Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Mobilisation theory and the state: the missing element
- 2 States, free riders and collective movements
- 3 The state and mobilisation for war: the case of the French Revolution
- 4 Ideology, collective action and the state: Germany, England, France
- 5 Individual action, collective action and workers' strategy: the United States, Great Britain and France
- 6 The state versus corporatism: France and England
- 7 The Nazi collective movement against the Prussian state
- 8 Territorial and ethnic mobilisation in Scotland, Brittany and Catalonia
- 9 Nation, state and culture: the example of Zionism
- 10 The state, the police and the West Indians: collective movements in Great Britain
- Conclusion: the end of the state? From differentiation to dedifferentiation
- Notes
- Index
10 - The state, the police and the West Indians: collective movements in Great Britain
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Mobilisation theory and the state: the missing element
- 2 States, free riders and collective movements
- 3 The state and mobilisation for war: the case of the French Revolution
- 4 Ideology, collective action and the state: Germany, England, France
- 5 Individual action, collective action and workers' strategy: the United States, Great Britain and France
- 6 The state versus corporatism: France and England
- 7 The Nazi collective movement against the Prussian state
- 8 Territorial and ethnic mobilisation in Scotland, Brittany and Catalonia
- 9 Nation, state and culture: the example of Zionism
- 10 The state, the police and the West Indians: collective movements in Great Britain
- Conclusion: the end of the state? From differentiation to dedifferentiation
- Notes
- Index
Summary
In 1811, at a time when political crisis and social disorder was resulting in an upsurge of criminal activity, the British Parliament rejected Bentham's proposals regarding the construction of the panopticon and of industrial houses. The panopticon, as readers of Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish will know, was a prison whose structure was designed to allow each and every prisoner to be surveyed. No one within this imposing ‘machine’ could escape surveillance. Foucault observes that Bentham nowhere states whether his project drew its inspiration from the menagerie which Le Vaux had built in Versailles. He also emphasises the extent to which these plans for a system of total surveillance, which Bentham wanted to extend to the 150 industrial houses (containing some 2,000 persons each), were influenced by the French example.
From the time of Louis XIV, policing in France grew and grew, until constant surveillance of the whole population was achieved. Thus, the Lieutenant-General of Police in Paris was in charge of 48 commissioners of police, allocated to 20 different districts, 20 inspectors, the officers of the watch, the constables, the mounted watch, the footwatch, in addition to which there was a whole army of spies. This immense police force also received help from the Marshalsea. The French police continued to grow in strength and, in the aftermath of the Revolution, Fouché had made it yet stronger and more centralised.
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- States and Collective ActionThe European Experience, pp. 170 - 181Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1988
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