Governance and Governmentality: Foucault Cont. Flashcards
What is the idea behind social control theory?
Associated with functionalism- social control as good and necessary for societal functioning. Institutions as functions for order and control.
What are legal functionalists concerned with?
The laws operative role in society.
What is the idea behind structural consensus theory (functionalism)?
A successful society is based on value consensus- people agreeing on shared norms and values-enables cooperation to shared goals. A successful society also has a stable social structure, wherein WInstitutions perform unique functions that contribute to the maintenance of society (institutions as organs, society as the body).
What are the 3 key ideas that Durkheim had on social control?
1) Society shapes the individual and members are constrained by social facts, beliefs and morals. Society can only survive with sufficient homogeneity.
2) Social solidarity
3) Anomie
What is the idea behind social solidarity?
Too much freedom is bad when there is no clear guidance as to what is right and wrong. Societies must create solidarity and make individuals feel as if they are part of something greater (traditionally achieved by religion, but now being achieved moreso by family)
What is anomie?
A social condition which implies normlessness, lawlessness, chaos and disorder. People begin to feel a lack of belonging as they are disconnected.
How do structural functionalists explain social inequalities and norms as being natural?
Emerged out of inherent differences between individuals and groups.
How do structural functionalists explain social inequalities and norms as being functional?
In a healthy, stable society, individuals know their place. Certain individuals are natural leaders and hold skills to make decisions- the most fit are then awarded privileges so they will carry out bigger tasks. The people in power deserve to be there.
How do structural functionalists defend the idea of the nuclear family and social order?
Division of labour as an essential norm for family stability and social order-functionalism validates traditional forms of moral governance and self regulation, and deviations from this result in anomie.
What is the functionalist approach to law and control?
Law as operative-helping to fulfill existing ideals and norms (gives validity to norms). Law as an important integrating mechanism, legal codes as the best empirical indicator of solidarity. Two forms (mechanical and organic)
What is mechanical (traditional) solidarity?
The law as repressive, sanctions as punitive, deviation from the collective consciousness as a crime against all society (eurocentric hunter-gatherer view)
What is organic solidarity?
Modern society- restitute law needed to reintegrate the deviant into society.
What are the main problems with functionalism?
Justifies unequal distribution of resources as given, implies the lower and working class are undeserving, characterizes deviance as a need to be corrected.
What are the 2 Marxist control models?
Instrumentalism and Structuralism.
What is instrumentalism?
The state and law work in the interest of the ruling class as tools for the bourgeoisie to enforce capitalist social order.
What is structuralism?
State/law is used to reproduce a capitalist order, but social institutions have relative autonomy.
What is the idea of social control according to Marxist perspectives?
Represses and exploits the working class. The rule of law as a myth and illusion, ideological fiction.
How do social institutions have relative autonomy according to Marxist structuralism?
Consent and legitimization as essential, not only repression. Citizens belief in rule of law and access to rights presents people from challenging beliefs, due to to institutions occasionally giving them small tastes of freedom. Overruling of short term capitalist interests to provide the lower class with real rights in order to avert resistance (idea of false consciousness and hegemony). Capitalism with social safety nets (unions, labour laws etc).
What was Foucaults response to Marxism?
Marxism as economically deterministic, reductionist, and simplistic. Wanted to study tools to resist oppression and domination, and also looking at how less formal non-state technologies of power play a role in governance and regulation.
What type of theorist is Foucault considered to be?
Post-structuralist.
What did Foucaults insights eventually inspire?
Governmentality, law as governance, and third wave feminism.
What was third-wave feminism? (80s and 90s)
A response to gender essentialism (second wave) and critiquing the eurocentric, cis-gendered, white middle class. BIPOC as isolated by second wave feminism, sexism, misogyny, heteronormative power relations as not solely located in state and law.
What is the prison industrial complex?
Argued that 2nd wave feminists worked with conservatives to make the law more punitive which further criminalized black men.
What was second wave (radical) feminism?
Inspired by instrumental Marxism, it used Marxist methods to critique gender oppression, violence, and misogyny. State and law used by men to control women and benefit male interests. Social control of women achieved by direct and instrumental law manipulation.
