Exploring Regimes of Discipline : The Dynamics of Restraint [1 ed.] 9780857450227, 9781845454012

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EXPLORING REGIMES OF DISCIPLINE

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EASA Series Published in Association with the European Association of Social-Anthropologists (EASA) 1. LEARNING FIELDS Volume 1 Educational Histories of European Social Anthropology Edited by Dorle Dracklé, Iain R. Edgar, and Thomas K. Schippers

2. LEARNING FIELDS Volume 2 Current Policies and Practices in European Social Anthropology Education Edited by Dorle Dracklé and Iain R. Edgar

3. GRAMMARS OF IDENTITY/ALTERITY Volume 3 A Structural Approach Edited by Gerd Baumann and Andre Gingrich

4. MULTIPLE MEDICAL REALITIES Volume 4 Patients And Healers In Biomedical, Alternative and Traditional Medicine

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Edited by Helle Johannessen and Imre Lázár

5. FRACTURING RESEMBLANCES Volume 5 Identity and Mimetic Conflict in Melanesia and the West Simon Harrison

6. SKILLED VISIONS Volume 6 Between Apprenticeship and Standards Edited by Cristina Grasseni

7. GOING FIRST CLASS? Volume 7 New Approaches to Privileged Travel and Movement Vered Amit

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EXPLORING REGIMES OF DISCIPLINE

The Dynamics of Restraint

Edited by

Copyright © 2008. Berghahn Books, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Noel Dyck

Berghahn Books New York • Oxford

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First published in 2008 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2008 Noel Dyck All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Exploring regimes of discipline : the dynamics of restraint / edited by Noel Dyck. p. cm. — (EASA series ; v. 8) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-84545-401-2 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Discipline. 2. Discipline—Case studies. I. Dyck, Noel. BJ1533.D49E96 2008 303.3—dc22

2007015627

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed in the United States on acid-free paper

ISBN 978-1-84545-401-2 Hardback

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

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Chapter 4

Anthropological Perspectives on Discipline: An Introduction to the Issues Noel Dyck The Legacy of Vieskeri: Performativity and Discipline in Amateur Trotting Racing in Finland Susanne Ådahl

23

Targeting Immigrant Children: Disciplinary Rationales in Danish Preschools Helle Bundgaard and Eva Gulløv

42

The Discipline of Being Hospital Porters: Transcending Hierarchy and Institution Nigel Rapport

57

Chapter 5

Governance as a Regime of Discipline Susan Wright

Chapter 6

Creatively Sculpting the Self through the Discipline of Martial Arts Training Tamara Kohn

Chapter 7

1

The Fertile Body and Cross-Fertilization of Disciplinary Regimes: Technologies of Self in a Polish Catholic Youth Movement Esther Peperkamp

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75

99

113

vi ◆ Contents

Chapter 8

The Practice of Discipline and the Discipline of Practice Peter Collins

135

156

Index

158

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Notes on Contributors

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1 Anthropological Perspectives on Discipline An Introduction to the Issues

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Noel Dyck

The pursuit and practice of discipline have become near ubiquitous elements of contemporary social life and parlance. From the celebrated “discipline of the market” proclaimed by neoliberal politicians to selfactualizing experiences of embodied discipline proffered by martial arts instructors, discipline has become a commonplace and even sought-after social technology or way of doing things. Yet among social scientists there remains a tendency to conceptualize discipline narrowly in terms of externalized and impersonal structures of control and punishment of the kinds associated with prisons, the military, or traditional schoolrooms. The limitations of this approach become apparent when we seek to take account of the stylized and innovative ways in which regimes of selfdiscipline are being cultivated within voluntary realms of leisure and selfdevelopment, not to mention within partially autonomous and individuated venues of professional, working, and domestic life. What is more, insights acquired through the exploration of programs and activities featuring self-discipline suggest that some abiding assumptions concerning structures of externally imposed control may, in fact, tend to obscure as much or more of the workings of these ostensibly coercive disciplinary regimes than they reveal. Clearly, it is time to reexamine customary precepts and presumptions regarding the nature and dynamics of restraint fundamental to disciplinary practice. And, as this volume seeks to demonstrate, this is a task that anthropologists are especially well equipped to undertake.

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Defining and Depicting Discipline Broadly speaking, discipline may be invoked to refer to a range of overlapping activities, relationships, and outcomes. It may comprise programs of training, especially pertaining to mind and character, which aim to reproduce preferred forms of conduct. By the same token, discipline may be identified as the product or result of such training, as in the “suitablyordered” behavior of school children or soldiers. Or discipline may be located within sets of rules established for the purpose of exercising control over people, be they prisoners, coreligionists, or fellow practitioners such as physicians or lawyers. So too may discipline be depicted in terms of the application of particular forms of punishment. Alternately, a domain of instruction, learning or knowledge may be said to constitute a discipline. Reaching beyond these familiar dictionary definitions of discipline, academics have often turned to Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1977), a work that has for many years served as a principal source in the social sciences for defining and theorizing the nature and utilization of discipline in the modern world:

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“Discipline” may be identified neither with an institution nor with an apparatus; it is a type of power, a modality for its exercise, comprising a whole set of instruments, techniques, procedures, levels of application, targets; it is a “physics” or an “anatomy” of power, a technology. And it may be taken over either by “specialized” institutions (the penitentiaries or “houses of correction” of the nineteenth century), or by institutions that use it as an essential instrument for a particular end (schools, hospitals), or by pre-existing authorities that find in it a means of reinforcing or reorganizing their internal mechanisms of power (215).

