Foucault: Hierarchy and "Normalizing Judgement"

Hierarchy and ‘the normalizing judgment’ are essential parts of systems of discipline. The authoritative gaze or the hierarchal gaze becomes necessary to ensure that individuals are conforming to the ideal of how a soldier, a pupil, a prisoner or a factory worker should behave. The architecture of the Enlightenment, more specifically of schools, asylums, and prisons was one that allowed authorized surveillance. The architecture of that era was not only for aesthetical purposes, namely to look appealing to the observer from the outside, but the architecture also had to allow a type of observation to take place inside the buildings. Architecture was designed to allow internal observation that is to create a type of hierarchal observation. The ‘normalizing judgment’ on the other hand, involves establishing a standard norm that individuals must measure up to a certain level, and those unable to reach the set level are deemed as ‘abnormal’. The normalizing judgment on the basis of how they act, in relation to their location, and in relation to other people. Therefore, children in school are expected to behave in a certain manner, as are workers in a factory, and soldiers in a military. The ‘normalizing judgment’ allows for control to take place, as it required that individuals within institutions be scrutinized and monitored.

References:

Lowman, J. (1987) Transcarceration: Essays in the Sociology of Social Control . Cambridge: Avebury.

Morris, M. (2006) Michel Foucault: Power, Truth, Strategy. Sydney : MacArthur Press.