Crit Crim (2013) 21:31–46

DOI 10.1007/s10612-012-9164-1

Bourdieu and Foucault: A Conceptual Integration

Toward 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’s
and Michel Foucault’s theories of culture and power are interrelated in some compelling
ways. Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977) and Discipline and Punish (1979) are two of
the most influential contributions in post-structural and postmodern theory. Yet, far more
attention is paid to Foucault’s contributions in criminology than to Bourdieu’s. This essay
brings together the work of these influential theorists to argue for a critical examination of
the 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 the
original works. Then, the combination of those primary concepts is used to address specific
methodological concerns researchers should consider when doing empirical research in
prison.

Introduction

Although the similarities between them are under analyzed, Pierre Bourdieu’s and Michel
Foucault’s theories of culture and power are interrelated in some compelling ways. Outline
of a Theory of Practice (1977) and Discipline and Punish (1979) are two of the most
influential 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 ways
contemporary social scientists theorize institutions, structures and social interaction and
have 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 to
Foucault’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, USA
e-mail: jenny.schlosser@gmail.com

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essay on the nature of crime, penology or prison culture, Foucault’s work features
prominently. Notably lacking is the application of Bourdieu’s work on culture in relation to
contemporary criminology. This essay brings together the work of these two influential
theorists to integrate their specific concepts into a more critical analysis of the sociology of
prisons.
My purpose is to engage readers in a textual understanding of Bourdieu and Foucault
and to outline how specific conceptual linkages can be used in the effort to add weight to
empirical analyses of prisons as institutions embedded in larger socio-historical processes.
As Seron and Munger (1996) argue, ‘‘agency alone will not provide an understanding of
the group-life of a society or its institutions or the ways in which class continues to form an
important bridge between those contingencies that comprise elements of an actor’s own
understanding of action and those of which the actor is unaware’’ (188). Understanding the
boundaries of culture as those inherent and often invisible social processes that govern the
lives of prison inmates allows for the inclusion of these conceptual elements into a broader
framework 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). A
cultural 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 (Ferrell
and Sanders 1995; Milovanovic 1997). There is significant critique in the literature that
postmodernism has no place in criminology. Stuart Russell (1997) provided a lengthy and
passionate critique of postmodern thought and explicated the grounds for its exclusion
from 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 critical
criminology’’ (62). He further argued that:
postmodernism has led to a deafening, elitist, political demobilisation of intellectuals
who have no desire to descend from the ivory towers. The impenetrable and inac-
cessible nature of postmodern prose combined with its intellectual closure have
contributed greatly to its elitist status (84).
Like Russell, Leavitt (1999) posed a significant critique of the discursive theorizing
prevalent in some strands of criminology. For Leavitt, ‘‘there is often too much confusion
as to which parts of them are assumptions and which are propositions, open to empirical
scrutiny’’ (394).
Bernard and Snipes (1996) problematize criminologists’ penchant for creating new and
seemingly oppositional theories in order to explain a singular, empirical phenomenon. The
authors argue that theoretical integration is possible under certain conditions; particularly,
that the propositions of the theories being integrated are complimentary. The authors state
that ‘‘pure conceptual integration tends to result in theoretical mush…the only meaningful
integration 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 various
strands of thought from different theorists in order to better understand modern con-
structions, like hierarchal institutions and organizations such as the prison system (Arrigo
1995; 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 of
prisons. Doing a sociology of prisons does not neglect the individual, as postmodernism is so
highly critiqued for doing. Rather, a sociology of prisons is inclusive of all aspects embodied
within the experiences emergent from the total institution; including the subjective indi-
vidual, the internal institutional hierarchy, the culture, the agents of control, the consequences
of 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 of
Prisons,’’ 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 four
categories: (1) ‘‘contemporary critiques directed against the numbing effects of the current
situation,’’ (2) ‘‘efforts, particularly following Foucault, to revisit and revise our under-
standing of prison history’’ (3) ‘‘sociological and anthropological work that attempts an
entry into and a direct engagement in the interior life of the prison,’’ and (4) ‘‘work that
addresses 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 truly
understand prisons provides an inclusive methodological framework.
As a researcher who has entered the prison setting, spoken with inmates, collected their
stories 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 this
piece. Elsewhere, I have written about the technical aspects of access, the presentation of
self, representation and other challenges involved in interviewing inmates (Schlosser
2008). But, during the course of those experiences I never managed to banish Bourdieu and
Foucault 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 to
contextualize my experiences as a prison researcher.
Outline of a Theory of Practice and Discipline and Punish are two works that, to my
knowledge, have not been systematically combined in an effort to incorporate their
interrelated concepts into a sociology of prisons. I did not rely heavily on texts written by
others on Bourdieu and Foucault as supplementary material (see: Wacquant 1989; Calhoun
et al. 1993; Swartz 1997), although these have certainly informed my thinking. Finally, I
drew many of my stylistic choices from exemplary pieces that also engage a conceptually
integrative 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’s
conception 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 comparing
specific examples from the original works (see Fig. 1). Each pair of related concepts is used
to 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 culture
with 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 social

