Calhoun, Craig, Joseph Gerteis, et al. Contemporary Sociological Theory. Malden: Blackwell, 2002. 185-188.

The work of Michel Foucault (1926-84) has had a tremendous impact on a number of disciplines. Although not a sociologist by training, his work addresses deeply sociological issues and it has had significant influence on the work of other sociologists. Foucault did not attempt to construct a systematic theory. Rather, as Cousins and Hassain put it, one encounters certain “habitual features of Foucault’s analyses.” These features are both substantive and methodological in nature. Substantively, Foucault explores issues of power through his historical examination of different “discourses” such as madness, medicine, prisons, and sexuality. Methodologically, Foucault creatively employs archeology and genealogy as analytic tools. While some scholars consider Foucault to be neo-structuralist, he has been most closely associated with the intellectual movement known as “post-structuralism.” Others (most notably, Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1983) oppose such categorizations of Foucault’s work. They suggest that he employs a unique interpretation of different intellectual traditions.

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Structuralism began to lose favor in France in the 1980s. Post-structuralism arose out of, and in response to, structuralism. Incorporating Nietzschean and psychoanalytic concepts, post-structuralists emphasize the importance of language. For instance, Derrida, whose name has been closely associated with post-structuralism, argues that all claims of originary speech are misleading. Opposing a systematic approach to language, Derrida suggests instead that it is “difference” that marks writing. In other words, this term suggests both a differing and a deferring of the presence of meaning for language. Like structuralists in general, post-structuralists seek to de-center the subject, but they propose that subjects are created by the discourse in which they are embedded.

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In the 1970s, Foucault’s interest shifted from discourse to the problem of power, from archaeology to genealogy. In his later works, Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality, Foucault explores the relations between power, knowledge and the body in modern society. In Discipline and Punish, he conducts a genealogy of modern disciplinary technology. He analyzes the transformation of punishment from torture in medieval times to the representation of crime in the Classical Age to the role of the prison and a normative social science in producing the modern individual. Power is increasingly exercised in the form of surveillance by a large array of apparatuses; through the classification and documentation of individuals; and the turning of subjects into objects of knowledge. Foucault extended his analysis of power relations to the area of sexuality in The History of Sexuality. His argument is that, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, sexuality became an object of scientific investigation and social concern. This was the result of the spread of bio-power, which was deployed in the case of sexuality through the practice of the confessional. In his writings on power in general, Foucault makes the case that power is not restricted to political institutions. Rather, it is multidirectional, operating from above and below.