Bourdieu and Foucault: A Conceptual Integration Toward an Empirical Sociology of Prisons

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Bourdieu and Foucault: A Conceptual IntegrationToward an Empirical Sociology of Prisons

Jennifer A. Schlosser

Published online: 19 December 2012! Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012

Abstract Although the similarities between them are under analyzed, Pierre Bourdieu’sand Michel Foucault’s theories of culture and power are interrelated in some compellingways. Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977) and Discipline and Punish (1979) are two ofthe most influential contributions in post-structural and postmodern theory. Yet, far moreattention is paid to Foucault’s contributions in criminology than to Bourdieu’s. This essaybrings together the work of these influential theorists to argue for a critical examination ofthe sociology of prisons. Bourdieu’s concepts of: (1) habitus, (2) ethos, (3) doxa, and (4)the theory of practice are related to Foucault’s ideas about (1) discipline, (2) docile bodies,(3) panopticism, and (4) history of the present by comparing specific examples from theoriginal works. Then, the combination of those primary concepts is used to address specificmethodological concerns researchers should consider when doing empirical research inprison.

Introduction

Although the similarities between them are under analyzed, Pierre Bourdieu’s and MichelFoucault’s theories of culture and power are interrelated in some compelling ways. Outlineof a Theory of Practice (1977) and Discipline and Punish (1979) are two of the mostinfluential contributions in the lineage of post-structural and postmodern thought. Bour-dieu’s and Foucault’s notions of power, knowledge and culture have reshaped the wayscontemporary social scientists theorize institutions, structures and social interaction andhave compelled us to engage more self-reflexive methodologies in our empirical appli-cations of theory (Hogeveen and Woolford 2006). Yet, far more attention is paid toFoucault’s contributions in criminology than to Bourdieu’s. In almost any contemporary

J. A. Schlosser (&)Department of Sociology and Political Science, Tennessee Technological University,Mathews-Daniel Hall, Cookeville, TN 38501, USAe-mail: [email protected]

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Crit Crim (2013) 21:31–46DOI 10.1007/s10612-012-9164-1

Author's personal copy

essay on the nature of crime, penology or prison culture, Foucault’s work featuresprominently. Notably lacking is the application of Bourdieu’s work on culture in relation tocontemporary criminology. This essay brings together the work of these two influentialtheorists to integrate their specific concepts into a more critical analysis of the sociology ofprisons.

My purpose is to engage readers in a textual understanding of Bourdieu and Foucaultand to outline how specific conceptual linkages can be used in the effort to add weight toempirical analyses of prisons as institutions embedded in larger socio-historical processes.As Seron and Munger (1996) argue, ‘‘agency alone will not provide an understanding ofthe group-life of a society or its institutions or the ways in which class continues to form animportant bridge between those contingencies that comprise elements of an actor’s ownunderstanding of action and those of which the actor is unaware’’ (188). Understanding theboundaries of culture as those inherent and often invisible social processes that govern thelives of prison inmates allows for the inclusion of these conceptual elements into a broaderframework that privileges empiricism.

For years, theorists have engaged postmodern approaches to study the culture of dis-cipline that enshrines and controls our captives (Adler and Longhurst 1994; Sloop 1996;Milovanovic 1997; Presdee 2000; Rhodes 2001; Kane 2004; Wheeldon and Heidt 2007). Acultural criminology, however, often implies analyses of popular media and their rela-tionship to the criminalization of certain groups and individuals; the carnival of crime(Ferrell 1999; Presdee 2000). Likewise, postmodern critiques tend to emphasize the sat-uration of meaning emergent from media representations of crime and criminals (Ferrelland Sanders 1995; Milovanovic 1997). There is significant critique in the literature thatpostmodernism has no place in criminology. Stuart Russell (1997) provided a lengthy andpassionate critique of postmodern thought and explicated the grounds for its exclusionfrom criminology. Russell stated that his ‘‘main argument is that the theoretical impov-erishment of postmodernism creates a major obstacle to the development of a truly criticalcriminology’’ (62). He further argued that:

postmodernism has led to a deafening, elitist, political demobilisation of intellectualswho have no desire to descend from the ivory towers. The impenetrable and inac-cessible nature of postmodern prose combined with its intellectual closure havecontributed greatly to its elitist status (84).

Like Russell, Leavitt (1999) posed a significant critique of the discursive theorizingprevalent in some strands of criminology. For Leavitt, ‘‘there is often too much confusionas to which parts of them are assumptions and which are propositions, open to empiricalscrutiny’’ (394).

