Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2014
Foucault's innovative and influential explorations of sexual and moral regulation did not sufficiently explore the connections or contradictions between moral regulation and economic processes. This paper draws on Pierre Bourdieu's materialist concept of “cultural capital” in the elaboration of a model for the study of moral regulation based on the concept of “moral capital”. The accumulation of moral capital, it is argued here, mimics that of economic capital, and yet it also acts as an external limit to economic capital accumulation. This dialectical model is both elaborated and tested through a historical overview of philanthropic techniques for the moral regulation of the urban poor.
Les importantes et novatrices études de Foucault sur la réglementation de la sexualité et de la moralité ne se sont pas suffisamment penchées sur les liens ou les contradictions qui existent entre la réglementation de la moralité et les processus économiques. Cet article s' inspire du concept matérialiste de «capital culturel» introduit par Pierre Bourdieu dans l'élaboration d'un modèle pour l'étude de la réglementation de la moralité, basé sur le concept de «capital moral». L'auteure soutient que l'accumulation du capital moral est similaire à l'accumulation du capital économique, quoique la premiére s'avère également une limite externe à la seconde. C'est par le biais d'un survol historique des techniques philanthropiques utilisées pour réglementer la moralité des pauvres en milieu urbain que ce modèle dialectique est élaboré et testé.
1. Foucault does not use the phrase “moral regulation”; it has been developed by others working loosely within his framework, most notably Corrigan, P. & Sayer, D., The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979)Google Scholar.
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10. One of the finest literary explorations of this theme is found in Henry James' Portrait of a Lady, where we see the character, Gilbert Osmond, become increasingly empty morally as he pursues and achieves perfect “taste”. James appears to agree with Bourdieu, since Osmond's acquisition of cultural goods—from furniture to a wife—is only the tangible representation of the more fundamental process of achieving the perfectly “tasteful” personality.
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35. Supra note 31 at 74.
36. Ibid. at 52.
37. See Tarn, J. N., Five Percent Philanthropy: An Account of Housing in Urban Areas Between 1840 and 1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973)Google Scholar.
38. Ibid. at 7.
39. Supra note 31 at 56.
40. Ibid. at 41.
41. The convolutions made by poor law guardians, especially masters of workhouses, in order to incorporate a “test” element into the administration of a poor law that also acknowledged a universal entitlement to not starve, are well described (though not analyzed) in the massive reports and studies of the 1909 Royal Commission on the Poor Laws, about which more below.
42. S., & Webb, B., The Prevention of Destitution (London: Longmans, 1912) at 1–2Google Scholar.
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44. Ibid. at 39.
45. This is J. Donzelot's interpretation, in his influential work on philanthropy and social policy The Policing of Families, supra note 16. The late-19th-century shift in interest from old people to children is taken to be a rational economic measure, insofar as children represent future economic values and old people do not; while this is true it does not prove that separate moral considerations were not at work.
46. The Webb statement on pensions is from their jointly written “Minority Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws”, on which Beatrice sat (alongside her rival Octavia Hill and other COS representatives), U.K. (H.C., Parliamentary Papers (1909) vol. 37, 941Google Scholar, henceforth “Minority Report”). The phrase “respectable lives in decent houses” is found throughout the Majority Report's very lengthy discussion of the conditions of outdoor relief.
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49. Supra note 46 at 816. Emphasis in original.
50. Ibid. at 815, 905. This is repeated at 846, in the section on social welfare for school-age children, which praises the “constant supervision of unfit parents” as a means not to undermine parenting but “to induce them “poor parents] to continuously fulfil their parental responsibilities”.
51. The Webbs' obliviousness to popular culture was more than just a personal prejudice; as Sally Alexander has pointed out, it was indicative of the Fabian Society's lack of popular base. See Alexander, S., ed., Women's Fabian Tracts (London: Routledge, 1988)Google Scholar introduction.
52. Beatrice Webb's personal life was dominated, from the tender age of 15, by a constant struggle against what she perceived as her “lower” passions. Sensual love, the pleasures of eating and drinking and even those of listening to religious music or reading anything not geared to social research, were enemies to be defeated in the service of a pure life of public service. Even her own moral capital seemed constantly imperilled. See The Diary of Beatrice Webb, supra note 47.