orchestration without a conductor (72). The processes by which individuals are governed
are neither strictly external nor internal to themselves but reside simultaneously in multiple
arenas; yet, understanding such ordered processes of social life does not require any set of
formally stated rules. As such, no sovereign power necessarily exists (although it may) to
direct 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 each
case a complete description (which invocation of rules allow one to dispense with) of
the relation between the habitus, as a socially constituted system of cognitive and
motivating 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 exist
alone; instead, they are bound up within references to the past, within agents’ motivations
for action, and within the cultural contexts that regulate and order the courses of such
action. The habitus, as the social arena within which tradition and ritual structure the
boundaries of ordered action, is reproduced by the actors existing within it; practicing their
cultures in relation to the historical (though not deterministic) events that precede them.
The ways that individuals navigate culture, expectation and interaction exist such that ‘‘the
habitus is the source of these series of moves which are objectively organized as strategies
without being the product of a genuine strategic intention…’’ (73).
Bourdieu discussed habitus as being produced by different modes of generation that
elicit different possibilities, definitions and practices for each invocation of a new cultural
arena. Thus, habitus produces practices that produce regularities within the objective
contexts of a ‘‘generative principle’’ (78). These regularities, then, set the boundaries of
potential, 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 most
compelling similarity to Foucault’s notion of discipline.
In discussing the new ‘‘projects of docility’’ rampant in the eighteenth century, Foucault
referred to certain changes in the way discipline was being understood. Specifically, when
referencing the change in the object of control from bodies (en masse) to the body, the
mechanism of human action, Foucault stated that the object of attention was not or was no
longer 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 forces
rather 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 engaging
in these projects of docility, the cultural boundaries of action were defined and redefined as
they referenced control, regulation and structure without bearing the need for singular
agents’ structuring intent. Likewise, in discussing the mode through which control was
implemented, Foucault stated that:
it implies an uninterrupted, constant coercion, supervising the processes of the
activity rather than its result and it is exercised according to a codification that
partitions 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 the
constant 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 their
effective implementation were perhaps necessary, but no master plan was drawn up to
drive the forces of action to bear such control upon the body. Discipline was understood as
the way order was achieved, the way culture was regulated in almost every social arena, the
way that life should progress and, indeed, the taken for granted acknowledgement that
living with discipline and order was an entirely natural state of being. Discipline permeated
every 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 disciplines
became general formulas of domination’’ (137). The era of disciplinary life characterized
the habitus of the individuals living in the eighteenth century. The taken for granted,
natural, ordered and regulated, yet altogether unspeakable way of existing within the
boundaries and definitions of structured potential constituted a state of being handed down
by no one yet accepted by everyone.
For Bourdieu, ‘‘the homogeneity of habitus is what… causes practices and works to be
immediately intelligible and foreseeable, and hence taken for granted’’ (80). Finally, for
Foucault;
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 scattered
location, 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 work
presents 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 is
missing such that no discussion of her/him is warranted because subjectivity is produced on
a large scale, reproduced by those practicing it, and fortified within the boundaries of
established order through the modes of habitus and discipline.
Yet, it is possible to reintroduce the individual back into the mesh of a disciplinary
habitus of the prison. Understanding the effects of social and physical control on the
inmate body/mind/spirit can allow the invisible boundaries of the prison conglomerate to
become illuminated. Breaking with the notion that the prison is simply a warehouse makes
room for concepts like habitus and disciplinary control to better explain the lived realities
of those behind the wall. For instance, the power dynamics among inmates and guards in a
prison complex exist in a vacuum. Disciplinary control in prison feels nothing for the
inmates’ 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 of
intake. Yet, each habitus (before and during prison) is restricted in similar ways. The
patterning of many neighborhoods is often fueled by the need to survive; similarly, survival
is 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 the
qualitative instruments we design to assess the inmates’ life-world is necessary. Through
good 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 to
read our data with a new lens, potentially finding a roadmap embedded in these concepts as
we navigate the path of our participants’ subjectivity.

