Disciplinary Power Research Articles

Foucauldian Panopticism in Donald Barthelme’s “Subpoena”

Some of Donald Barthelme’s works have been undeniably influenced by Michel Foucault’s socio-political philosophy, however, few scholars have explored such concepts in his works, especially the theme of “panopticism.” The purpose of this article, which is library based, is to analyze and scrutinize the panoptic society of Barthelme’s “Subpoena” in the light of Foucauldian “panopticism” which is a segment of his more general concept of power. Keeping the Benthamite “Panopticon” in the back of his mind, Foucault outlines the “new physics of power” represented by “panopticism” as a modern or disciplinary power; he, then, draws our attention to its most important feature, i.e., the penetration into the most trivial and personal affairs of social subjects. It is worth mentioning that the basic characteristics of disciplinary power such as omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence can be discovered in panoptic society of “Subpoena.” In this society, there is always the possibility of resistance and rebellion because wherever power is found, resistance emerges as well, though, eventually, power prevails upon individuals. Barthelme creatively portrays a post-modern society in which disciplinary power, with its meticulous and permanent surveillance, on the one hand, has transformed the subjects into the men of modern humanism, and, on the other hand, has changed the traditional society into a panoptic one. Barthelme successfully finalizes the story with the message that modern society intends to make obedient and useful machines out of the subjects.

Headship preparation in Taiwan: moral obligation or disciplinary power?

ABSTRACT With the increasing global interest in preparing school headteachers over the past two decades, educational systems have developed numerous means by which aspiring headteachers are prepared for the role. Reflecting this global trend, local governments in Taiwan have launched a new type of headship preparation approach, namely, the aspiring headteachers’ Administrative Placement (AP) in local education authorities, ostensibly aiming to enhance participants’ policy and administrative capabilities. Drawing on the analytical toolkit provided by Michel Foucault, this study problematizes the operation of the AP scheme and examines how it functions as a regime of discipline and self-discipline. Data collected from three AP schemes in different localities were used to examine the insidious effects of power relations, and findings revealed that the aspiring headteachers were, in effect, being situated into a wide range of disciplinary and dividing practices, through which they became more visible, knowable, and amenable. The study argues that the AP scheme is best understood as a disciplinary technology that shapes aspiring headteachers as self-regulating subjects and renders them as delivery subjects that contribute to securing the local delivery capacity, rather than authentically preparing educative leaders.

Key Concepts in Advertising: Disciplinary Power

Abstract: Key Concepts in Advertising articles provide short lectures on an important concept to help understand advertising’s place in society, culture, history, and the economy. This article focuses on the concept of disciplinary power, which is taken from French critical theorist and philosopher Michael Foucault’s Discipline and Punish . A series of short videos defines disciplinary power, explains its origin in Foucault’s book, and discusses how the concept applies to the relationship between advertisers and consumers. Viewers learn how to define disciplinary power and study examples of its application to advertising. A recommended reading list provides other sources to learn more about the concept and its associated topics.

Institutionalised Islamophobia Before Prevent

With little exception, across the breadth of literature addressing the implementation of the CTSA (Counter terrorism and Security Act 2015) in British universities, a distinct narrative predominates. Herein, the imposition of Counter-Terror state measures are articulated as interrupting the liberal egalitarianism of universities, sites characterized as free of racialized regulation. I argue that this body of critique unwittingly submerges the historically racialized character of universities and in particular, the sectors own production of the ‘transgressive fundamentalist Muslim student subject.’
 Grounded in empirical research (2004–5) and historical/document analysis of the nineties, I address this lacuna by charting a series of junctures which illuminate how one aspect of Islamophobic discourse in the sector, centering on the figure of the ‘fundamentalist’ has previously been institutionalized and harnessed to Islamophobic effect. I elucidate how this aspect of Muslim student histories can be identified as a formative period that cohere with prevailing narratives of securitization and surveillance.
 Framed through a decolonial perspective, it is argued that dominant characterizations of state imposition in the sector does not represent a radical disjuncture from (pre-)existing discourses associated with ‘Muslim students.’ Rather, in troubling the neo-liberal university as a-priori racialised, it is argued that Prevent has (e)merged into an existing regime of racialised ‘post’-disciplinary power.