Bernard and Snipes (1996) problematize criminologists’ penchant for creating new andseemingly oppositional theories in order to explain a singular, empirical phenomenon. Theauthors argue that theoretical integration is possible under certain conditions; particularly,that the propositions of the theories being integrated are complimentary. The authors statethat ‘‘pure conceptual integration tends to result in theoretical mush…the only meaningfulintegration is propositional integration’’ (322).

After immersing oneself in a postmodern text, it easy to accept these critiques. Yet,taking all postmodern endeavors at face value neglects the utility of combining variousstrands of thought from different theorists in order to better understand modern con-structions, like hierarchal institutions and organizations such as the prison system (Arrigo1995; Bernard and Snipes 1996; Barak 1997).

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Sociology of Prisons

Paired with an understanding of the boundaries of postmodern and discursive theorizing,these analytical techniques and theoretical contributions, integrated with other methodolo-gies, can certainly contribute to the empirical investigation of sites of criminological interest.In fact, the empirical work on prison culture I propose here is better defined as the sociology ofprisons. Doing a sociology of prisons does not neglect the individual, as postmodernism is sohighly critiqued for doing. Rather, a sociology of prisons is inclusive of all aspects embodiedwithin the experiences emergent from the total institution; including the subjective indi-vidual, the internal institutional hierarchy, the culture, the agents of control, the consequencesof political rhetoric and the practices, actions and discourses of people within the institution.

The proposal to do a sociology of prisons (or similar endeavor) is not a new idea(Mathiesen 1966; Bosworth and Sparks 2000; Carrabine 2000). Lorna Rhodes (2001)proposed a similarly integrative methodology in her article, ‘‘Toward an Anthropology ofPrisons,’’ and carried out such techniques in her 2004 empirical study of a maximum-security prison. Rhodes (2001) proposed that writing about prison can be divided into fourcategories: (1) ‘‘contemporary critiques directed against the numbing effects of the currentsituation,’’ (2) ‘‘efforts, particularly following Foucault, to revisit and revise our under-standing of prison history’’ (3) ‘‘sociological and anthropological work that attempts anentry into and a direct engagement in the interior life of the prison,’’ and (4) ‘‘work thataddresses women as prisoners and problematizes the predominance of masculine per-spectives in and on the prison’’ (66). Her integration of anthropology, sociology, feminism,postmodernism and critical theory in relation to the empirical work necessary to trulyunderstand prisons provides an inclusive methodological framework.

As a researcher who has entered the prison setting, spoken with inmates, collected theirstories and navigated the very real and often daunting labyrinth of institutional regulation,it is with a deep understanding of the limitations inherent in prison studies that I write thispiece. Elsewhere, I have written about the technical aspects of access, the presentation ofself, representation and other challenges involved in interviewing inmates (Schlosser2008). But, during the course of those experiences I never managed to banish Bourdieu andFoucault from my thoughts. Their concepts, as guides to understanding those social pro-cesses of prison life that we can not readily see, provided a roadmap which allowed me tocontextualize my experiences as a prison researcher.

Outline of a Theory of Practice and Discipline and Punish are two works that, to myknowledge, have not been systematically combined in an effort to incorporate theirinterrelated concepts into a sociology of prisons. I did not rely heavily on texts written byothers on Bourdieu and Foucault as supplementary material (see: Wacquant 1989; Calhounet al. 1993; Swartz 1997), although these have certainly informed my thinking. Finally, Idrew many of my stylistic choices from exemplary pieces that also engage a conceptuallyintegrative logic in their comparisons of Bourdieu and Foucault (Cronin 1996; Hoy 1999;Myles 2004; Callewaert 2006).

This reading of Bourdieu and Foucault identifies four primary concepts in each theorist’sconception of the study of culture. The following sections relate Bourdieu’s concepts of: (1)habitus, (2) ethos, (3) doxa, and (4) the theory of practice to Foucault’s ideas about (1)discipline, (2) docile bodies, (3) panopticism, and (4) history of the present, by comparingspecific examples from the original works (see Fig. 1). Each pair of related concepts is usedto theorize how the empirical study of prison culture can be influenced and improved.Combining the primary concepts of each theorist integrates a critical theory of prison culturewith the methodological components necessary to conducting empirical research.

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Fig. 1 Interrelating conceptual linkages between Bourdieu and Foucault

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Interrelating Concepts

Habitus::Discipline

In Outline of a Theory of Practice, Bourdieu’s concept of habitus is described as socialorchestration without a conductor (72). The processes by which individuals are governedare neither strictly external nor internal to themselves but reside simultaneously in multiplearenas; yet, understanding such ordered processes of social life does not require any set offormally stated rules. As such, no sovereign power necessarily exists (although it may) todirect the actions of actors within the field of practice. In Bourdieu’s words:

To eliminate the need to resort to ‘rules’, it would be necessary to establish in eachcase a complete description (which invocation of rules allow one to dispense with) ofthe relation between the habitus, as a socially constituted system of cognitive andmotivating structures, and the socially structured situation in which the agents’interests are defined, and with them the objective functions and subjective motiva-tions of their practices (76).