Part Three of Discipline and Punish, which specified the mechanisms by which docile bodies were to be created, how means of correct training were to be exercised, and panopticism practiced, has been widely cited, puzzled over, and reworked by succeeding generations of social and political analysts, including more than a few anthropologists. Foucault’s depiction of the disciplinary methods that evolved during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries presented these as “general formulas of domination” (1977: 137) that differed fundamentally from slavery, vassalage, and prior disciplines of a monastic type. What he distinguished as having been generated during this historical era was a policy of coercions that act upon the body, a calculated manipulation of its elements, its gestures, its behaviour. The human body was entering a machinery of power that explores it, breaks it down and rearranges it. A “political anatomy”, which was also a “mechanics of power”, was being born; it defined how one may have a hold over others’ bodies, not only so that they may do what one wishes, but so that they may operate as one wishes, with the techniques, the speed and the efficiency that one determines. Thus discipline produces sub-

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Anthropological Perspectives on Discipline ◆ 3

jected and practised bodies, “docile” bodies. Discipline increases the forces of the body (in economic terms of utility) and diminishes these same forces (in political terms of obedience). In short, it dissociates power from the body; on the one hand, it turns it into an “aptitude”, a “capacity”, which it seeks to increase; on the other hand, it reverses the course of the energy, the power that might result from it, and turns it into a relation of strict subjection. (138)

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Deposited within Foucault’s rendering of discipline is an admission that it may be implemented so that they may be obliged to do what one wishes, thereby acknowledging discipline as a means of control capable of being applied by some individuals or groups to others. Nevertheless, his gaze in Discipline and Punish remained firmly focused on technological features and mechanisms, the “it” of discipline, rather than upon relationships and dealings between those who would apply discipline and those to whom it would be applied. Indeed, the disciplinary mechanisms observed and described with such evident care in Foucault’s account seem at times almost like actual machines, switched on and humming in the foreground, inconspicuously muffling any sounds from those who might in one way or another be caught up with or in the machinery of discipline. What Foucault fixed his attention upon were matters such as the advantages of hierarchical observation: “The perfect disciplinary apparatus would make it possible for a single gaze to see everything constantly. A central point would be both the source of light illuminating everything, and a locus of convergence for everything that must be known: a perfect eye that nothing would escape.” (1977: 173). Within the parameters of surveillance, panopticism, and discipline—as in the realm of the Borg, featured in the science fiction television program Star Trek—“resistance is futile.” Detailing measures taken by town authorities to respond to outbreaks of the plague in the seventeenth century, Foucault traced how and with what effect implementation of a strict quarantine and ceaseless inspection was mounted: This enclosed, segmented space, observed at every point, in which the individuals are inserted in a fixed place, in which the slightest movements are supervised, in which all events are recorded, in which an interrupted work of writing links the centre and periphery, in which power is exercised without division, according to a continuous hierarchical figure, in which each individual is constantly located, examined and distributed among the living beings, the sick and the dead—all this constitutes a compact model of the disciplinary mechanism. The plague is met by order; its function is to sort out every possible confusion: that of the disease, which is transmitted when bodies are mixed together; that of the evil, which is increased when fear and death overcome prohibitions. It lays down for each individual his place, his body, his disease and his death, his well-being, by means of an omnipresent and omniscient power that subdivides itself in a regular, uninterrupted way even to the ultimate determination of the

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individual, of what characterizes him, of what belongs to him, of what happens to him. Against the plague, which is a mixture, discipline brings into play its power, which is one of analysis. (1977: 197)

This model of the disciplinary mechanism may, one interpreter of the Foucauldian approach has suggested, represent the most despairing stage of Foucault’s decidedly pessimistic reading of the development of Western society (Ransom 1997: 19–24). Yet, for those who turn to Discipline and Punish not in order to join in a continuing archaeological excavation of Foucault’s life and thought as an end in itself, but rather as a point of departure from which to interrogate further the complex workings of discipline in the contemporary world, this boldly sketched model of the microphysics of power offers little in the way of encouragement. By repeatedly underscoring the implausibility of resistance, Discipline and Punish raises the specter of discipline as an implacable, seamless, and, in some respects, inscrutable force sui generis. Foucault’s portrayal of discipline inconspicuously assumes the posture of a complete and finished analytical undertaking that henceforth stands ready to serve as a reliable field manual for listing and spotting the indispensable features of disciplinary regimes. The sense of certainty and preoccupation with structural arrangements characteristic of Discipline and Punish are, one might argue, fairly predictable products of Foucault’s reliance upon textual analysis rather than ethnographic research to ground his investigation. Anthropologists have been no less intrepid than other social scientists in their various endeavors to apply different aspects of Foucault’s model of discipline to a range of settings. But in seeking to employ this analytic model within fieldwork studies, anthropologists have frequently confronted and noted relationships, processes, and contradictions not recognized much, if at all, in Discipline and Punish. Indeed, the likelihood of encountering a wider range of pragmatic problems, operational inconsistencies, and analytic alternatives pertaining to discipline seems to increase significantly when one strays beyond the bounds of textual certainty through engagement in ethnographic inquiry.

Observing the Panopticon Carla Freeman’s (1993) examination of corporate discipline in Barbados’s offshore data-processing centers reprises the functioning of the panopticon in the form of video display terminals: “[The VDT] is undoubtedly a manager’s dream come true: every employee can be electronically observed without pause or error; her productivity can be measured for specific increments or longitudinally; and she need never be engaged in face-to-face contact. The computer thus becomes a tool that not only speeds specific job tasks, but that evaluates the worker as well” (175). What Freeman also