Ethos::Docile Bodies

In his discussion of the scientific theory of probabilities, Bourdieu stated that to evaluate
the 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 own
potential, the probability of their success and the direction of their action bring into each
situation the unconscious principles of the ethos which, being the product of a learning
process 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 and
are 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 objective
requirements, the most improbable practices are excluded, either totally without
examination, as unthinkable, or at the cost of the double negation which inclines
agents to make virtue of necessity, that is, to refuse what is anyway refused and to
love the inevitable (77).
It is in similar language that Foucault discussed the production of docile bodies. Processes
of 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 not
so much for the meaning that it conceals within it as for the hold it provides for the power that
wishes to seize it’’ (140). Encompassing of themselves, docile bodies are constructed so that
they 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 ‘‘political
anatomy of detail’’ (139). From acceptable space to rank to time to physical movement and
tactics for action, the production of docile bodies creates, parallel to itself, a mode of doing, a
utility, 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’s
concept of ethos. Indeed:
the very conditions of production of the ethos, necessity made into a virtue, are such
that the expectations to which it gives rise tend to ignore the restriction to which the
validity of any calculus of probabilities is subordinated… (77–78).
Bourdieu’s explanation of the binding character of ethos relates to Foucault’s insistence
that:
in becoming the target for new mechanisms of power, the body is offered up to new forms
of knowledge. It is the body of exercise, rather than of speculative physics; a body
manipulated by authority, rather than imbued with animal spirits; a body of useful
training and not of rational mechanics, but one in which, by virtue of that very fact, a
number 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 alternative

possibilities, is suppressed by their immersion in the cultural ethos of prison and in their
training to become docile bodies. Assessing the life of prison inmates within the bounds
and confines of mental and material subjugation requires attention to those inmates’ ethos.
The cultural and practical constraints experienced outside of prison are amplified inside the
prison. If social problems like poverty and addiction bind the individuals’ potential for
action outside the institution, imagining alternative possibilities becomes impossible inside
the prison (see also: Wacquant 2000). The presence of authority and its control over the
individual bleeds from one arena into the other. Imagining freedom in a context of cultural
ethos that inherently limits potential allows the institution, and all that it implies, to
produce 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 order
communicate with the subjective organization of life such that ‘‘the natural world and
social world appear as self evident’’ is what Bourdieu called doxa (164). Where systems of
classification exist within arbitrary logic outside of individual knowledge, doxic experi-
ences emerge. The ‘‘self-evident’’ nature of doxa restrains the full potential of knowledge
for its social members so that it cannot be understood that the construction of social life is
produced and reproduced by the very individuals it eludes. The elusive nature of the
experience of doxa is arranged so that:
schemes of thought and perception can produce the objectivity that they do produce
only by producing misrecognition of the limits of the cognition that they make
possible, thereby founding immediate adherence, in the doxic mode, to the world of
tradition experienced as a ‘natural world’ and taken for granted (164).
Thus, we see that without agents accepting their own constructions of regulatory
restriction, 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 the
relationship between doxa and panopticism. Panopticism, as the mechanism of ultimate
and individual regulation exists, unquestioned. Those who bear the effects of constant
surveillance become enmeshed in the production of their own regulation:
Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious
and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to
arrange 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 actual
exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for
creating 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 are
themselves the bearers (201).
That individuals themselves produce the boundaries of social life that constrain them is the
theme of both doxa and panopticism. Individuals become subject to their own social
constructions, whether through arbitrary classification or internalized surveillance, the
effects 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 in
doxic experiences or panoptic spaces do is attributed to externalities that defy actual
reality.
The social ‘‘reality’’ of individual existence relies on the internalization of ‘‘objective’’
forces (doxa and panopticism) in order to dominate and constrain their actions, knowledges
and practices. Understanding the social world of doxa and panopticism as self-evident,
beyond control, static and omnipresent allows for the reproduction of self-domination to
exist 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 the
actors that both exist within and produce social reality, allow us to read Bourdieu and
Foucault almost as if in conversation:
In fact, power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and
rituals of truth (Foucault, 194).
The dominated classes have an interest in pushing back the limits of doxa and
exposing the arbitrariness of the taken for granted; the dominant classes have an
interest in defending the integrity of doxa… (Bourdieu, 169).
On the whole, therefore, one can speak of the formation of a disciplinary society
in 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 are
validated by the objective consensus on the sense of the world, what is essential goes
without 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 form
of recognition of legitimacy through misrecognition of arbitrariness, since it is
unaware of the very question of legitimacy… (Bourdieu, 168).
He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility
for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he
inscribes 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 from
Foucault as from Bourdieu, the general sentiments in each work provide concepts in the
theory of culture that, through integration, allow for a more complete understanding of
aspects of domination that pervade the social lives of inmates. Internalization, self-
(re)producing regulations and constraints upon action characterize the terms of both doxa
and panopticism.
Because ‘‘what goes without saying comes without saying’’ in every lived aspect of
inmates’ existence in the total institution, legitimacy is understood as unachievable. That
inmates should become the bearers of their own subordination is a theme that permeates
and 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 and
achievable alternatives.