In this way, the potentialities of future actions are not predetermined nor do they existalone; instead, they are bound up within references to the past, within agents’ motivationsfor action, and within the cultural contexts that regulate and order the courses of suchaction. The habitus, as the social arena within which tradition and ritual structure theboundaries of ordered action, is reproduced by the actors existing within it; practicing theircultures in relation to the historical (though not deterministic) events that precede them.The ways that individuals navigate culture, expectation and interaction exist such that ‘‘thehabitus is the source of these series of moves which are objectively organized as strategieswithout being the product of a genuine strategic intention…’’ (73).

Bourdieu discussed habitus as being produced by different modes of generation thatelicit different possibilities, definitions and practices for each invocation of a new culturalarena. Thus, habitus produces practices that produce regularities within the objectivecontexts of a ‘‘generative principle’’ (78). These regularities, then, set the boundaries ofpotential, cognition, motivation and definition as a structured genre of cultural under-standing without the need for any specific or overt structuring agent. Here, we see the mostcompelling similarity to Foucault’s notion of discipline.

In discussing the new ‘‘projects of docility’’ rampant in the eighteenth century, Foucaultreferred to certain changes in the way discipline was being understood. Specifically, whenreferencing the change in the object of control from bodies (en masse) to the body, themechanism of human action, Foucault stated that the object of attention was not or was nolonger the signifying elements of behavior or the language of the body, but the economy,the efficiency of movements, their internal organization; constraint bears upon the forcesrather than upon the signs; the only truly important ceremony is that of exercise (137).

In emphasizing the mechanism of the individual body as the site of control, by engagingin these projects of docility, the cultural boundaries of action were defined and redefined asthey referenced control, regulation and structure without bearing the need for singularagents’ structuring intent. Likewise, in discussing the mode through which control wasimplemented, Foucault stated that:

it implies an uninterrupted, constant coercion, supervising the processes of theactivity rather than its result and it is exercised according to a codification thatpartitions as closely as possible time, space, movement. These methods, which made


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possible the meticulous control of the operations of the body, which assured theconstant subjection of its forces and imposed upon them a relation of docility-utility,might be called disciplines (137).

No formal set of rules was established to define the disciplines; suggestions for theireffective implementation were perhaps necessary, but no master plan was drawn up todrive the forces of action to bear such control upon the body. Discipline was understood asthe way order was achieved, the way culture was regulated in almost every social arena, theway that life should progress and, indeed, the taken for granted acknowledgement thatliving with discipline and order was an entirely natural state of being. Discipline permeatedevery aspect of life so that the possibility of questioning it became unfathomable; indeed,‘‘many disciplinary methods had long been in existence—in monasteries, armies,workshops. But in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the disciplinesbecame general formulas of domination’’ (137). The era of disciplinary life characterizedthe habitus of the individuals living in the eighteenth century. The taken for granted,natural, ordered and regulated, yet altogether unspeakable way of existing within theboundaries and definitions of structured potential constituted a state of being handed downby no one yet accepted by everyone.

For Bourdieu, ‘‘the homogeneity of habitus is what… causes practices and works to beimmediately intelligible and foreseeable, and hence taken for granted’’ (80). Finally, forFoucault;

the ‘invention’ of this new political anatomy must not be seen as a sudden discovery.It is rather a multiplicity of often minor processes, of different origin and scatteredlocation, which overlap, repeat, or imitate one another, support one another, dis-tinguish themselves from one another according to their domain of application,converge and gradually produce the blueprint of a general method (138).

The relationship of the habitus and the disciplines in Bourdieu’s and Foucault’s workpresents a unique standard of cultural existence that signifies ways of ordering and regu-lating the social without its formal explication. In both works, the individual agent ismissing such that no discussion of her/him is warranted because subjectivity is produced ona large scale, reproduced by those practicing it, and fortified within the boundaries ofestablished order through the modes of habitus and discipline.

