Postscript On The Societies Of Control Society Essay

Foucault however, argues that the prisons is one disciplinary institution that isn’t effective in reducing criminal activity through ‘self-surveillance’ as it urges an individual to deter from the rest of society and their shared norms and values. He said that this constant supervision and forced discipline broke the will of the criminal and made him into a “docile body”. His book ‘Discipline and Punish’ lays out Foucault’s thoughts on how the elite in society dominate and control the rest of society. Prison’s major goal was to reduce crime by punishing the criminal. Prisons should also deter others from committing crimes. According to Foucault, prisons did not meet their objective; in fact they made criminals worse and this has infiltrated into all parts of society.

Technology, the advancement of knowledge and productivity through the application of tools, information, and techniques to create an effortless process, has ultimately lead to the declination of our society and our future. In “A Thing Like Me,” Nicholas Carr addresses the development of technology from the day it was created and how it initiated an immediate impact within the lives of humans leading to an unhealthy dependency. Carr establishes how technology, what was intended to be a tool, has become the “pacifier” of our generation. This “pacifier” causes a loss of freedom, not through the laws of the government, but rather with the values of freedom one holds within themselves. This freedom is the individuality that distinguishes each person from the next, and forms a desire for the development of oneself through the experiences of life and the wisdom that is acquired along the way. Technology has blinded man from this pursuit of self-enhancement and with the advancement of technology occurring daily, there is no resolution. Each day people are confined within themselves and the pieces of technology that will continually limit them in their lives. Freedom is more than just a concept of laws instilled by the government, it is the thought process found within each individual person and their “hunger” to become more. With technology, social media was created and immediately immersed within our lives. The society of today has

Almost everything someone does in today’s society is under surveillance. It does not matter if you are surfing the web, going to the store, or even driving a car; it is almost always under surveillance. While Michel Foucault does not specifically talk about modern surveillance technology in Discipline & Punish (1977), much of the primitive technology that he does talk about is directly related with today’s surveillance technology. Michel Foucault believes that societal surveillance began to take effect during the 1600’s to control the masses. Many modern surveillance technologies reflect Foucault’s ideas helping to categorize, differentiate, hierarchize, and exclude people from the masses.

helps the subject mold their image in the public eye. I will be analyzing how Foucault and

In order to understand the power structures present in her description of life as a low-wage worker in Nickel and Dimed, we need to first understand Michael Foucault’s philosophy regarding discipline and surveillance. Rather than perceive power and discipline as strictly political and authoritative, Foucault believes that society is structured in a way in which constant observation disciplines us to abide by social norms and expectations. This constant surveillance is omnipresent in the sense that observation occurs in all realms of society, from education to sexuality. To further explain this idea of disciplining through constant inspection, Foucault describes Jeremy Bentham’s panoptican, a type of prison in which

Foucault once stated, “Our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance; under the surface of images, one invests” (301). By this, he means that our society is full of constant supervision that is not easily seen nor displayed. In his essay, Panopticism, Foucault goes into detail about the different disciplinary societies and how surveillance has become a big part of our lives today. He explains how the disciplinary mechanisms have dramatically changed in comparison to the middle ages. Foucault analyzes in particular the Panopticon, which was a blueprint of a disciplinary institution. The idea of this institution was for inmates to be seen but not to see. As Foucault put it, “he is the object of information, never a subject in

Any government with total control is worth being feared and having a group of individuals who go against their government. With complete control, a government is capable of committing acts against their citizens, which can be perceived as “something good” from the government’s point of view. In 1984 by George Orwell, and “Harrison Bergeron”, by Kurt Vonnegut, the main characters, Winston and Harrison, feel oppressed by the government's acts and events, try to overthrow their government, and go through a realization of hopelessness and defeat.

The United States has emerged into a disciplinary society where power is not only in certain institutions or is undivided in a particular social class, but power is dispersed through the people. The oppression by abiding people to discipline helps portray the diffusion of power. In order to analyze and fully comprehend how the United States consists of a disciplinary society it is best if we look through a Foucault lens. One of the reasons why its best to look at it through Foucault’s lenses is because he has always been interested in the way that knowledge and power increase knowledge. Also, according to Foucault, people ae dominated by surveillance, knowledge and discipline.

