Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Acknowledgments
- 1 The contemplation of ruins: archaeological approaches to architecture
- 2 A sample of ancient Andean architecture: a critical description
- 3 The architecture of monuments
- 4 The architecture of ritual
- 5 The architecture of social control: theory, myth, and method
- 6 Summary and implications
- References
- Index
- NEW STUDIES IN ARCHAEOLOGY
5 - The architecture of social control: theory, myth, and method
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 October 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Acknowledgments
- 1 The contemplation of ruins: archaeological approaches to architecture
- 2 A sample of ancient Andean architecture: a critical description
- 3 The architecture of monuments
- 4 The architecture of ritual
- 5 The architecture of social control: theory, myth, and method
- 6 Summary and implications
- References
- Index
- NEW STUDIES IN ARCHAEOLOGY
Summary
To establish a government is an essay in world creation.
Eric Voeglin, Order and HistoryThe Panopticon may be one of the true oddities of architectural history, but it was more than a mere curio. The model prison was designed by Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), the British Utilitarian philosopher who unsuccessfully promoted his plan for twenty years, spending a small fortune in the process (Evans 1982:195–197). Bentham was primarily concerned with the nature of government and the justice of punishment, and, for that reason, a pioneer of prison reform, though a somewhat quirky one. The hidden labyrinths of eighteenth-century prisons led to unobserved abuses, and Bentham's solution was the Panopticon (Figure 5.1) – a circular, glassroofed structure, with cells along the outer ring all facing onto a central rotunda where a single guard could keep every prisoner under constant surveillance (Johnston 1973: 19–21). Bentham lavished a creator's prose on the project: “The building circular – A cage, glazed … The prisoners in their cells, occupying the circumference, the inspectors concealed … from the observation of the prisoners: hence the sentiment of a sort of omnipresence … One station in the inspection part affording the most perfect view of every cell” (cited in Evans 1982: 195). Bentham's Panopticon was an architectural plan designed explicitly as a means of social control “to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power” (Foucault 1977: 201).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Architecture and Power in the Ancient AndesThe Archaeology of Public Buildings, pp. 168 - 219Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996