Yet, it is possible to reintroduce the individual back into the mesh of a disciplinaryhabitus of the prison. Understanding the effects of social and physical control on theinmate body/mind/spirit can allow the invisible boundaries of the prison conglomerate tobecome illuminated. Breaking with the notion that the prison is simply a warehouse makesroom for concepts like habitus and disciplinary control to better explain the lived realitiesof those behind the wall. For instance, the power dynamics among inmates and guards in aprison complex exist in a vacuum. Disciplinary control in prison feels nothing for theinmates’ stories, origins, struggles or lives prior to entering prison. The shift in inmates’habitus from the confines of poverty, low social support and often dangerous neighbor-hoods to the ultra-regulated disciplinary regime of prison goes ignored in the process ofintake. Yet, each habitus (before and during prison) is restricted in similar ways. Thepatterning of many neighborhoods is often fueled by the need to survive; similarly, survivalis a restrictive emotional and physical component to daily life in prison. As a result,integrating the primary assumptions of the concepts of habitus and discipline into thequalitative instruments we design to assess the inmates’ life-world is necessary. Throughgood instrument design and by remaining analytically open to the words used in defining

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habitus and discipline we can pull apart these similarities. Then, we are in a position toread our data with a new lens, potentially finding a roadmap embedded in these concepts aswe navigate the path of our participants’ subjectivity.

Ethos::Docile Bodies

In his discussion of the scientific theory of probabilities, Bourdieu stated that to evaluatethe potential consequence of a given action brings scientists into the realm of their sub-jects’ cultural ethos. The processes by which people come to understand how their ownpotential, the probability of their success and the direction of their action bring into eachsituation the unconscious principles of the ethos which, being the product of a learningprocess dominated by a determinate type of objective regularities, determines ‘‘reason-able’’ and ‘‘unreasonable’’ conduct for every agent subjected to those regularities (77).

The ‘‘dispositions’’ of agents acting within a culture are determined by regulation andare bounded within the limits of their ethos. Ways of understanding everyday life char-acterize what is truly necessary (and what is truly improbable) for agents in their moti-vations for action. Dispositions, then:

engender aspirations and practices objectively compatible with those objectiverequirements, the most improbable practices are excluded, either totally withoutexamination, as unthinkable, or at the cost of the double negation which inclinesagents to make virtue of necessity, that is, to refuse what is anyway refused and tolove the inevitable (77).

It is in similar language that Foucault discussed the production of docile bodies. Processesof learning, regimentation, regulation and the direction of action for those subjected to dis-cipline serve to produce the ethos, the objective limits of potential, necessary for the con-struction of docile bodies. For Foucault’s ‘‘disciplined man… no detail is unimportant, but notso much for the meaning that it conceals within it as for the hold it provides for the power thatwishes to seize it’’ (140). Encompassing of themselves, docile bodies are constructed so thatthey may be used, plied and manipulated within the contexts of their potential for action.Every detail of life is meticulously calculated such that discipline becomes a ‘‘politicalanatomy of detail’’ (139). From acceptable space to rank to time to physical movement andtactics for action, the production of docile bodies creates, parallel to itself, a mode of doing, autility, and an unconscious principle of discipline. Practices and action are bound by regu-lation. Necessity is governed by utility and desire for difference is deemed improbable.

The Foucauldian production of docile bodies necessarily exists within Bourdieu’sconcept of ethos. Indeed:

the very conditions of production of the ethos, necessity made into a virtue, are suchthat the expectations to which it gives rise tend to ignore the restriction to which thevalidity of any calculus of probabilities is subordinated… (77–78).

Bourdieu’s explanation of the binding character of ethos relates to Foucault’s insistencethat:

in becoming the target for new mechanisms of power, the body is offered up to new formsof knowledge. It is the body of exercise, rather than of speculative physics; a bodymanipulated by authority, rather than imbued with animal spirits; a body of usefultraining and not of rational mechanics, but one in which, by virtue of that very fact, anumber of natural requirements and functional constraints are beginning to emerge (155).


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The individuality of agents, as expressed through their ability to imagine alternativepossibilities, is suppressed by their immersion in the cultural ethos of prison and in theirtraining to become docile bodies. Assessing the life of prison inmates within the boundsand confines of mental and material subjugation requires attention to those inmates’ ethos.The cultural and practical constraints experienced outside of prison are amplified inside theprison. If social problems like poverty and addiction bind the individuals’ potential foraction outside the institution, imagining alternative possibilities becomes impossible insidethe prison (see also: Wacquant 2000). The presence of authority and its control over theindividual bleeds from one arena into the other. Imagining freedom in a context of culturalethos that inherently limits potential allows the institution, and all that it implies, toproduce a docility that dampens agency in a contiguous display of subordination.