Disciplinary power on daily practices of nurses and physicians in the hospital.

To understand power relations, it is important to consider that power is an attribute, and whoever has it at a given moment is in the condition of dominant and whoever is under its exercise is dominated. Moreover, we must consider that these positions are interchangeable, changing when relations of force change. Power relations represent the pursuit of supremacy through knowledge, with struggles for better positioning in the social structure. In this study, we analyze the effects of disciplinary power on daily practices of nurses and physicians in the hospital environment, more specifically in intensive care units. From the perspective of disciplines, power is exercised in a discreet, modest, calculated and permanent way, through the establishment of rules and norms. In this context, despite the strong appreciation of a medical-centered model, it is observed that nurses gain visibility through knowledge and the defense of institutional norms and rules, which can generate tensions in daily professional practices.

Forbidden Visibility: Queer Activism, Shari‘a Sphere and Politics of Sexuality in Aceh

This article aims to explain why organized queer activism emerged in Aceh, but could endure only in about six years (from 2008 to 2014). It is argued that this has mainly caused by massive expansion of ‘shari‘a spheres’ since 2001 supported by national and local government and parliament legal-political back up and societal religio-cultural forces on the one hand, and weak nature of the queer movements as counterpublics, characterized with the inadequate resources mobilization, especially in leadership and in getting support from its social movement communities during the crises on the other hand. Shari‘a, which is heteronormative, have been used as discursive and embodied disciplinary power of sexuality for normalizing and excluding the queer (including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender/LGBT). Their organized visibility triggered the issuance of the Qanun Jinayah in 2014, which includes punishment for same-sex activities. It caused them to dissolve their own queer organizations.

Citizenship as status, habitus and acts: Language requirements and civic orientation in Sweden

ABSTRACT This article employs the notions of citizenship as status, habitus and acts as a framework through which to capture how sovereign power, disciplinary power and biopower intersect in the context of Sweden’s current management of migration. Through an analysis of policy and media debates, the article first illustrates how citizenship as status and sovereign power in Sweden have undergone a shift from actively endorsing multilingualism and cultural dialogue to requiring migrants to demonstrate knowledge of a particular language, Swedish, and what is constructed as a singular national culture and its values. The article then homes in on a particular Arabic-language course in civic orientation for newly arrived adult migrants in a large urban area. We illustrate how disciplinary power and biopower work by socializing a group of migrants into a specific habitus of Swedish values and norms. We also unveil the acts of resistance they perform in response.

Climate change disclosure ratings: the ideological play

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of climate change rating organisations on rated firms, to understand whether disclosure ratings can facilitate enhanced emissions performance.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses 1,848 cross-country firm-year observations from organisations that responded to the carbon disclosure project (the rater) between 2011 and 2015 and, hence, were rated for their disclosure. Drawing on the ideology of numbers, this paper hypothesises that the disciplinary power of ratings will result in rated firms improving their subsequent disclosure scores. Following the environmentally-friendly ideology, this study hypothesises that poorly-rated firms will adopt decoupling behaviour, by improving their climate change disclosure scores without reducing the intensity of their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.FindingsThe results indicate that climate change disclosure ratings pressure poorly-rated firms to improve their disclosure scores in subsequent years, yet these firms are not inclined to lower their GHG emissions. Further, the direct publication of firms’ GHG emissions intensity can exert some restricted disciplinary impact on rated firms, as the more polluting firms tend to improve their subsequent climate change performance compared with those having lower emissions levels.Practical implicationsThis paper argues that the ability of corporate sustainability rating schemes to influence corporate behaviour comprehensively is limited and should be used with caution.Originality/valueThis paper sheds new light on the ideological dynamics at play between the rater and the rated, while highlighting new aspects of the power-rating nexus in the climate change arena.

Chinese Adolescents' Struggle in Online Compulsory Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Foucauldian Perspective.