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Anthropological Perspectives on Discipline ◆ 5

noticed is the manner in which employees in this pink-collar sector are, however, inspected at close hand and obliged to observe a managementdefined dress code while on the job. Within the arena of the office, dress and fashion may serve as powerful metaphors of corporate discipline. Yet Freeman surmises that preferred styles of dress also comprise valued forms of personal expression and pleasure for female workers (177). Peer pressure with respect to dress and demeanor can, therefore, be understood both as contradicting and playing into the hands of corporate managers. Female workers in this industry express pride about “holding down a regular job, getting dressed up, and being ‘a working woman’” (Freeman 1993: 181). Although allowing for the possibility that this discourse might be dismissed as merely “a deception or a ploy to distract the workers from the reality of their meager wages and the limits of their jobs,” Freeman nonetheless argues that such a conclusion would “preclude a more subtle analysis of the women’s working experience and the contradictions between their ‘real’ and ‘perceived’ motivations and responses” (181). In other words, rather more seems to be unfolding within this particular disciplinary context than a conventional model of the workings of the panopticon might lead us to expect. Paul Killworth’s (1998) ethnographic account of the internal security operations and training of the British Army in Northern Ireland similarly deploys insights drawn from Discipline and Punish in likening army patrols to a system of disciplined surveillance. But while accepting the salience of discipline in the constitution of modern subjectivities, Killworth signals a fundamental gap within Foucault’s work: namely, that it applies an agent-less and often ahistorical principle of disciplined surveillance to actual situations (3). Arguing that it is human agency at all levels that “breathes life and meaning into the disciplined state” (3), a factor that he believes Foucauldian analysis has traditionally ignored, Killworth sets about the task of specifying the ways in which actual forms of surveillance mounted by British military patrols depend upon personal relationships, history, and knowledge generated by and shared between individual soldiers. Although the Army’s data gathering system, replete with files, documents, and records, may appear to resemble the modes of subjectification described by Foucault, Killworth demonstrates that the specific kind of knowledge held and utilized by actual soldiers on patrol “is far from Foucauldian, yet is heavily implicated in the disciplined apparatus of the state” (1998: 18). For instance, the presumption that there exists a singular and unidirectional gaze within regimes of disciplined surveillance is flatly contradicted by the experience of British soldiers on the ground in Northern Ireland. Experienced corporals and sergeants, reports Killworth, take pains to stress to newly arriving units that members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army “would take account of details such as which patrols or individuals showed poor drills or attention, and would time and place their attacks accordingly” (19). These practices, notes Kill-

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worth, demonstrate the shortcomings of “assuming only one gaze, or in examining systems of disciplined knowledge without embedding them in the concrete, personalized discourses that allow or constrain their operation, and understanding the historical dialogues and processes that form and condition these personalized experiences” (19). Another perspective upon the “troubles” that engulfed Northern Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s is provided by Allen Feldman’s (1991) appraisal of narratives he collected from paramilitary members. These center upon their engagement in “military” and “political” activities that landed and then kept many of them in prison for extended terms. Guided by Foucauldian models of power, Feldman’s ethnographically grounded analysis, nonetheless, leads him to identify certain limitations to the proffered approach.

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Foucault does not acknowledge that it is precisely the self-bifurcation of the prisoner, the mimesis of alterity that is the basis of prison resistance and revolt. The body as the terminal locus of power also defines the place for the redirection and reversal of power. In revolt, the prisoner also bifurcates and objectifies the body as an instrument of violence. The prisoner’s capacity to resist exploits the principle of auto-domination and auto-punition that Foucault identifies with panoptic penal regimes. (178)

The evolving design and administration of prison regimes in Northern Ireland highlighted not only the shifting responses of British authorities to paramilitary claims for status as “political prisoners” but also a sustained clash of disciplinary styles and objectives. On the one side stood the institutional authority and techniques of the state apparatus; the opposing side featured the internal disciplinary forms brought into the prisons collectively and individually by members of groups such as the Provisional Irish Republican Army. The systematic reshaping by the British authorities of prison systems as an exercise in counterinsurgency duly prompted far-reaching ideological innovation and tactical adjustments on the part of paramilitary prisoners, leading in turn to the development of the “Blanketmen,” the “Dirty Protest,” and finally to the hunger strike that claimed the lives of Bobby Sands and others. Indeed, Sands first labeled the “H-Block” prisons as the “breaker’s yard” and likened the passage through its disciplinary machinery to a journey into the “inner truth” of the British state (Feldman 1991: 227). Notwithstanding the ostensibly unrivalled disciplinary powers wielded by prison officials, these were ultimately unable to achieve intended objectives. But the limitations of the powers of prison regimes and the capacities of prisoners to engage in studied, effective, and reflective forms of resistance have also been exhibited in other cases, including those of Mahatma Gandhi, Antonio Gramsci, and Nelson Mandela, to name but a few. Judith Modell’s investigation of local self-help groups established in Hawaii to address domestic violence traces the ways in which there may

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Anthropological Perspectives on Discipline ◆ 7

be, in contrast to Foucauldian assumptions of unquestioned disciplinary authority, a continual negotiation between state officials and local people concerning their decidedly differing notions of what constitutes proper conduct, ethical behavior, and the virtuous self (2002: 173). Participation in these groups is partly a matter of choice and partly a matter of coercion. Men charged in Family Court as perpetrators were given the option of a jail term or of participating in an anger management group. Female victims of domestic violence could join a domestic violence support group “as a resource against the abuse they were receiving in a relationship. Behind their choice, however, lay the threat that the state, through Child Protective Services, would remove any children they had: the state argued that violence against a mother threatened the children in her household. Voluntary self-discipline took place in the context of state punishment” (174). What actually ensued in the convening of these groups, reports Modell, “shows the vitality of a local discourse of discipline constantly confronting a mandated, state-authorized, and urbanized discourse” (2002: 176). What became particularly evident during one occasion, when members of the women’s support group repaired to a nearby beach to celebrate a wedding shower for one of their number, was the distance between the state’s view of an appropriate female self and the women’s views of themselves:

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For the state’s purposes, components of the individual body are broken down in order to be efficiently disciplined [à la Foucault]. In an American state, sexual activity is one measure of disorder—and the legacy is long in Hawaii, where colonists early saw sex as a sign of recalcitrance. To control “sex” is to produce order and, as well, to separate sexual activity from other behaviours. The women I knew constructed another discipline, premised on the integrity of the body. In their discourse, woman as sexual partner was inseparable from woman as mother. (187)

What Modell discovered through ethnographic inquiry was not “discipline in Foucault’s sense of the state’s authoritarian intrusion into a subject’s interests” (Ibid: 195). Rather, she observed in the meetings of these somewhat inauspiciously convened ‘self-help’ groups vibrant though complicated attempts to create moral communities that attended to the problem of domestic abuse, albeit in terms quite unlike those employed by state authorities.