Doxa::Panopticism

The experience of existing within a cultural arena where the objective limits of ordercommunicate with the subjective organization of life such that ‘‘the natural world andsocial world appear as self evident’’ is what Bourdieu called doxa (164). Where systems ofclassification exist within arbitrary logic outside of individual knowledge, doxic experi-ences emerge. The ‘‘self-evident’’ nature of doxa restrains the full potential of knowledgefor its social members so that it cannot be understood that the construction of social life isproduced and reproduced by the very individuals it eludes. The elusive nature of theexperience of doxa is arranged so that:

schemes of thought and perception can produce the objectivity that they do produceonly by producing misrecognition of the limits of the cognition that they makepossible, thereby founding immediate adherence, in the doxic mode, to the world oftradition experienced as a ‘natural world’ and taken for granted (164).

Thus, we see that without agents accepting their own constructions of regulatoryrestriction, the social world would appear for what it really is: the product of individuals’decision-making, classification and social action. Instead, the world of doxa rests in safety,beyond the reach of those it regulates and, paradoxically, of those who create it. In effect,individuals regulate and control themselves.

Perhaps the most provocative comparison of Bourdieu and Foucault is that of therelationship between doxa and panopticism. Panopticism, as the mechanism of ultimateand individual regulation exists, unquestioned. Those who bear the effects of constantsurveillance become enmeshed in the production of their own regulation:

Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of consciousand permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So toarrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discon-tinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actualexercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine forcreating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it;in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they arethemselves the bearers (201).

That individuals themselves produce the boundaries of social life that constrain them is thetheme of both doxa and panopticism. Individuals become subject to their own socialconstructions, whether through arbitrary classification or internalized surveillance, theeffects of their existence within the social world (as ‘‘free’’ agents or institutionalized

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inmates) reproduces the very conditions that motivate them. Thus, what social beings indoxic experiences or panoptic spaces do is attributed to externalities that defy actualreality.

The social ‘‘reality’’ of individual existence relies on the internalization of ‘‘objective’’forces (doxa and panopticism) in order to dominate and constrain their actions, knowledgesand practices. Understanding the social world of doxa and panopticism as self-evident,beyond control, static and omnipresent allows for the reproduction of self-domination toexist in the most minute arenas of social interaction. The similarities and interconnec-tedness of doxa and panopticism, as possessing the reproduction of internal truth in theactors that both exist within and produce social reality, allow us to read Bourdieu andFoucault almost as if in conversation:

In fact, power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects andrituals of truth (Foucault, 194).

The dominated classes have an interest in pushing back the limits of doxa andexposing the arbitrariness of the taken for granted; the dominant classes have aninterest in defending the integrity of doxa… (Bourdieu, 169).

On the whole, therefore, one can speak of the formation of a disciplinary societyin this movement that stretches from the enclosed disciplines, a sort of social‘quarantine’, to an indefinitely generalizable mechanism of ‘panopticism’ (Foucault, 216).

Because the subjective necessity and self-evidence of the commonsense world arevalidated by the objective consensus on the sense of the world, what is essential goeswithout saying because it comes without saying. (Bourdieu, 167).

Because, without any physical instrument other than architecture and geometry, it[the Panopticon] acts directly on individuals; it gives ‘power of mind over mind’(Foucault, 206).

The adherence expressed in the doxic relation to the social world is the absolute formof recognition of legitimacy through misrecognition of arbitrariness, since it isunaware of the very question of legitimacy… (Bourdieu, 168).

He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibilityfor the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; heinscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles;he becomes the principle of his own subjection (Foucault, 202–203).

Although one cannot find the optimism of potential for a dominated class as evident fromFoucault as from Bourdieu, the general sentiments in each work provide concepts in thetheory of culture that, through integration, allow for a more complete understanding ofaspects of domination that pervade the social lives of inmates. Internalization, self-(re)producing regulations and constraints upon action characterize the terms of both doxaand panopticism.

Because ‘‘what goes without saying comes without saying’’ in every lived aspect ofinmates’ existence in the total institution, legitimacy is understood as unachievable. Thatinmates should become the bearers of their own subordination is a theme that permeatesand infiltrates prison policy. The motive of punishment, cloaked in the rhetoric of reha-bilitation, is clarified by the doxic and self-reproducing effects of internalized surveillance,while simultaneously shrouding and systematically denying difference, authenticity andachievable alternatives.


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Using the integrated conceptual elements of doxa and panopticism to read state policydirected at inmates and prisons is a way to better prepare ourselves to enter the field.Preparedness in the field of prison research requires a familiarly with the language usedthere. Researchers must ready themselves for what they can expect upon entrance into theprison; otherwise, systematic processes of data collection intended to remain grounded canquickly fall beyond the control of the researcher. If a prison researcher uses the integratedconcepts of doxa and panopticism to better understand the context s/he is entering in theprison, the integrity of the entire research program is strengthened.

