This is something people treasure equally and have equal amounts of. It’s taking away something more universal: your freedom. In contrast, prison is egalitarian, or affects everyone equally, because it isn’t taking away your money. Rich people can afford fines more than poor people. If you fine someone for a crime, the fine will impact people differently based on their wealth. How is the prison an egalitarian form of punishment? In both cases, an institution organizes life in such a way to train people how to act correctly. Similarly, a student has a designated place and role in the school. A solider has a proper place and set of proper behaviors expected of him in the barracks. Disciplinary power is everywhere, as people at all times act in accordance with the normative judgments they imagine others to be making on them.īoth soldiers and students are disciplined. Because it is a power that belongs to society as a whole, in determining norms, it is more diffuse than sovereign power, which was located in the king. When you’re at home, away from the view of the king, you don’t experience power as much as you would in a disciplinary society.ĭisciplinary power is power that trains people to act properly through social norms. But it’s also a power that is less pervasive throughout society. You have to act in a way that does not offend or hurt the king. It’s a kind of power that’s centralized and easy to locate. Sovereign power is power located in the sovereign, or usually king, of a nation. This means that punishment starts to focus on reforming the private soul of the individual more than on inflicting pain on their body. Ultimately, they were instead put into prison, where their bodies were not on public display in the same way. At first, people were tortured or executed for their crimes in public. In the late 1700s through the mid 1800s, Foucault describes a shift from punishment as a public spectacle to private confinement. What is the major transformation in punishment Foucault describes?

Michel foucault discipline