Week 4

When reading The Order of Things last week, it seemed to me that Foucault was focused more on explaining the break between, or the distinctions between, the Classical period of wealth, natural history and general grammar and the modern period of economics, biology and philology. In Security, Territory, Population, Foucault talks about three different periods, namely, those of sovereignty, discipline and security. While his aim is to explain their differences, he does so by also drawing attention on their commonalities, and I think that is one of the reasons that I found this week's reading to be more intriguing.

The problem of scarcity is one of the common factors that govern the structure of the three kinds of society. During the time of sovereignty, scarcity was seen either as a manifestation of bad fortune or a punishment for person's evil nature. In a juridical and disciplinary society, the the authorities sought to prevent scarcity by keeping the price of grain at the minimum level. On the other hand, in the apparatus of security, the overarching stance is that of laisser-faire, which is letting the natural courses of things have their way so that they can nullify the reality that they themselves are parts of.

Moreover, there are also continuities. The art of government, for example, has persisted in exerting influence on the development of administrative apparatus ever since the sixteenth century. It is only that the art of government was still trapped within the structures of the administrative monarchy until its 'unblocking' was enabled by the emergence of the perspective of population during the eighteenth century.