Theory of Practice::History of the Present

The final comparison of Bourdieu and Foucault is perhaps, the most straight forward. Boththeorists concerned themselves with the methods by which culture can be studied by socialscientists. Bourdieu’s concept of a theory of practice questions traditional anthropologicalmethods of researchers objectively immersing themselves in a ‘native’ culture because,through such action, researches inevitably imbue upon their data the relations of power andsubjectivism accompanying them into the field. For Bourdieu, an empirical study of aculture different from that of the researcher’s requires a self-reflexive mode of thinkingabout methodology. Understanding that the researcher does not stand outside of culture,but straddles multiple cultural forms, allows for more honesty in researching and theacknowledgement of the impossibility of pure scientific ‘‘objectivity;’’

Hence, it is not sufficient for anthropology to break with native experience and thenative representation of that experience: it has to make a second break and questionthe presuppositions inherent in the position of an outside observer, who, in hispreoccupation with interpreting practices, is inclined to introduce into the object theprinciples of his relation to the object, as is attested by the special importance heassigns to communicative functions… (2).

For Bourdieu, the success of a research project lies in the way the investigator practicesher/his own culture as well as the cultures of the subjects. Reflexivity implies action andcritically analyzing one’s own place in the field is not enough; researchers must also actoutside of their position as outsiders.

For Foucault, conducting a history of the present inherently privileges discourse overBourdieu’s practice; yet both theorists place the importance of research on reflexivity inregard to the researcher’s imposition of her/himself onto the data as well as the temporaland historical position of the researcher in relation to the context of the period of study.Thus, when writing a history of the present, the researcher is not removed from thecontexts that resulted after the event in question but, rather, is a part of them. Under-standing that the historical build-up of events does not exist in a social vacuum allows theresearcher to reflexively construct a discourse between the past and the present thatenlightens readers to the embedded and often invisible contexts of the present as directlydescendant from past events. For Foucault, knowledge of any sort is inherently inseparablefrom the power relations that embody such knowledge;

These ‘power-knowledge relations’ are to be analysed, therefore, not on the basis ofa subject of knowledge who is or is not free in relation to the power system, but, onthe contrary, the subject who knows, the objects to be known and the modalities ofknowledge must be regarded as so many effects of these fundamental implications ofpower-knowledge and their historical transformations (27–28).

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Writing a history of the present, then, requires the researcher’s awareness of her/his ownplace within the structural bounds of power relations and within the limitations of her/hisown ability to obtain knowledge when it is so embedded in contexts of power (23). Boththe researcher’s position in the field as an outside observer, and the researcher as an activeparticipant in a historical discourse that understands the limitations and social construc-tions of the present are methodologies suited for the sociological study of prisons (Rhodes2001). Bourdieu’s theory of practice and Foucault’s history of the present should not beseparated, but rather they should be combined so that researchers’ reflexivity, action,discourse and practice can flourish within the course of study.

In the next section, the concepts outlined from each theorist are used to illustrate howtheir interrelatedness necessarily contributes to the study of prison culture.

Theory as Method: Empiricism and the Sociology of Prisons

Ethos, doxa and habitus are inseparable concepts. They exist in embedded contexts, definethe limits of the individuals who produce them and simultaneously work in partnership toreveal a culture that denies agents’ empirical verification. Incomplete in their separationand yet perfectly merged in their wholeness, ethos, doxa and habitus exist within andamong one another as the ‘‘objective’’ limits defining a culture. Similarly, discipline, theproduction of docile bodies and panopticism work together to fortify the boundaries of aninexplicable, and inherently unknowable ‘reality’ that is constructed as altogether naturaland yet, simultaneously unspeakable. Agents’ inability to pull apart these social appara-tuses of domination, control and order as embodied in habitus and discipline; ethosand docile bodies; doxa and panopticism is the common thread binding the necessity oftheir integration. That individuals are unaware of their own roles in the production ofthe constructs that constrain them serves as the conceptual link hooking each of themtogether.

Habitus and Discipline

Using the analytical linkage of habitus and discipline in an empirically relevant way withinthe research project of a sociology of prisons requires our attention to the preexistinghistorical contexts that were experienced by each of our subjects of study. Drawing ourassumptions about the political and cultural realities of prison without acknowledgingthose contexts means ignoring the habitus that encourages discipline before, within andafter the physical confines of prison. Engaging the life histories and experiences of thepeople of the institution (both the inmates and the staff) outside of the prison system willhelp us draw a more complete picture of their whole experienced selves, both as a result ofand in opposition to, disciplinary forces.

