Social Control

Social Control

Both Michel Foucault and Truffaut's depiction of a
disciplinary society are nearly identical. But Truffaut's
interpretation sees more room for freedom within the disciplinary
society. The difference stems from Foucault's belief that the social
control in disciplinary pervades all elements of life and there is no
escape from this type of control. Foucault's work deals mostly with
"power" and his conception of it. Like Nietzsche, Foucault sees power
not as a fixed quantity of physical force, but instead as a stream of
energy flowing through all aspects of society, its power harnesses
itself in regulating the behavior of individuals, the systems of
knowledge, a societies institutions, and every interaction between
people.
Foucault in "Discipline and Punish", applies this notion of
power in tracing the rise of the prison system in France and the
rise of other coercive institutions such as monasteries, the army,
mental asylums, and other technologies. In his work Foucault exposes
how seemingly benign or even reformist institutions such as the modern
prison system (versus the stocks, and scaffolds) are technologies that
are typical of the modern, painless, friendly, and impersonal coercive
tools of the modern world. In fact the success of these technologies
stems from their ability to appear unobtrusive and humane. These
prisons Foucault goes on to explain like many institutions in post
1700th century society isolate those that s...

Social Control

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