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Using the integrated conceptual elements of doxa and panopticism to read state policy
directed 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 used
there. Researchers must ready themselves for what they can expect upon entrance into the
prison; otherwise, systematic processes of data collection intended to remain grounded can
quickly fall beyond the control of the researcher. If a prison researcher uses the integrated
concepts of doxa and panopticism to better understand the context s/he is entering in the
prison, 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. Both
theorists concerned themselves with the methods by which culture can be studied by social
scientists. Bourdieu’s concept of a theory of practice questions traditional anthropological
methods of researchers objectively immersing themselves in a ‘native’ culture because,
through such action, researches inevitably imbue upon their data the relations of power and
subjectivism accompanying them into the field. For Bourdieu, an empirical study of a
culture different from that of the researcher’s requires a self-reflexive mode of thinking
about methodology. Understanding that the researcher does not stand outside of culture,
but straddles multiple cultural forms, allows for more honesty in researching and the
acknowledgement of the impossibility of pure scientific ‘‘objectivity;’’
Hence, it is not sufficient for anthropology to break with native experience and the
native representation of that experience: it has to make a second break and question
the presuppositions inherent in the position of an outside observer, who, in his
preoccupation with interpreting practices, is inclined to introduce into the object the
principles of his relation to the object, as is attested by the special importance he
assigns to communicative functions… (2).
For Bourdieu, the success of a research project lies in the way the investigator practices
her/his own culture as well as the cultures of the subjects. Reflexivity implies action and
critically analyzing one’s own place in the field is not enough; researchers must also act
outside of their position as outsiders.
For Foucault, conducting a history of the present inherently privileges discourse over
Bourdieu’s practice; yet both theorists place the importance of research on reflexivity in
regard to the researcher’s imposition of her/himself onto the data as well as the temporal
and 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 the
contexts 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 the
researcher to reflexively construct a discourse between the past and the present that
enlightens readers to the embedded and often invisible contexts of the present as directly
descendant from past events. For Foucault, knowledge of any sort is inherently inseparable
from the power relations that embody such knowledge;
These ‘power-knowledge relations’ are to be analysed, therefore, not on the basis of
a subject of knowledge who is or is not free in relation to the power system, but, on
the contrary, the subject who knows, the objects to be known and the modalities of
knowledge must be regarded as so many effects of these fundamental implications of
power-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 own
place within the structural bounds of power relations and within the limitations of her/his
own ability to obtain knowledge when it is so embedded in contexts of power (23). Both
the researcher’s position in the field as an outside observer, and the researcher as an active
participant in a historical discourse that understands the limitations and social construc-
tions of the present are methodologies suited for the sociological study of prisons (Rhodes
2001). Bourdieu’s theory of practice and Foucault’s history of the present should not be
separated, 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 how
their 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, define
the limits of the individuals who produce them and simultaneously work in partnership to
reveal a culture that denies agents’ empirical verification. Incomplete in their separation
and yet perfectly merged in their wholeness, ethos, doxa and habitus exist within and
among one another as the ‘‘objective’’ limits defining a culture. Similarly, discipline, the
production of docile bodies and panopticism work together to fortify the boundaries of an
inexplicable, and inherently unknowable ‘reality’ that is constructed as altogether natural
and yet, simultaneously unspeakable. Agents’ inability to pull apart these social appara-
tuses of domination, control and order as embodied in habitus and discipline; ethos
and docile bodies; doxa and panopticism is the common thread binding the necessity of
their integration. That individuals are unaware of their own roles in the production of
the constructs that constrain them serves as the conceptual link hooking each of them
together.