To tackle the debate surrounding the tension between knowledge and power in online education for adolescents and between freedom and control at large, this study examines how disciplinary power was exercised and resisted in a Chinese setting of online compulsory education during the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020. Overall, 60 participants, including students (from Grade 7 to 12), their parents, and teachers joined in our focus groups or individual interviews in a secondary school in Xi’an, China. By following Foucault’s concepts of three techniques of disciplinary power: hierarchical observation, normalizing judgement and examination, we identified four themes based on the data: (1) diminished discipline with the dissolving boundary, (2) reconfigured disciplinary power by teachers, (3) self-discipline as a vital skill, and (4) online compulsory education as a future trend. Interpretations from the Foucauldian perspective were presented, suggesting that most adolescents depend upon more external disciplines from schools and teachers, while only a few may achieve autonomy through self-discipline.

Genealogy of Bio-Power in Urban Development Plans (Case Study: Abkooh Neighborhood in Mashhad)

In developing countries, after decades passed from preparing urban development plans, informal settlements and urban decay are unresolved, but their scope and severity increase day by day. Therefore, instead of tracing the root of this problem in preparing and implementing plans, it should be viewed from another perspective and the hidden aspect of planning theory, i.e., the realm of power and its application to living space, mainly ignored by urban planners. The primary purpose of this study is to investigate the genealogy of urban development plans in the Abkooh neighborhood to reflect the application of bio-power in the process of spatial planning. Using the social constructivism approach and accepting the transition of the capitalist system from imperialism to the empire, the current study analyses two categories of power-knowledge: disciplinary power and bio-power and their relationship with spatial planning. Then, after describing the gray spaces, applying disciplinary power and bio-power in these spaces is discussed. Finally, Foucault's genealogical approach is performed to critically analyze the bio-power in urban development projects related to the Abkooh neighborhood. From Foucault's power-knowledge perspective, power relations seek to accumulate capital and commodify urban spaces through urban development plans and rely on disciplinary power and bio-power and using the formal spatial planning system. The research findings prove that historically, the formation of urban development plans is connected to the network of power relations. Therefore, spatial planners, besides attending planning approaches routinely learned in the academic environment, should also address power-knowledge issues.

Disciplinary power and practices of body politics: an evaluation of Dalit women in Bama\u2019s Sangati and P. Sivakami\u2019s The Grip of Change through Foucauldian discourse analysis

Through a Foucauldian reading of Bama’s Sangati (2005) and P. Sivakami’s The Grip of Change (2006a, 2006b), this paper attempts to delineate the permeation and maintenance of disciplinary power in the social structure and assertion of patriarchal politics in the subjugation of Dalit female bodies. The detrimental politics of patriarchal discourse, the paper argues, degrades the existence of Dalit women, and excludes them from the equation of power relations by delimiting their access to society’s productive resources and restricting their sexuality. Disciplinary power, which acts as a patriarchal tool, prescribes acceptable gestures and required behaviour, and through constant surveillance normalizes a dominant male order. It reduces Dalit women’s existence into an amorphous property, readily mutilated and moulded under the whims of a phallocentric order. Discursive practices further constitute practices of body politics, making the female body an object of active site of political struggle. The paper studies Sangati and The Grip of Change as literary exemplars to demonstrate how disciplinary power, as underscored by Foucault’s discourse analysis, intervenes and determines the life of Dalit women. It not only lays bare the covert body politics of patriarchy with the unfiltered depiction of women’s exploitation and atrocities, but also represents a paradigm shift by advocating ways of emancipation for Dalit women.

“Why Did I Really Want to Coach? To Help Girls”:

The purpose of this study was to investigate women coaches’ experiences in high-performance rugby union. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with four women who had experience coaching at the representative, university, and/or international level. Informed by a Foucauldian feminism, the analysis revealed how disciplinary power, the formation of dominant knowledges, and the pervasiveness of surveillance operated in a deeply masculine environment of high-performance rugby. This study provides an in-depth examination of femininity, masculinity, and what it means to be a woman leader in the world of high-performance rugby union.