Our project topic was centered on Social Control, as discussed in Chapter 8 of the Kottak textbook. Social Control is defined as “maintaining social norms and regulating conflict” (Kottak 2013; 165). More specifically, we decided to focus on the phenomenon of “slut-shaming.” According the Oxford Dictionary Online for American English, “slut-shaming,” is defined as the “action of stigmatizing a woman for engaging in behavior judged to be promiscuous or sexually provocative.” Although Oxford singularizes women in this phenomenon, the practice of slut-shaming is inclusive to both genders. It is the stressed implication that women are more targeted that begged us to question: are women more likely to follow societal regulation in regards to their sexual acts than men? In other words, are women more likely to follow the social norms of the culture regarding their sexual activities than men? Shame and gossip are informal forms of social control that are usually practiced in small communities, which further correlates with the idea that women will follow the informal regulations put into place in order to avoid these consequences. With such ideologies in mind, we hypothesized that in American culture, men are less likely to be confined to sexually-charged social constraints than women.

In 24/7 Jonathan Crary explores the recent developments in modern society, and delves into the slowly eroding forms of natural human routine brought about by the timeless shape world consumerism and modernization. Crary gives a name for this timeless energy consuming force of power, 24/7, and more fully defines the effects and implications brought about by such a device. Crary’s 24/7 fits neatly within Foucault’s definition of an apparatus, an apparatus being the overarching theme connecting a “network of elements”. These elements are a “set of strategies of the relations of force supporting and supported by, certain types of knowledge” (Agambem, 2). Foucault defines the apparatus as type of power formed at a specific moment in history, working

In this essay, I will critically assess that deviant behaviour is likely, related to the strength of social bonds. The Control Theory is the criminological theory, which is mostly driven by classicist beliefs, similar in the freedom of choice, and the ability to stop ourselves from committing a crime. It is a theory of why individual’s do not commit the crime? (Hirschi,1969) The theory was popular in the 1950’s/1960’s, as this was a new way of thinking since other theorists were interested, why do people commit a crime? and the control theory begins to explain the social controls/bonds to their society, which can insulate an individual from deviance. As it is presumed the majority of people would commit the crime if they had the chance. It

Rather than the massive, binary division between one set of people and another, it called for multiple separations, individualizing distributions, an organization in depth of surveillance and control, an intensification and a ramification of power. (Foucault, “Discipline” 553)

There have been so many amazing things that I have experienced in my life already. I look forward to each new experience I may have an opportunity to have. Each day is a victory, a challenge, and a success story. Every day is a gift and you should take full advantage of everyday you are given. Unfortunately, we all miss some of the best moments in life by being so concerned about control life.

Sandra Bartky begins her piece by explaining Michel Foucault’s ideas about modern power dynamics. Unlike in the past, power in modern society focuses not only on controlling the products of the body but, rather, on governing all its activities. In order for this power to continue, people are disciplined into becoming “docile bodies” which are subjected and practiced (Bartky, 63). This discipline is imposed through constant surveillance in a manner similar to the Panopticon. Inmates in said prison are always visible to a guard in the central tower, so they mentally coerced into monitoring their own behavior. In the same way, individuals become their own jailers and subject themselves to the society’s whim due to being in a “state of conscious and permanent visibility” to its all-seeing eye (65). Bartky, however, breaks from Foucault’s theory by claiming that there is a clear difference in the disciplines imposed on men and women that are ignored in the latter’s writings.

It was by doing this that the disciplinary self was created - “discipline ‘makes’ individuals”, a phenomenon of the disciplinary era (1977, p.170). Our movement through the institutions defined our individualisation; normalising, examining and hierarchically observing each member of society (Foucault, 1977) - our sense of self emerged from their intersections. In Postcript on the Societies of Control (1992), Deleuze states the S.O.D have made way for the S.O.C. He mainly attributes this shift to the environments of “enclosure” (1992, p.4) – the institutions – beginning to crumble, and the factory – a typical workplace on the S.O.D – being replaced by the corporation (1992). In the S.O.D Foucault claimed that the soldier can be moulded like “a formless clay” (1977, p.135) – these rigid institutions formed us. Now without these institutions we lose this mould, and therefore our concept of the ‘self’. Imagine if instead of pushing clay into a mould we placed it on a desk; it would be shapeless and adaptable. This according to Deleuze is a defining characteristic of the S.O.C; flexibility in our structures moving us from moulds to “modulations” (1992, p.4). These modulations are “a self-deforming cast that will continuously change from one moment to the other” (1992, p.4). Instead of experiencing these rigid disciplines, we are left in this soft, malleable environment, which constantly