Beyond the Culture of Control
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Description
The Culture of Control (Garland 2001), together with the effusion of commentary, criticism and debate that followed its publication, forms part of a collective project that has been rapidly unfolding in the sociology of punishment over the past several years. The central concern of that project is to develop a critical understanding of the practices and discourses of crime control that have recently come to characterise a number of contemporary societies, notably the United States and the UK. This is a research programme whose existence owes less to particular authors than to the remarkable transformations that have occurred in the social and penal fields and to the momentous effects experienced by everyone involved. The Culture of Control develops a sociological description of the contemporary field, a genealogical account of its emergence, an analysis of its central discourses and strategies, and an interpretation of its social functions and significance. Whatever the value and validity of these analytical claims, there was clearly some virtue in developing a rather precise and comprehensive account with which others could take issue, and one effect of the book has been to focus debate, to sharpen disagreement, and to refine matters of theoretical and empirical controversy. The response that the book has provoked demonstrates the vitality of that collective project and the extent to which scholars are now actively engaged in seeking to understand the penological present. Beyond its assessment of the book's claims, this response has offered up a whole series of alternative descriptions and explanations, emphasizing different factors, arguing for different interpretations and highlighting different national trajectories. Some matters are now settled and others are as much in doubt as ever they were, but the upshot is that we now have a clearer sense of the phenomena to be explained, of the questions at issue, and of the kinds of research—above all, theoretically focused studies of how different societies have responded to the control problems posed by late modernity—that should help resolve them. The present essay will not be concerned to defend my book against criticisms, correct misreadings or restate my intentions. There have been many opportunities for exchanges of that kind: critics not convinced then will remain unconvinced now, and readers of the book will, in any case, be able to make up their own minds. I want instead to use this occasion to try to advance matters a little by taking up some constructive suggestions, refining or extending some of my original claims and sketching out several new lines of research that might now be pursued. Before turning to these matters, however, I want first to deal with the question of theory and the role that it plays in The Culture of Control. Of all the issues that critics have addressed, the matter of the book's engagement with ‘theory’ has been the most contentious, the most varied, and, to my mind, the most confused. Thus while several commentators have singled out the book's theoretical contribution for special praise, others have expressed ‘disappointment’ that the book was not more overtly theoretical, or more faithfully Foucauldian or more concerned with ‘the centrality of sophisticated theory’. In the light of these comments, and in a context where the use of ‘theory’ too often means the worshipful invocation of a theorist's name or the rolling out of ready-made concepts that bear little relationship to actual research, it might be useful to begin by discussing what theory is and what it is for.
Source Publication
Managing Modernity: Politics and the Culture of Control
Source Editors/Authors
Matt Matravers
Publication Date
2005
Recommended Citation
Garland, David W., "Beyond the Culture of Control" (2005). Faculty Chapters. 664.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/664