We cannot assume, therefore, that our basic demographic gathering techniques areadequate in gauging the extent of individuals’ habitus as related to their imprisonment.Further, we cannot assume that the agents of the institution are immune to institutionaldiscipline. Often, prison researchers become caught up in separating the inmates from theguards as if their individual experiences in the prison place are not related. Though prisonstaff are the ones enforcing discipline (and by doing so, also reproducing it), they are alsounder disciplinary control. Using assessment techniques that recognize the omnipresenceof a habitus of disciplinary reproduction as it works on and is reproduced by the individuals


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within it will provide an unparalleled richness of data. Using methods such as ethnog-raphies, in-depth interviewing, life-histories, diaries and narratives to their fullest advan-tage within the institutional setting can help researchers better assess the extent of thedisciplinary habitus ongoing within the entire sphere of the life of a person linked to prison.Surveys, questionnaires, and detached observations alone are inadequate ways to gatherdata in a system as complex as the prison. Researchers must commit to using a full range ofinvestigative methods and a variety of tools to probe the corners of prison’s disciplinaryhabitus.

Ethos and Docile Bodies

The link between ethos and the production of docile bodies to conducting empiricalresearch lies in understanding individuals’ methods of acceptance and resistance. Only byembedding ourselves within the languages of prison, in the form of codes, policy, clas-sifications and rules can we begin to see where the projects of docility and potentialities ofindividuals’ ethos in prison meet. With this in mind, we can ask questions of our researchsuch as: what knowledges must inmates have to survive in prison? What languages mustthey learn? How do they resist institutional rules and systems of classification? How dothey embody them and why? How are boundaries tested (how are they not tested)? How isdocility expressed? Do inmates use docility as a tool? Does the staff use it as a weapon?What is mandatory in prison? What is voluntary? How do experiences differ as a result ofthis? These types of questions probe the boundaries of individuals’ ethos within the prison.The pursuit of their answers pushes the limits of researchers and asks us to make asignificant break from traditional research methods. In making this break, however, thedata yielded will emerge in a purer form, novel and untouched.

Doxa and Panopticism

The empirical connection of doxa and panopticism within the field of prison researchbecomes paramount in relation to researchers’ preparedness upon entrance. First, recog-nizing the ‘‘taken for granted’’ and ‘‘arbitrary systems of classification’’ as the products ofhuman social action allows for a fluid approach to all aspects involved in navigating theinstitutional maze of prison research. Keeping ourselves at all times aware of the con-structed forces within which we must act prevents us from becoming caught up inreproducing those same constraining forces. Our consciousness of the arbitrariness ofregulations imposed by subjects such as Institutional Review Boards, politicians, policymakers, prison staff and the state may help us better understand our own place in thesystem as well as the inmates’ social locations.

Second, we must remember that this reflexivity does not afford us some special placeoutside the realm of the doxic and panoptic spaces that pervades prison. Rather, ourawareness of it allows us to become all the more critical of the structural realties that wetoo must negotiate.

Theory of Practice and History of the Present

Finally, by using each of the empirical linkages to the concepts suggested above in doingprison research, we enter into the realm of actually doing a sociology of prisons. Using

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theory as method, not along side it or in addition to it, is the building block upon which wecan engage a truly critical stance through praxis within the field of criminology. Producingresearch for the sake of producing research is wasteful. Understanding and being able toexplain the findings of a research project in relation to how we can actually use thosefindings to make a difference by affecting practice and policy is a reachable goal. Engagingin projects that can promote social justice, whether by calling attention to injustices,exposing the taken for granted, giving voice to the voiceless or simply by asking toughquestions of those in positions of power, we can (and should) instrumentally engage ourresearch to help problematize the status quo.

Conclusion

The practice of integrating postmodern assumptions and analytical strategies into the fieldof criminology is one that is highly critiqued (Handler 1992; Russell 1997). The merits ofthese critiques are compelling and persuasive; yet, if we are not careful we run the risk ofdismissing all aspects of a rich and persistent theoretical tradition that may just have morepractical utility than we thought (Calavita and Seron 1992; Carrabine 2000). It is notsufficient simply to dismiss postmodernism, nor is it enough to use it alone; doing asociology of prisons requires the integration of methods, theories, concepts and empiricalresearch that pull from multiple fields of thought including postmodernism, post-struc-turalism, cultural studies, feminism and critical theories. Using a variety of perspectivesand reworking concepts such as doxa, habitus, ethos, panopticism, docility and disciplineto fit a new genre of prison research can serve to produce some innovative and provocativeempirical findings while simultaneously remaining grounded in critical perspectives andtrue to the production of social justice.

