19 Apr 2012
School
Department
Course
Professor
Lecture 9 - March 15
March-15-12
14:58 PM
Foucault: The Dark Side of Enlightenment
Papers- can send outlines/drafts for up to a week
-paper is an argument, should be able to summarize in one or two sentences
-work from an outline
-does not need long intro, come to point, explain problem/summarize answer, summarize how intend to
prove answer
-respond to question; originality and interest, use of evidence; interesting to people outside the class
Weber Review
Elements of Modern Legal System
-rational-legal authority formulates legal system
-legal system is bureaucratic
-bureaucracy have own interests, structures and to extent structure social reality, culture and history
help create economic/social systems
-legal systems have formal rationality
Contributions
-systematic comparative law
-Weber's pessimism about modernity, democracy anticipates Foucault; changes in the law and
domination
-not much room for democracy to make much of a difference; prime minister as face alone, people
under him as important
-deployed differently, significance of different institutions
-Weber argues bar association/legal profession formed earlier than others and so Canada based on
medieval common law
-Marx; everything reflects economic base; legal profession does not explain any historical outcome,
whereas for Weber, traditional way of organizing powers, path dependency; institutions have own
cultures and path dependency, how political decisions get made
-symbiosis between bureaucratic society/law and capitalist development
-bureaucracies and capitalism have affinities with one another; bureaucracy makes capitalism more
effective
-Weber is trying to explain pre-eminence of the west in his time period p.223
-human element of decision making governed by rules in democracy p.225-6
-important contribution; founder of modern sociologically informed comparative legal analysis; look at
different legal traditions; how they develop and why they differ
Foucault
-bio and intellectual setting; questioned Marxism, whether paradigm of regimes was important or not
and discuss how people are governed
-the political setting
-his role in criminology toady: from government to governance; government as overarching political
group, governance of any institutions
-critiques
Early modern punishment transformed
-from spectacle to sobriety/regimentation; spectacle is abolished, focus toward prison and reform
-from overt violence to the gentle way; prison taking over, violence as abolished (although prison is
violence in other ways)