Abstract
The aim of this article is to reveal how two Foucauldian modalities of power, disciplinarity and biopolitics, are enacted in urban space as practices of social control and negotiation of norms beyond the limits of sovereign juridical power. The article contributes to other spatial studies based on the Foucauldian perspective in two respects: by combining the analysis of both disciplinarity and biopolitics, and by focusing on an urban neighbourhood, rather than a single institution. The characteristics of built structures in a mixed-use neighbourhood in Vilnius were analysed by combining observation and photo-documentation. Qualitative data analysis and thematic mapping of the data was based on coding categories originated from the Foucault’s discussion on the divides and interrelations of power modalities in his lectures at the College de France. The findings show that each structure, regardless of its function, employs both disciplinary and biopolitical techniques of social control at three distinct levels: a) urban planning, prescribed functionality and its correspondence to actual use; b) means of limiting access, containment and transparency; c) circulation of populations and their compliance to the particular spatial setup they find themselves in.
Highlights
The findings show that each structure, regardless of its function, employs both disciplinary and biopolitical techniques of social control at three distinct levels: a) urban planning, prescribed functionality and its correspondence to actual use; b) means of limiting access, containment and transparency; c) circulation of populations and their compliance to the particular spatial setup they find themselves in
Foucault conceptualised them while studying the transformation from feudal domains, where sovereignty was the dominant mode of rule, to contemporary states where disciplinarity and biopolitics prevail
Foucault retains relevance from a criminological standpoint, because both disciplinary and biopolitical themes resonate with current debates on varying aspects of social control
Summary
Michel Foucault’s framework of power relations, recounted in his lectures at the Collège de France in 1975-1976 (2004 [1976]) and 1977-1978 (2007 [1978]), posits that contemporary societies rely on three modalities of power:. I briefly trace the genesis of disciplinarity and biopolitics throughout Foucault’s work and his discussion of the spatial aspects of these modalities of power The latter are used as a basis for outlining characteristics for mapping practices of social control pertaining to built structures. In the first volume of the History of Sexuality (Foucault 1978 [1976]), Foucault continued to delineate the transformation of the pre-modern sovereign into the modern state, which emerged throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth century He added a third modality of power to the first two: biopolitics. Disciplinarity is an administrative modality of power concerned with instilling discipline in bodies, that are singled out as individuals from the sovereign multiplicity of subjects It is practised in specially designed institutions (such as schools, clinics or prisons established by the administrative state) (Foucault 2007 [1978]; 6-12; 110). The metaphor of Bentham’s Panopticon (see Foucault 1991 [1975]; 135-228) illustrates the ideal of a self-imposed and self-policed disciplinary system fuelled by an invisible omnipresent power, reigning over minds via their bodies, time and labour (Foucault 2004 [1976]; 35-36)
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