Habitus and Discipline

Using the analytical linkage of habitus and discipline in an empirically relevant way within
the research project of a sociology of prisons requires our attention to the preexisting
historical contexts that were experienced by each of our subjects of study. Drawing our
assumptions about the political and cultural realities of prison without acknowledging
those contexts means ignoring the habitus that encourages discipline before, within and
after the physical confines of prison. Engaging the life histories and experiences of the
people of the institution (both the inmates and the staff) outside of the prison system will
help us draw a more complete picture of their whole experienced selves, both as a result of
and in opposition to, disciplinary forces.
We cannot assume, therefore, that our basic demographic gathering techniques are
adequate 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 institutional
discipline. Often, prison researchers become caught up in separating the inmates from the
guards as if their individual experiences in the prison place are not related. Though prison
staff are the ones enforcing discipline (and by doing so, also reproducing it), they are also
under disciplinary control. Using assessment techniques that recognize the omnipresence
of 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 the
disciplinary 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 gather
data in a system as complex as the prison. Researchers must commit to using a full range of
investigative methods and a variety of tools to probe the corners of prison’s disciplinary
habitus.

Ethos and Docile Bodies

The link between ethos and the production of docile bodies to conducting empirical
research lies in understanding individuals’ methods of acceptance and resistance. Only by
embedding 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 of
individuals’ ethos in prison meet. With this in mind, we can ask questions of our research
such as: what knowledges must inmates have to survive in prison? What languages must
they learn? How do they resist institutional rules and systems of classification? How do
they embody them and why? How are boundaries tested (how are they not tested)? How is
docility 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 of
this? 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 a
significant break from traditional research methods. In making this break, however, the
data 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 research
becomes paramount in relation to researchers’ preparedness upon entrance. First, recog-
nizing the ‘‘taken for granted’’ and ‘‘arbitrary systems of classification’’ as the products of
human social action allows for a fluid approach to all aspects involved in navigating the
institutional 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 in
reproducing those same constraining forces. Our consciousness of the arbitrariness of
regulations imposed by subjects such as Institutional Review Boards, politicians, policy
makers, prison staff and the state may help us better understand our own place in the
system as well as the inmates’ social locations.
Second, we must remember that this reflexivity does not afford us some special place
outside the realm of the doxic and panoptic spaces that pervades prison. Rather, our
awareness of it allows us to become all the more critical of the structural realties that we
too must negotiate.

Theory of Practice and History of the Present

Finally, by using each of the empirical linkages to the concepts suggested above in doing
prison 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 we
can engage a truly critical stance through praxis within the field of criminology. Producing
research for the sake of producing research is wasteful. Understanding and being able to
explain the findings of a research project in relation to how we can actually use those
findings to make a difference by affecting practice and policy is a reachable goal. Engaging
in 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 tough
questions of those in positions of power, we can (and should) instrumentally engage our
research to help problematize the status quo.