Reconsidering the Habitus Ethnographic inquiries into given disciplinary regimes and practices have also prompted some anthropologists to seek inspiration and insight through application of Pierre Bourdieu’s (1977) notion of habitus. But the difficulties that ethnographers encounter in trying to comprehend the particularities of disciplinary regimes in terms of habitus are not unlike those experi-

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enced by anthropologists who have sought to reconcile their findings with Foucault’s dictums on discipline. Peter Collins (2002), for instance, identifies the creation of a code of discipline as being central to the development and survival of Quakerism. But habitus, which he summarizes plainly as “a tendency, resulting from socialization, to behave in certain ways” (80), does not serve to account for the systematic, conscious, and public manner in which Quaker elders and overseers have paid microscopic attention to their coreligionists’ day-to-day behavior (86). In every case, the advices and queries issued by these church leaders emphasized and articulated right action (orthopraxy) and largely disregarded belief (orthodoxy). Unlike Bourdieu’s claim of the class-generated nature of habitus, the Quaker case illustrates a code of discipline that not only emerges from religion but does so through practice preceding belief (88). In an examination of ritual and the disciplines of Salat, Saba Mahmood (2001) develops a related criticism of Bourdieu’s rendering of habitus as the means by which the objective conditions of a society are inscribed in the bodies and dispositions of social actors. Specifically, Mahmood notes that Bourdieu’s “failure to attend to pedagogical moments and practices in the process of acquiring a habitus results in a neglect of the historically and culturally specific embodied capacities that different conceptions of the subject require. It also neglects the precise role various traditions of bodily discipline play in becoming a certain kind of subject” (838). Eyal Ben-Ari’s (1997) account of body projects in a Japanese daycare center painstakingly presents the ways in which such an institution seeks to train children to carry their bodies in “appropriate” ways without the need for unceasing and explicit supervision. Bracketing these activities analytically under Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, Ben-Ari goes on to describe not only the inculcation of approved modes of child behavior, but also instances of playful criticism, name calling, or cultivation of irony by children, actions that tend either to be ignored outright or labeled as “mischief” or “nonsense” by adults who are present (125). Noting the “deterministic” tendencies of Bourdieu’s formulation of habitus, Ben-Ari concludes that one aspect of the independent activity of children is that it may potentially disrupt and challenge taken-for-granted assumptions of adults; children’s knowledge may even contradict what adults take to be “obvious” (126). Yet, because such incidental activities are prone to being declared “senseless” by adults, children may in practice be left to carry these out without much interference since they are not seen as threatening the “serious” order of the preschool center (130). Ben-Ari concludes that socialization is an entirely less certain undertaking than adults might wish to recognize and that, in consequence, children’s ventures potentially represent an easily underestimated yet recurring political problem within childcare institutions. Brenda Farnell’s (2000) fieldwork on an Indian reservation in Montana provides the ethnographic basis for a searing critique of Bourdieu’s model

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Anthropological Perspectives on Discipline ◆ 9

of habitus. She contends that the root of the problem is that of how to define and locate human agency: “If one asks where human agency is located … one finds that ‘habitus’ has replaced ‘person’ as the agentic power, located somewhere ambiguously behind or beneath the agency of persons…. Bourdieu’s model does not recognize that neither ‘rules’ nor ‘habitus’ can use people, because such constructs themselves have no causal efficacy. Only people do” (403–4). What makes the habitus explanatorily “empty,” in Farnell’s view, is that it only describes again the phenomenon to be explained: “Bourdieu tells us that people say and do things habitually according to the ways in which they have been socialized because of their habitus, which thus becomes an artefact of the social theorist’s own practice and his theoretical interests to transcend objectivism and subjectivism. Not unlike reified notions of culture, it becomes a device that gives theoretical discourse a spurious appearance of authority over what is actually happening” (412). In contrast to Bourdieu’s talk about the body, as though it can be described normatively in terms of the ostensible dispositions of a habitus, Farnell’s ethnographic findings feature talk from the body in the form of “accounts of persons enacting their bodies using vocal signs and action signs in dialogical interactional processes” (412). Critical engagement with the theoretical approaches of Foucault and Bourdieu is, of course, by no means exclusive to anthropology. Michel de Certeau’s (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life provided an early and earnest rethinking of the nature and practical implications of discipline and habitus in the contemporary world. Expressing his dismay that the tentacles of disciplinary processes seemed everywhere to be growing more extensive and oppressive, de Certeau urged intellectuals to discover how societies might resist being reduced to such grids of coercion: “This approach raises a new and different set of problems to be investigated. Once again … [Foucault’s] ‘micro-physics’ of power privileges the productive apparatus (which produces the ‘discipline’), even though it discerns in ‘education’ a system of ‘repression’ and shows how, from the wings as it were, silent technologies determine or short-circuit institutional stage directions” (xiv). What de Certeau wished to draw attention to were ways of operating that give rise to counterparts (on the side of the dominated) to regimes of discipline. These modes of operating, he suggested, posed questions that were both analogous and contrary to those dealt with by Foucault, analogous in that the goal is to perceive and analyze the microbe-like operations proliferating within technocratic structures and deflecting their functioning by means of a multitude of “tactics” articulated in the details of everyday life; contrary, in that the goal is not to make clearer how the violence of order is transmuted into a disciplinary technology, but rather to bring to light the clandestine forms taken by the dispersed, tactical, and make-shift creativity of groups or individuals already caught in the nets of “discipline.” (xiv)

