WEEK 3 - Bentham\'s panopticon PDF

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REQUIRED READING WEEK 3 BENTHAM’S PANOPTICON: FROM MORAL ARCHITECTURE TO ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE          

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Many elements of his panopticon concept has been gradually incorporated into prisons, schools and workplaces Ideas of moulding human behaviour through constant surveillance that has left a mark on societal organization David Lyon gauges the extent to which our modern world of data banks and electronic surveillance has been shaped by the eighteenth century panopticon In 1971 Jeremy Batham published plans for panopticon In panopticon physical expression of utilitarian philosophy Electronic devices monitor our everyday lives so intimately society itself is like a panoptic prison Inspection lodge observers would be able to keep an eye on prisoners whose cell fanned out in a circular pattern around the central tower Prisoners’ every move would be visible to the guards. Guards were hidden from prisoners’ sight with the use of wooden blinds – moral architecture Bentham regarded the panopticon as a crucial component of his rationalist social reform agenda The principles expressed found their way to other European countries. Formed the design basis not only of many nineteenth century prisons but also schools, factories workshops, barracks and hospitals Michel Foucault gives panopticon pride of place. Epitomizes the new disciplines of modern social control Break past modes of punishment that frequently were public and brutal was made symbolically Emphasis would be on putting prisoners away – isolation, categorizing and monitoring them and keeping their record on file Maximum security society – police computers, government databases and commercial monitoring of consumers – the electronic panopticon

The panopticon: Unitarian Utopia -

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Offered a solution to concerns of his day Promise was not modest – morals reformed – health preserved – industry invigorated – instruction diffused – public burthens lightened – economy seated as it were upon a rock – Gordian know of the poor laws not cut but tied – all by a simple idea in architecture Intrinsic elegance as a rational panacea its adaptability to changes in his own philosophical position and personal interest vested in its success are three significant ones Church of England who is famous for anti-slavery campaign, already included in its humanitarian agenda the reform of filthy, corrupt, overcrowded, unsanitary and brutal jails Promised prison reform without a religious base on British soil “to be incessantly under the eyes of the inspector is to lose in effect the power to do evil and almost thought of wanting to do it” page 598-599 Realising that constant supervision was out of the questions he contrived to ensure that prisoners would believe they are under inspection Hence the need for elaborate measures guaranteeing the invisibility of the inspector plus artificial lighting and reflectors to turn the prisoners’ night into day

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Many panopticon fed on religious sources. Yet Bentham devise alternatives to what he saw as theologically dominated theories of society

Certainty without blood -

Simply make redundant the old regime of physical and often arbitrary punishment of the body and also the paraphernalia of restrains such as chains Obviate potentially rebellious communication between prisoners; the unruly crowd could be tamed Believing they are being watched the prisoners would impose discipline on themselves making them active participants in their own supervision Irresistibly superior to rival schemes and could not fail to work Recommended solitary cells, clearly classified and segregated by category to avoid dangers of association Gained parliamentary approval in 1810 – downfall was Bentham running it as a private enterprise

The spider in the web -

Got refused because Bentham wanted it managed as a profit-making venture The rule of economy whereby the state would have no financial responsibility for the panopticon In short Bentham’s panopticon was a factory Reformation by seclusion was paramount insisted Bentham’s opponents Another reason it was denied – Bentham offered his services to both the prisoners needs, watch over them and to receive the produce of their labour

Discipline and modernity -

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Prisoners could be expected to chained, whipped, tortured and abused which marked the body and smelled of vengeance New penology aimed to change behaviour, alter conduct by calculated human intervention – assumed people would response to subtle switched in the pain-pleasure calculus In the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power Impersonal, automatic machine appropriate to modernity Factories, schools, barracks and hospitals reflected the panopticon in their detailed regimes of examination, classification and individualising observation with the analytical arrangement of space Surveillance is a source of power in its own right. Cannot be reduced to a reflex of capitalism, industrialism, urbanism or the state

Machine to gradgrind and beyond -

Pain-pleasure calculus that governs all out actions Human beings are machines to be understood, controlled and used

Absent governor, the empty inspection lodge -

Foucault’s work is dashed by the waves of controversy Three examples

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Paid little attention to the ways that other dimensions of modernity accompany the rise of surveillance eg right to vote, join labour unions or claim welfare benefits. Discipline and punish focuses on subordination by rational means Secondly criticized those week seek a total explanation of events. Discipline and punish exudes the impression that panopticism is a generalised for of social power, creeping into every capillary of social organisms Thirdly fulminated against panopticon he winds up with a form of fatalism. Discloses neither the basis for his attack nor any potential remedial action

Towards the electronic panopticon -

Electronic surveillance is invisible and unverifiable, processes automatically though it simultaneously requires our participation Election surveillance is a super panopticon While highly disciplinary no power centre is discernible Able to refuse marriage certificates to ticket defaulters – New York Society isn’t becoming prison like, showing that specific organization exhibit panoptic traits

The return of Bentham’s ghost -

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What Bentham was working towards in 1810 is now remerges as a workable solution to problems of social control and the containment of deviance The age of the consumer is also the age of the computer Two aspects to this o Doctrine that the state should control the means of policing, prisons and punishment has fallen on hard times  Policing has spread over recent years – from industrial sites to housing complexes, universities to shopping centres  Growth of treatments in the community as a response to both fiscal constraint and to technological potential o Commercial surveillance via credit cards, telephone billing, direct mail – conceive high tech apparatus of the consumer society at panoptic  Difficulties of stimulating and maintaining consumer demand is increasing viewed as social management problem Once commercial criteria become paramount as in private policing and electronic tagging, the moral categories fade

Maturing with modernity -

Bentham’s panopticon read modernity, Foucault’s postmodernity and the computer age connects the two Computer-power lends weight to the argument that post modernity is no such thing, todays cultural landscape is simply modernity matured. Two aspects of this duality o Information technology facilitates the continued quest for certainty o General issue of instrumental approaches to social problems is highlighted by new technology and the panopticon...