Conclusion

The practice of integrating postmodern assumptions and analytical strategies into the field
of criminology is one that is highly critiqued (Handler 1992; Russell 1997). The merits of
these critiques are compelling and persuasive; yet, if we are not careful we run the risk of
dismissing all aspects of a rich and persistent theoretical tradition that may just have more
practical utility than we thought (Calavita and Seron 1992; Carrabine 2000). It is not
sufficient simply to dismiss postmodernism, nor is it enough to use it alone; doing a
sociology of prisons requires the integration of methods, theories, concepts and empirical
research that pull from multiple fields of thought including postmodernism, post-struc-
turalism, cultural studies, feminism and critical theories. Using a variety of perspectives
and reworking concepts such as doxa, habitus, ethos, panopticism, docility and discipline
to fit a new genre of prison research can serve to produce some innovative and provocative
empirical findings while simultaneously remaining grounded in critical perspectives and
true to the production of social justice.
In this paper, my fields of research are the texts and my analyses are the data. This piece
is intended to provide a fresh lens and new possibility for those interested in doing a
sociology of prisons. The link to empiricism proposed here involves asking readers to
reorient their thinking and consider the deep potential for analysis that integrating these
concepts 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 the
construction and analysis of our research instruments allows us to bring the individual back
into our data. Inherently qualitative, though not wholly so, interviews, narratives, oral
histories, policy content analyses, ethnographies and diaries can be constructed, opera-
tionalized and read by specifically utilizing the concepts discussed above. First time prison
researchers are often woefully unprepared to walk into a prison and assume that the
interview instruments they constructed will suffice in answering questions about inmates.
However, prison inmates are in a very unique position whereby they can both embody and
simultaneously subvert the language of institutional policy. As a result, traditional inter-
view techniques or inflexible instruments fall remarkably short of assessing the myriad
complexities and details bound up within the inmates’ experiences. The foundation for
strengthening our methodological toolkits can be found in a closer reading of Bourdieu and
Foucault.
Second, by refocusing our sights on the themes woven throughout these texts we can
find their empirical verification in the prison setting. Using the words of Bourdieu and
Foucault 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 untapped
processes of institutional control that dominate our participants. But, reflexivity and
keeping ourselves attuned to these themes the key to using these concepts in empirical
research.
For both Foucault and Bourdieu, researchers’ self-awareness and their embededdness in
the 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 lived
experiences of inmates to orient themselves. Certainly a complete ‘hands-off’ approach is
impossible, but a conscious decision to allow the participants and the data to speak for
themselves, as well as attention to conceptual detail, will likely allow the themes to
emerge, 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 more
validity to the practice of using postmodern approaches in criminological theorizing.
Authority, power, knowledge and discipline are written into the rules that govern
practice; all we have to do to find these similarities is look for them. Critiquing the
inequitable distribution of criminal responsibility, then, becomes necessary. Analyzing
policy with these mirror concepts in mind will provide the basis for uncovering the
problems and inequalities explicitly expressed therein. The empirical link between the
study of culture as described by Bourdieu and Foucault and the ‘realities’ of inmates
in prison as reproducing their own confinement is evident in inmates’ internalization
of 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; Podgòrecki 1994; Ewick and Silbey 1995;
Garland 1996; Fox 1999).
If we are to imagine a study of prisons that neglects the relationship between and among
those 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 house
of degradation and punishment to a young men’s reformatory to a treatment center and
now, 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 stability
and continuing presence is revealed through the one aspect of the system that remains
constant; the legitimate domination over the individual is nowhere more evident than
within the systems and institutions that confine our criminals. Dominance over individuals
in prison operates without question. Inmates regarded as doomed by their biology or
rational actions are the guinea pigs of the justice system. The prison is not simply an
institution of incarceration; it is a machine of criminal reproduction and a thief of human
potential.
Whatever ‘‘truth’’ is out there, in terms of the political and social effects of prisons as
total institutions on human individuals, can be reassessed and reworked toward the goal
of producing equity through the use of the themes discussed here. Justice, in the modern
sense, 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 the
concepts discussed in this paper to illuminate the invisible boundaries and the social
problems inherent in the lived realities of prison inmates may, at the least, help to crack
the façade.

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Toward an Empirical Sociology of Prisons 45

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