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For de Certeau, the activities and ruses of those “caught in the nets” were to be seen as nascent networks of “anti-discipline.” Yet in adopting this essentially binary mode of definition, he effectively accepted the theoretical territory, if not all of the predilections, initially selected by Foucault. Elsewhere in The Practice of Everyday Life, de Certeau addressed a number of questions about Bourdieu’s notions of practice and habitus (1984: 45–60). Again these presented timely and telling cautions about difficulties in attributing agency and of analytical reification that marked Bourdieu’s work, as well as that of Foucault. Within twenty years of the publication of de Certeau’s trailblazing “second thoughts” about discipline and habitus, the sorts of qualms that he expressed had been overtaken by uncompromising critiques born out of increasing frustration on the part of ethnographers who were attempting to uncover more about the practices of discipline than the strictures of Foucault and Bourdieu would allow. Thus, Vanessa Fong’s (2004) study of coming of age under China’s one-child policy considers in detail the augmented importance of schooling for single children and the central place of discipline within schools (115–26). But in order to clear analytical space for her account, Fong commences by contrasting her use of cultural models to Bourdieu’s notion of habitus. The advantage of the former, she argues, is that while cultural models can be embodied and may frequently be taken for granted, nevertheless, unlike habitus, they can also be consciously perceived, imparted, and adopted (13). As a result, ethnographers may strive to specify how, by whom, and to what effect cultural models of discipline may be invoked, negotiated, and enacted—all these being matters that tend to remain shielded from investigation under the rubric of habitus.

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Prefiguring the Ethnography of Discipline But what else, beyond the declaration of various limitations of and problems with Foucault’s treatment of discipline and Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, have anthropologists contributed to this field of inquiry? The general point that discipline is most successful when it emerges from a consensus or negotiated arrangement between those who impose it and those who submit to it (Modell 2002: 194) has been noted in several anthropological studies. For instance, Nicole Constable (1997: 553) reports that Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong often find themselves arguing in favor of, or incidentally supporting, forms of self-discipline that their employers impose upon them. Leslie Salzinger’s (2000: 86) analysis of sexual harassment and discipline on a maquiladora shop floor indicates that while most academic writing on this topic tends to focus on its corrosive effects upon productivity, in this case to do so would be to obscure the role of desire in work relations. Her ethnography of sexual subjectivities and shop-floor relations in an export-processing plant shows how worker efficiency and

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Anthropological Perspectives on Discipline ◆ 11

desirability are conflated within shop-floor discipline. Donna Winslow’s (1998: 346) investigation of the breakdown of military discipline in the Canadian Army’s peacekeeping operations in Somalia demonstrates that small-unit cohesion can readily undermine official versions of discipline in the overall functioning of a larger military force. Another ethnographically derived insight is that disciplinary regimes, symbolically and rhetorically trumpeting not only arrangements and purposes that they advocate but also “unacceptable” practices that they seek to repair or obliterate, frequently manifest and elaborate mappings of the “preferred” and the “non-preferred,” the “ideal” and the lamentably “actual.” Constable’s account deftly illuminates the larger context within which Chinese wives seek to enforce strict forms of discipline upon Filipina domestics employed in their households:

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In a situation where Chinese women appear to be losing the power they once derived from their role within the household, the discipline that women employers direct at controlling the sexuality of domestic workers offers them one way of continuing to exert authority. To control a domestic worker may be easier for a woman than to control her husband’s fidelity, her children’s affection or the vicissitudes of her own workday experiences. Employers’ discipline and control of domestic workers can also be seen as an attempt to reduce them to docile social bodies, to deprive them of full personhood, and to craft for them a less morally ambivalent—but sufficiently subordinate—position within the household. (1997: 553)

But what captures one’s attention in Constable’s article is not the technical efficiency with which discipline is enacted, but rather the underlying anguish of wives pulling out all the stops to exert some show of control over their households. A similar dimension is revealed in studies of disciplinary undertakings mounted in colonial settings. Victoria Bernal (1997) and Eric Worby (2000), respectively, report a “monumental project” of colonialism in Sudan and a “regime of development” in post-war Rhodesia that although not particularly successful in terms of advancing economic modernization nonetheless prominently displayed and celebrated preferred representations of proper authority, encoded moralities, and ordered social relations. In both cases, the “inherent danger” of what was labelled as indigenous “backwardness” was to be obviated by the establishment of regimes of ostensibly economic discipline that would deliver Africans from being “unruly, immoral and indolent” (Worby 2000: 110). Robin Vincent’s (2002) findings in his study of the governmentalizing of law in Lower Shepton, England, can be located within much the same genre. At the heart of suburbanites’ invocation of discipline as the popularly preferred response to outbreaks of youth crime lays a mythical promise of uncompromised authority. While this myth of transcendent authority may be reassuring, Vincent reports that it relies upon

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the contrastive constitution of identity and the projection of ambiguity onto a variety of “Others.”… The ideal of intact authority is impossible to live up to in practice, and thus relies on drawing contrasts with that which one is not.… So the mother or father in Lower Shepton could always compare themselves to the “bad parent,” in order to be the good parent vital for maintaining the discipline that would stave off crime—which was very hard to live up to in actuality. Equally, people could usually find someone with whom to contrast themselves as self-disciplined and “decent,” as in the example of people who smoked cannabis, but did not take heroin. (315)

To look closely into the ways in which a need for discipline is declared and acted upon in a given setting is to gain valuable insights into its social and political constitution. If invocations of discipline are just as deserving of ethnographic and analytical attention as the technical means by which discipline is supposed to be activated, what other matters, questions, and propositions might anthropologists offer to sharpen our understanding of the dynamics of disciplinary regimes within the contemporary world?

