Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T09:58:27.035Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - The architecture of social control: theory, myth, and method

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2011

Jerry D. Moore
Affiliation:
California State University, Dominguez Hills
Get access

Summary

To establish a government is an essay in world creation.

Eric Voeglin, Order and History

The 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 Andes
The Archaeology of Public Buildings
, pp. 168 - 219
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×