Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Foucault, Sovereign v. Disciplinary Power and the Sports Team

Foucault describes sovereign power as a power of ascending individualism and disciplinary power as a power of descending individualism. Disciplinary power incorporates hierarchical observation, normalizing judgment, and examination to measure each individual's deviation from a norm. On the sports team, both sovereign and disciplinary power come into play.

2 comments:

  1. Michel Foucault presents a theory of power in Discipline and Punish that is dramatically different from those that were presented before him. Foucault calls his theory disciplinary power and the power of those who came before him, sovereign power. The difference between the two types of power, from where power is located to whether the criminal is disciplined or punished, is dramatic.

    Foucault describes the sovereign power that existed in medieval society in the first few pages of his text as a brutal demonstration of publicly executed punishment (3-6). As in Durkheim’s description of mechanical solidarity, punishment in sovereign power is public, passionate and organized, allowing it to also be violent. The purpose of this punishment is to teach the public a lesson by instilling shame in the criminal and fear in the people. This demonstration of the expendability of the individual is performed on the body by an executioner (16, 11). Foucault discusses ascending individualism when sovereign power is at play, as each individual looks up to the power that controls him and is aware of every symbol of that power that exists in society.

    Disciplinary power, according to Foucault, manifests itself through hierarchical observation, normalization, and examination (170). Hierarchical observation creates an overarching visibility of society and, in the panopticon, operates like a machine in that it makes people work hard and be honest without having any actual contact with them (171, 173, 177). Normalization, or normalizing judgment, measures each person according to a norm in order to reduce the gaps between an individual’s behavior and the norm and also to rank them against one another (178, 181). Finally, examination combines hierarchical observation and normalizing judgment to turn visibility into power, create individuality, and transform each individual into a case in the same moment (187). This disciplinary power is decentralized to many different institutions of society in what Foucault calls the micro-physics of power, meaning that power is both positive and negative, is not confined to the legal sphere, is closely associated with the human sciences and is seen in terms of the regulation of the body as it is controlled by the soul (23-4). Finally, Foucault discusses descending individualism in a disciplinary society as the powerless are individualized and power becomes more anonymous (192-3).

    Sovereign power plays a minor role in the institution of the sports team, in that the players know that they are subordinate to their coaches, and regular teammates are subordinate to a team captain. In this way, their ascending individualism is very obvious to everyone on the team as each member looks up toward the power held by the coach to allow certain people to play. In addition, the power held by a referee during competition is clear as he wears a different uniform and clearly states his position of power on the playing field, directing even the coaches when they make mistakes by shaming them into compliance.

    Disciplinary power, however, plays a larger role. During early practices and games, coaches are able to watch the players on their team and determine a hierarchy. This hierarchy can be based on leadership, sportsmanship or ability, or some combination of the three, but there is always a hierarchy. As the season goes on and a coach knows his team, he is able to determine what a norm might be and compare each member of the team to it. In doing so, he ranks them and reduces the gaps between them, in effect homogenizing them and individualizing them in one fell swoop. Finally, a coach is able to combine these aspects of observation and normalization into examination when he determines which member of his team will play what position and how many minutes of playing time each member will get.

    While Foucault paints a picture of a society based purely on the panopticon and disciplinary power, the sports team demonstrates that in reality, both sovereign and disciplinary power come into play in most modern societies.

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  2. Nice job in combining Durkheim's and Foucault's arguments together. I have one suggestion, mention the state's involvement in the two powers and how it differs.

    On question about your institution, are you focusing on a particular sport or just sports in general?

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