Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
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Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison Allen Lane, London, 1977, Trans. by Alan Sheridan Massimo Sargiacomo
Published online: 17 January 2009 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. 2009
The book under review originally published in France in 1975 as Surveiller et Punir: Naissance de la prison, by Gallimard Editions, Paris, represents an important, and possibly, the main legacy of Michel Foucault’s robust corpus of studies. The tremendous impact that the Foucauldian ideas embedded in this scientific milieu have had, and still have, upon accounting, management and organization literature is witnessed by a number of relevant studies which are near to impossible to list. Although it is beyond the scope of this brief note to review the studies underpinned by Foucauldian ideas, it suffices to refer, in not a very thorough way, to accounting and accounting history (Carmona et al. 1997, 2002; Loft 1986; Hoskin and Macve 1986, 1988; Hopwood 1987; Miller and O’Leary 1987), management and human resources management (Barratt 2003; Hardy and Leiba-O’ Sullivan 1998; Hardy et al. 2000; Knights 1992; Knights and McCabe 1998; Sewell 1998), strategy and organization (Al-Amoudi 2007; Burrell 1988; Caldwell 2007; Clegg 1994; Knights and Morgan 1991, 1995; Townley 1993) literature. Interpretative guides for the Foucauldian readers (e.g. Rabinow 1984), special issues on top journals (e.g. AOS, 1986; CPA, 1994; Organization, 2002) as well as books (e.g. McKinlay and Starkey 1998), provide other unquestionable proof of the scientific testament which Michel Foucault has left to the future studies through his thoughts. Importantly, it should be noted that his ideas have been, and still are, widespread across several scientific disciplines (e.g. anthropology, history, philosophy, …), thereby celebrating Michel Foucault, born in Poitiers, France, in 1926, and passing away prematurely in 1984, as one of the most influential thinkers of the contemporary world. Drawing on contemporary documentation and providing profound theoretical argumentations, the book “Discipline and Punish: The birth of the Prison” paints a magnificent portrayal of the historical shift of carceral institutions and punishment M. Sargiacomo (&) Department of Business Studies, University G.d’ Annunzio of Chieti-Pescara, Pescara, Italy e-mail: [email protected]
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practices from mid eighteenth to mid nineteenth century, especially with regards to the French penal system. In this scenario many discontinuities occurred both in the display of power of the sovereigns, and in the system of surveillance, constraint, control, examination and education of prisoners, as well as in the way that disciplinary punishments were conceived and administrated to infringers. The book, although specifically focused on prisons, also hints at other disciplinary institutions, such as schools/asylums, hospitals, barracks and factories, where the same technologies of behaviour were applied. The manuscript is divided into
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