Challenging Community Standards

The fact that women in Sudan are subject to 40 lashes and time in jail, or a $200 fine is a great example of punishment and deterrence, specific and general not to mention of punishments that far out weigh the crime. The crime in this case is that Al Jazeera wore trousers in public and that act violates decency laws in Sudan. We can see from the sheer numbers of women arrested last year for this offense, 43,000, that community standards are being challenged.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2009/09/200998152754685257.html

Weber and Foucault

Foulault, Michel. 1995. Discipline and Punish. New York: Random House Inc.



The connections between the theories of Max Weber and Foucault's history of punishment are inescapably linked. Weber's theory of authority and power and how power can seem coercive without legitimate authority parallel Foucault's theme of knowledge and its relation to power. Power without authority can be seen as coercive but when it is legitimized through rationality and/or knowledge power becomes legitimate. People are more willing to comply with authority if it is believed to be in their own interests. Punishments that are "humanized" through knowledge and the distribution of juridical power are seen as rational not barbaric, modern not pre-modern. As we move from Monarchies to Democracies we must also democratize our penal system. The history of the justice system in Europe parallels and mirrors the bureaucracy in Weber's theory of Bureaucracy and the Iron Cage. Bureaucracy, rationality, knowledge, all become a form of legitimate humanized domination.

Toture

Foulault, Michel. 1995. Discipline and Punish. New York: Random House Inc.

Our leap from Foucault to modern torture is somewhat problematic or me. I can certainly see the similarities, especially in the barbaric nature of both. Part one Torture takes place in such a different time from our own. The motivating and justifying factors that exist behind the torture of "pre-modern" Europe and the torture of today are literally worlds apart. Foucault consistently discounts the humanization of the penal system. In the torture of today though it may sterilized and attempts are made to rationalise it there is nothing human about it. The leap was so large for me because of all of the historical processes that have contributed to the evolution of torture. I am sure that in class as well as in Foucault the history that revolutionized torture will be addressed. I just have so many questions and so many thing to say.

*How has the enlightenment and the birth of man influenced torture?

*Hasn't the shift from a feudal economy to a capitalist economy seriously shifted belief systems, personal worth and freedom, and the efficiency of production/torture?

As monarchies fell and democracies rose God was decentered from the state and man stepped up.

*How did this influence the penal system and individual rights?

*Did knowledge replace God as a legitimzer of control?