Mystified Alienation: A Discussion between Marx, Foucault and Federici

This article explores Karl Marx’s critique of alienation. Specifically, I will argue that the concept of alienation is essential to understand not only how capitalism reproduces itself, but also to find alternatives to a regime of capital valorisation that has become mystified. In order to develop the analytical scope of this critique, I propose to discuss it together with the Foucauldian concept of disciplinary power and with the concept of patriarchal violence that appears in Silvia Federici's Caliban and the Witch. These two approaches provide a basis for the statement that the Marxist critique of alienation can be complemented and radicalised with the post-structuralist position, and with the feminist critique of capitalism.

Learning to become a parent by means of baby robots: negotiating intensive parenting

ABSTRACT This article explores how marginalized young people who are eager to become parents respond to participating in an intensive baby robot programme. In Denmark, baby robots or ‘infant simulators’ are increasingly used by Danish welfare institutions to train, but also discourage, marginalized young people from becoming parents. Based on observations and interviews, the article explores young participants’ wide variation in responses to institutional categorizations that depict this group as lacking fundamental parenting skills. While relative acceptance of institutional categorizations led some participants to postpone their dream of having a child, others made use of various tactics to resist their position as outside the normative ideal of appropriate parenthood and to reconstruct identities as good parents. The article thus provides insights into the contested nature of appropriate parenthood and demonstrates how the effects of parenthood programmes are the outcome of dynamic interactions between institutional power and participants’ agency, negotiation, and everyday resistance. In the analysis, the paper uses the concepts of ‘disciplinary power’, ‘resistance’ and ‘intensive parenting’.

The biopolitical president?: Sovereign power and democratic erosion in El Salvador

ABSTRACT States have adopted a range of policies to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Some, mainly democracies like New Zealand and South Korea, took quick health measures without curbing citizen rights. Others, especially those led by populists like Bolsonaro and Erdogan, denied the seriousness of the health crisis even as they curbed political and civil rights. El Salvador is virtually unique in its COVID-19 response, combining a strong rhetorical commitment to health measures with clear efforts to undermine democratic controls and rights. President Nayib Bukele adopted an early travel ban and publicly vilified those who broke curfew by sending them and all who tested positive to quarantine centers for 30 days. He derided and defied Constitutional Chamber decisions against such practices, ordered militarized actions, and crowded gang-affiliated prisoners together in humiliating ways that risked exposure to COVID-19. We examine how Bukele’s policies conform to, and seemingly exemplify, Michel Foucault’s theoretical concepts of biopolitics and disciplinary power. However, the Salvadoran case also challenges key features of Foucault’s theory, suggesting the need to modify his Western assumptions about highly institutionalized states. Our analysis suggests that strong leaders can undercut citizen rights and agency, visible at the intersection of biopolitical social theory and democratic backsliding.

Chartered accountancy and resistance in South Africa

In recent times, the chartered accountant profession was regularly in the news for reasons pertaining to the unethical and unprofessional behaviour of members. The profession has an important role to play in the South African economy, as members will often fulfil important decision-making roles in business. In a response to the dilemmas the profession is facing, we analysed the implications for the profession and society due to a resistance to include research as a pedagogical activity in the chartered accountancy educational landscape. Through deliberative research activities, students have the opportunity to engage with community members and with societal challenges that could foster reflexivity and humaneness in students. In addition, critical and problem-solving skills are cultivated. These are skills that are difficult to assess in the form of an examination, and the absence of research as pedagogical activity in this particular educational landscape, impacts the cultivation of these skills in future chartered accountants. This is so, as the chartered accountancy educational landscape is significantly influenced by the power that resonates within the profession and culminates into the disciplinary power mechanism of the examination. The South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) set an external examination, called the Initial test of Competence (ITC), which graduates need to write upon leaving institutes of higher learning. Success in this SAICA-examination therefore impacts on the teaching and learning pedagogy adopted by chartered accountants in academe. If chartered accounting students were instead primarily being exposed to technical content assessed via an examination, also being exposed and introduced to deliberative research, the possibility exists that students, through critical reflexivity, could move beyond the constraints of the self to that of the communal other in line with the African notion of ubuntu can be enhanced.