In this paper, my fields of research are the texts and my analyses are the data. This pieceis intended to provide a fresh lens and new possibility for those interested in doing asociology of prisons. The link to empiricism proposed here involves asking readers toreorient their thinking and consider the deep potential for analysis that integrating theseconcepts can provide.

Using these concepts from Bourdieu and Foucault in empirical work can be accom-plished in three ways. First, using these concepts as thematic building blocks in theconstruction and analysis of our research instruments allows us to bring the individual backinto our data. Inherently qualitative, though not wholly so, interviews, narratives, oralhistories, policy content analyses, ethnographies and diaries can be constructed, opera-tionalized and read by specifically utilizing the concepts discussed above. First time prisonresearchers are often woefully unprepared to walk into a prison and assume that theinterview instruments they constructed will suffice in answering questions about inmates.However, prison inmates are in a very unique position whereby they can both embody andsimultaneously subvert the language of institutional policy. As a result, traditional inter-view techniques or inflexible instruments fall remarkably short of assessing the myriadcomplexities and details bound up within the inmates’ experiences. The foundation forstrengthening our methodological toolkits can be found in a closer reading of Bourdieu andFoucault.

Second, by refocusing our sights on the themes woven throughout these texts we canfind their empirical verification in the prison setting. Using the words of Bourdieu andFoucault in our questions and to inform our observations has the potential to illuminate


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what is already hidden in plain sight; it can allow us deeper access into the untappedprocesses of institutional control that dominate our participants. But, reflexivity andkeeping ourselves attuned to these themes the key to using these concepts in empiricalresearch.

For both Foucault and Bourdieu, researchers’ self-awareness and their embededdness inthe relationships of power and domination that govern individuals’ lives are central.Understanding that there is no one ‘‘truth,’’ nor is there one ‘‘reality’’ can allow the livedexperiences of inmates to orient themselves. Certainly a complete ‘hands-off’ approach isimpossible, but a conscious decision to allow the participants and the data to speak forthemselves, as well as attention to conceptual detail, will likely allow the themes toemerge, unsolicited.

Third and finally, using these themes and concepts and whatever empirical trea-sures they may lead us to in ways that remain true to social justice may lend morevalidity to the practice of using postmodern approaches in criminological theorizing.Authority, power, knowledge and discipline are written into the rules that governpractice; all we have to do to find these similarities is look for them. Critiquing theinequitable distribution of criminal responsibility, then, becomes necessary. Analyzingpolicy with these mirror concepts in mind will provide the basis for uncovering theproblems and inequalities explicitly expressed therein. The empirical link between thestudy of culture as described by Bourdieu and Foucault and the ‘realities’ of inmatesin prison as reproducing their own confinement is evident in inmates’ internalizationof personal responsibility as it is fed to them through the medium of a natural,rational and logical rhetoric emphasizing their lack of control and personal fallibility(Scott and Lyman 1968; Skoll 1992; Podgorecki 1994; Ewick and Silbey 1995;Garland 1996; Fox 1999).

If we are to imagine a study of prisons that neglects the relationship between and amongthose constraining elements of self-producing order, then we are also to neglect the‘‘realities’’ of life in a place where those elements are, perhaps, most explicitly expressed(Carrabine 2000). A history of institutional revisions transformed the prison from a houseof degradation and punishment to a young men’s reformatory to a treatment center andnow, to an overcrowded, under-funded holding tank of recidivists. Through prisoners’rights movements, legislation, political rhetoric, ‘‘wars’’ on poverty and drugs and a multi-tude of inmate riots, the American prison system seems in constant flux. Yet, its stabilityand continuing presence is revealed through the one aspect of the system that remainsconstant; the legitimate domination over the individual is nowhere more evident thanwithin the systems and institutions that confine our criminals. Dominance over individualsin prison operates without question. Inmates regarded as doomed by their biology orrational actions are the guinea pigs of the justice system. The prison is not simply aninstitution of incarceration; it is a machine of criminal reproduction and a thief of humanpotential.

Whatever ‘‘truth’’ is out there, in terms of the political and social effects of prisons astotal institutions on human individuals, can be reassessed and reworked toward the goalof producing equity through the use of the themes discussed here. Justice, in the modernsense, is failing in our prison system. The rhetoric of rehabilitation emphasizes a tra-dition of judgment that delineates right from wrong and good from bad. Using theconcepts discussed in this paper to illuminate the invisible boundaries and the socialproblems inherent in the lived realities of prison inmates may, at the least, help to crackthe facade.

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Bourdieu and Foucault: A Conceptual Integration Toward an Empirical Sociology of Prisons

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