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Exploring Regimes of Discipline The widening range of anthropological work being conducted on regimes of discipline is beginning to yield a more complicated and nuanced appreciation of ethnographic practices and analytical possibilities within this emerging field of inquiry. No longer—if ever it should have done—does discipline refer exclusively or revolve primarily around forms of externalized control and punishment previously so often associated with specialized institutional settings. Indeed, it is becoming difficult to imagine an arena of social endeavor within which invocations of the need for and benefits of discipline might not be heard. Discipline entails not only technical means for exercising power over self and/or others but also an essential symbolic medium for defining and articulating preferred social practices, objectives, and ways of being. Often quite localized and stylized in terms of its discursive configuration, there is an implicit claim that to seek discipline is to assert agency. Obversely, the implementation and management of diverse regimes of discipline are pursued on the basis of their ostensible capacity to produce moral, physical, or mental improvement. For instance, in the suburban English community studied by Robin Vincent (2002), young people’s involvement in sport was heartily approved of and diametrically contrasted with the corrupting influence of drugs. Sport was interpreted as a healthy leisure pursuit that featured work-like discipline and emphasized fitness, training, and bodily control (311). The manner in which anthropologists grapple analytically with various regimes of discipline differs from the ways in which sociological theorists,

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criminologists, teachers, or soldiers, respectively, tend to approach this field. Since anthropologists are disposed to explore these matters—just as we examine other facets of social and cultural life—ethnographically and comparatively, we are obliged to take note of and to seek to account for intriguing similarities as well as puzzling differences in heterogeneous disciplinary routines situated within sundry ethnographic locales. We cannot comfortably relegate or label disciplinary schema that we come upon in one location or another as though these encompass inexorable aspects of a social and political structure or inscrutable manifestations of an unconscious habitus. Instead we are bound by an abiding ethnographic imperative to ask how given social arrangements are generated and maintained, resisted and manipulated in everyday life. In its varying styles and substantiations, discipline is neither simple nor universal, not least because diverse disciplinary arrangements are conjoined to highly variegated notions of subjectivity. For anthropologists, discipline is both mutable and inescapably contextual in nature. This renders it not only analytically challenging but, thereby, also an especially promising candidate for further ethnographic inquiry. Ambiguous and abstruse aspects of disciplinary arrangements and performances tend to draw ethnographers’ attention to issues that lead us beneath, beside, and beyond conventional dictionary definitions. For instance, in the course of surveying disciplinary regimes designed to shape and control stipulated behaviors, anthropologists—by virtue of being present in the locales they investigate—are prone to stumbling upon actual performances of discipline, not to mention informal reports by subjects of sensual experiences and memories of disciplinary exercises. What is smelled, felt, tasted, and experientially linked to given disciplinary settings becomes socially and ethnographically instructive. At the same time, anthropologists must remain attentive to forms of specialized knowledge, models, and moralities embedded in differing conventions and expressions of discipline. Modes of discipline remain open to and discernible through observation, but representations of them are also lodged and articulated within discourses and texts. The observed may readily become the inscribed. Programmatic formulations of right and wrong connected to particular disciplinary techniques and initiatives can be found in dossiers and aphorisms. Thus, Paul Killworth’s (1998) account of the patrolling activities of the British Army in Northern Ireland shows the varying ways in which official reports and the informal working knowledge of soldiers serve in differing ways to identify and organize the tracking of the “enemy.” In the midst of striving to comprehend the empirical and interactional complexities of disciplinary methods, anthropologists must keep an eye on symbolic and communicative processes additionally at work. Anthropological insights into the uses, meanings, and wider implications of regimes of discipline emerge for the most part from consideration

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of quotidian and easily overlooked details of disciplinary regimes and practices. Since discipline can be applied both to self and to others with varying degrees of coercion, resistance, and connivance, it operates within spaces of individuality as well as regions of collective life. Hence, the VDT operators studied by Carla Freeman (1993) were collectively subjected to and personally supportive of an office dress code. Discipline may be played out in a virtually limitless set of forms and contexts, including domestic or familial milieus, institutional settings, recreational locales, and otherwise personal and private venues. The presumed malleability of behavior underpins the pursuit of discipline. To apply discipline is to signal one’s subscription to the premises that designated ways of being and acting can and should be promoted and that desired personal and social transformation may be accomplished efficaciously by applying various established approaches or technologies. Discipline is regarded as offering practical and reliable means for constituting and inculcating suitable selves for oneself and others. Peter Collins’s explication of the workings of the Quaker Code of Discipline nicely illustrates this point. Underlying all of this is the expectation that change or transformation is possible and desirable, that there exist reflexive selves capable of exercising agency, and that intentional choice rather than dumb, unconscious habitus mobilizes the exercise of discipline. Regimes of discipline engender relationships that anchor and choreograph particular forms of practice. Dealings between teachers and students demarcate relations and systems of tutelage that manifest particularities of context. To track the forms and features of relationships that develop in different places and times between, for example, parents and children, coaches and athletes, employers and employees, sovereigns and subjects, or colonists and the colonized, is to bring to the fore generative questions and propositions concerning the ways in which discipline may be employed, experienced, and understood. To succeed in this, anthropologists must reckon both with actors and persons, not merely with impersonal aggregations and encounters of forces and structures. The demands made by this mode of inquiry are substantial, but it is by charting complexities, discontinuities, and unexpected parallels that anthropologists position themselves to penetrate the particularities and generalities of discipline. The activation of discipline surely involves the application of power, but what this entails in any given instance is far from being automatic or unidirectional. The deployment of discipline may more usefully be viewed as a project or coordinated undertaking rather than as a singular action. Attempts to impose discipline require responses as well as initiatives. Responses may range anywhere from agreement, to resistance, subversion, partial compliance, or some combination of these. The outcome of any given disciplinary undertaking—as opposed to the initial intention or impetus that launched it—reflects the responses triggered. These depend upon the inclinations of the acted upon or the targets of discipline, as well as