Questioning policy representations of women’s alcohol consumption: Implications for social work

This study draws on Carol Bacchi’s What’s the problem represented to be? (WPR) framework, to deconstruct policy discourses of women’s alcohol consumption. It examines Australian policies such as in the National Alcohol Strategy (2019–2028) and Australian Guidelines to Reduce Health Risks from Drinking Alcohol ( NHMRC, 2009, 2020 ). It found that policy discourses particularly focus on the effects of women’s alcohol consumption as ‘harms’ to unborn children, by emphasising women’s assumed reproductive roles, such in pregnancy and when breastfeeding. Social policy tends to reproduce medicalising and normative gendered discourses about women’s alcohol consumption, with disempowering effects on women. This discourse analysis of drug and alcohol policies can contribute to broadening how social workers understand policy representations and the effects of policy discourses on women. The disciplinary power of the medicalisation and acceptable/unacceptable categorisation of women’s alcohol consumption means that women can internalise shame and stigma, which is often an obstacle for women attempting to seek assistance. More research is needed about how social workers can co-design policies and research projects with women of diverse sexualities and cultural backgrounds who have been subjugated by these policy discourses.

The bleary-eyed (but disciplined) patient: Hospital late night and early morning awakenings and Foucault’s disciplinary power in a healthcare panopticon

It is an old adage that when one is staying at the hospital, a sleepless night will follow. Hospitals are notoriously difficult places to sleep in. This is due to a variety of factors, but one of the primary ones are the late night and early morning disturbances caused by nurses and other medical professionals, who are taking measurements and vital signs from the patient. Explaining why this occurs requires an understanding how the hospital is organized as a political institution. Using a Foucauldian theoretical framework, we critically examine the hospital as a disciplinary institution; we find that the hospital’s organizational impetus for a “perpetual examination” drives hospital sleeplessness. While the perpetual examination is not borne out of malice and is usually vital to the health of the patient, understanding this process helps us understand why hospitals are so difficult to sleep in. While we cannot reject the process of hospitalization wholesale, understanding what drives hospitals as political institutions helps us begin to improve them; helping patient sleep is one place to start.

Disciplinary Responsibility of Civil Servants of the Russian Empire

The paper is devoted to examining legal, factual and procedural grounds of disciplinary responsibility of civil servants in the Russian Empire on the basis of the Statutes of Civil Service, Regulations on Punishments in Criminal and Correctional Proceedings, the Statute of Criminal Proceedings. The author defines the concept of official misconduct (malfeasance in office), the legislatively established list of disciplinary offences and relevant measures of influence, their substantive characteristics, the peculiarities of simple (extrajudicial) and judicial procedure of proceedings in disciplinary cases initiated against civil servants of administrative departments. The analysis made it possible to draw a conclusion about the existence in the second half of the 18th century in the system of the Russian public service of a disciplinary process that has all the features of the legal process and a procedural form of criminal proceedings. The use of disciplinary sanctions was subject to certain rules that protected subordinates from arbitrary use of disciplinary power by their principals. The most stringent forms of disciplinary sanctions involving dismissal from service could only be applied by the court. A number of provisions existing at the time can be used to improve the legal basis of the proceedings in disciplinary cases of civil servants of the Russian Federation.

Kuasa Disiplin dalam Kepemimpinan Perpustakaan Perguruan Tinggi

A leader is someone who has influence in an organization. One of them is a library that has a leader to achieve its goals. The library of Islamic University of Indonesia is one of the higher education libraries located in the Special Region of Yogyakarta, which is led by a director with an educational background in library science. This study was aimed at investigating disciplinary power exercised by a director. This research employed a qualitative method with a descriptive approach. Data were collected through in-depth interviews, observation, and documentation. Data analysis was performed using three stages of analysis based on Miles and Huberman. In its analysis, Michel Foucault's theory of disciplinary power was used as an effort to look at five things, i.e. panopticism, separation of places, documentation, standardization of judgments, and rewards. The results show that the form of power was hierarchical supervision embodied in verbal rules regarding working time, non-verbal staff jobdesk, separation between the library director's room and division, forms of tardiness and absence, work standards and verbal rewards, and written warnings. Key Words: Discipline Power, Library Leadership, Panopticism, Islamic Libraries , UII Library