reformers, as per Foucault, were not propelled by a sympathy towards the welfare of prisoners, rather they wanted power to work all more proficiently. Foucault examined the prison framework to give his reasoning behind the early advancement of punishment, and its arrangement from the public execution to the framework that is set up today. He showed how this advancement in the system is flawed.