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those of initiators or the imposers of discipline. Judith Modell’s (2002) description of the actual workings of domestic violence support groups in Hawaii clearly illustrates this. Given the connectedness of initiative and response within a project of discipline, one might suspect that there is always some element or degree of negotiation between the disciplined and the discipliner, even when this involves the same person in both roles. Discipline remains a fundamentally communicative activity whether imposed or embraced as a set of rules. General acceptance of the presumed appropriateness, morality, and efficacy of discipline does not, however, spring forth mechanically. Indeed, discipline stands as the antithesis to Bourdieu’s notion of habitus (Bourdieu 1977; Farnell 2000; Reed-Danahay 2005) precisely because its operation requires of subjects a degree of self-consciousness about key questions: “What should I, we, or they do? How do we get them, us, or me to do that?” There are always other options looming, not to mention the ever-present possibility of failure for any given disciplinary initiative. If discipline could be effected merely through the brandishing of superior, coercive power, then there would no difficulty in employing it. Yet even in the most explicitly and brutally coercive of settings, as in a prison, discipline remains a problematic and contingent matter balanced on the precipice of incompletion, fiasco, or subversion. This is clearly demonstrated in Feldman’s (1991) account of the “H-Blocks” in Northern Ireland. Similarly, while the maintenance of military discipline may be thought by civilians to be an obvious and straightforward matter, anthropological accounts of military units and actions (Killworth 1998; Winslow 1998) indicate that discipline remains a complex concern for commanders, especially when it breaks down. Discipline embodies a mission to create and install order, one or another version of which is deemed beneficial. Thus, disciplinary projects, with all their aspirations, problems, and contradictions, mirror more general elements of the overarching humanistic project of social production, regulation, and reproduction. Discipline implicitly makes a bid for achievement through proposals for action and proffered sets of capacities to shape these proposals, to herd and implement them advantageously. As such, it revolves around belief, for its symbolic and expressive dimensions possess deep emotive and practical significance. Both symbolically and as an exercise of power, discipline oscillates back and forth between compulsion and self-subscription, both between and within its initiators and its objects. Victoria Bernal’s (1997) account of a development scheme originally mounted by British colonial authorities shows how the disciplinary relations that it featured have survived to occupy a central and continuing place in Sudan. In this sense, notwithstanding an initial appearance of utter difference, the disciplines invoked and experienced in the respective projects of learning aikido (Kohn, this volume) and leading an army are not all that unlike.

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In both settings participants engage in deciding what they will accept and what they won’t, what they will subscribe to wholeheartedly and what they will opt out of or—with greater or lesser subtlety—resist. In both cases we can observe a negotiation of terms, meanings, and objectives of discipline. For an institutional unit or social situation to function in a prescribed manner—be it a platoon, a cellblock, or a martial arts class—participants must to some extent buy into the premises that underlie proposed disciplinary arrangements. Another dimension of discipline is the rhetorical, featuring the terms in which it is identified, represented, and measured. The rhetoric of discipline, if not always its actual practice, tends to emphasize imposition and structure, power and coercion. This is a rhetoric often applied to children—very often in their absence—by adults. Interestingly, in Foucault’s depiction of the development of discipline (Foucault 1977), the objects of discipline rarely speak. But if one accepts the position that discipline not only brings together those who are enacting and those who are responding to discipline, but may sometimes prompt them to exchange positions, then the attempt to distinguish firmly between discipline as applied to others and discipline as applied to oneself breaks down. Instead, discipline is both fundamentally relational and also personal in nature. Rhetorical renderings of one or another mode of discipline may showcase the decisive wielding of power. Yet the cumulative impact of repeated disciplinary initiatives is also likely to leave a record of illogicalities and setbacks that the furnishing of discipline as a means of power is capable of producing. Eric Worby’s (2000) listing of the cumulative and recurring failures of a post-war development scheme in Rhodesia clearly illustrates this type of outcome. The tactical uses to which discipline may be put— for example, A disciplining B in order to control C—must be seen in conjunction with unintended effects, including unanticipated manipulation of disciplinary relations along with more incidental and accidental outcomes. The reversing or inverting of expected responsibilities, definitions, and outcomes of disciplinary arrangements may be fashioned through astute acts of subversion and cooptation, thereby introducing further levels of negotiation into this realm. Accordingly, it becomes necessary to specify the resources of disciplinary practice. Even fairly bald forms of coercive power are prone to seek a mantle of legitimacy to ease their operations. Acquiring an acknowledged and accepted capacity to “know,” define and enact what “should”—as well as what should not—be done is invaluable. Moreover, recognizing that discipline is frequently found in settings tinged with anxiety, striving, dissatisfaction, conflict, or fear serves to establish the socially and culturally performative dimensions of discipline. The rendering of judgments and discriminations, typically in dramaturgical fashion, is part and parcel of disciplinary projects. This occurs not only in formal statements and written texts but also in the unwritten and unspoken spaces of embodied

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communications, gestures, postures, and looks. The requisite “certainties” that might handily ease an attempt to impose one or another form of discipline might just as well be glossed as uncertain, indeterminate, and ineffective. Identities, boundaries, and preferences may be created, buttressed, or challenged by disciplinary practice. And ethnographers who have looked into these scenes have observed actors and subjects on either side of disciplinary relationships invoking, imposing, formulating, bending, protesting, fine tuning, and celebrating their participation in these ventures.

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An Overview of the Volume The chapters in this volume present a range of social settings featuring highly varied and intricate disciplinary practices and relationships that, when brought together analytically, offer new ways of thinking about and exploring discipline in everyday life. Susanne Ådahl’s chapter on amateur horse trotting racing in Finland examines the manner in which physically exacting but morally principled modes of discipline are adopted by farmertrainers in preparing their horses for competition. That they choose to devote themselves to this demanding but risky undertaking both reflects the changing context of farming in Finland under the “abstract” objectives of the European Union Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and contrasts these with the “solid,” traditional values of Finnish farming communities. For amateur trainers discipline is a social performance built upon cooperation and trust between man and animal that enables trainer and horse to “read” each other and to be attuned to one another’s agendas. A racehorse that competes with honor realizes the preferred values of rural Finnish society—endurance, loyalty, strength, and commitment. The performance of the horse bespeaks the capacities and character of the trainer who, though perhaps recently forced out of agricultural production by the CAP, nonetheless may succeed in embodying and exemplifying through race competitions forms of practical knowledge that can be shown to achieve “concrete” results and sometimes even victory. Helle Bundgaard and Eva Gulløv’s chapter investigates the implementation within Danish preschools of regulatory measures and disciplinary rationales mandated to force the integration of immigrant children into civil society. Specifically, children entering school in Denmark are now required to exhibit competence in speaking Danish. Ostensibly an economically motivated measure adopted to decrease the need for expensive special reception classes for children with little or no knowledge of Danish, Bundgaard and Gulløv situate this initiative more generally within a stage of acute preoccupation within Denmark and Europe concerning the integration of immigrants. Their account specifies the tangled ways in which children’s upbringing becomes the object of national political purposes and school disciplinary measures. Focusing upon the roles played

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by local educational professionals and immigrant parents in responding to this policy change, Bundgaard and Gulløv show that the attempted civic integration and disciplining of individuals through administrative procedure is neither simple nor uncontroversial. Disciplinary measures that in the end require control over educational staff as well as immigrant parents generate modes of response ranging from acceptance to resistance to the mounting of countermeasures. Nigel Rapport’s chapter specifies the means by which porters in a Scottish hospital not only confront the coercive disciplinary nature of the institution within which they work but also seek to transcend the hierarchical structure and prejudices that place them at the very bottom of this institutional social order. They accomplish this by constructing and counterposing their own disciplinary regimen to that of the hospital. Being a porter means coming to terms with “being a nothing,” located at the base of a hierarchy topped by doctors. Rapport identifies and illustrates a set of principles devised and expounded by porters that afford them a sense of empowerment over and against the institution of the hospital. Tactically exploiting the operational ignorance that separates the top of the hospital hierarchy from the bottom, porters skillfully employ stereotyping, joking relations, domestication of institutional hospital space, and ironic and demotic performances that may serve to frame doctors and porters alike as individuals subjected to “common” forms of institutional coercion. Porters’ construal and practice of these principles orders their everyday engagement with the hospital in ways meaningful and preferable to them. Susan Wright’s chapter delves into the recent sculpting and implementation of “governance” as a powerful but ambiguous regime of discipline in contemporary Britain. Starting with the example of a project to construct a bridge from the Scottish mainland to the Isle of Skye, funded through a combination of government subsidy, private ownership, and user tolls, Wright details the procedures by which new types of partnerships between government, private industry, and citizens have been promoted by the Blair government as appropriate means for achieving “proper” forms of “governance” for a new and modern Britain. An examination of the discourses connected to the notion of governance seems to suggest three quite separate dimensions, each of which refers to distinct modes of discipline: methods of setting a country in good order; practices of managing particular public institutions; and the appropriate conduct of citizens as individuals. Wright’s analysis of policy statements, initiatives, and responses demonstrates that these three meanings of governance and their related disciplines fit together practically and conceptually to forge new forms of power that are neither responsive nor even discernible to most citizens. Tamara Kohn’s chapter investigates the positive and creative energy generated by practitioners of aikido, a highly disciplined Japanese martial art. The notion of discipline is fundamental to the practice of aikido and is recurrently emphasized in spoken and written reflections concerning the

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“what” and “how” of this art. Kohn’s account, based upon ethnographic research conducted in Europe and America, recognizes two distinct but complementary dimensions of aikido. On the one hand, aikido comprises a controlling, rational, rule-bound, and punishing mode of discipline that makes substantial demands of those who would learn it. On the other hand, practitioners and teachers who submit themselves to mastering aikido often report experiencing a non-prescriptive, playful, and creative mode of practice that can be applied both on the mat as well as away from this ritually enclosed space. Characterized in terms of its capacities to enable power over self rather than others, aikido raises vital issues concerning choice, power, agency, and desire. What ideally ensues from the practice of aikido is proficiently performing yet intersubjectively aware bodies that are informed through the liberatory offering and acceptance of discipline. Esther Peperkamp’s chapter looks into the manner in which “natural family planning,” which occupies a central place in the teachings of the Catholic Church, prompts Catholics in countries such as Poland to adopt and adapt “fertility charting” techniques in ways that lead to disciplinary practices quite unlike those originally envisioned. As a means of mapping and recognizing a woman’s fertile period, charting is designed to provide couples with reliable information from which to decide whether or not to engage in sexual intercourse. But as well as pointing to times in the cycle when the Church-approved objective of a married couple achieving conception is most likely to occur, the observant keeping of such charts also tells a husband and wife when intercourse is unlikely to cause pregnancy, thereby providing safe possibilities for non-procreatively directed pleasure. Thus, the “religious” body is no longer simply opposed to the “medical” body. Natural family planning not only enables an ostensibly religious mode of discipline to coopt the discourse and discipline of medicine, but also permits devout Catholics to reconcile the ostensible demands of their faith with their desires as loving partners. Peter Collins’s chapter takes as its starting point the nature of Quaker discipline, past and present, but counterpoises an ethnographic account of a particular Quaker meeting for worship with Bourdieu’s notions of practice and habitus. Collins argues that discipline affords an analytical device that “does the work of Bourdieu’s notion of practice, only better.” Noting that it is participation in worship that most explicitly defines an individual as a Quaker, Collins goes on to demonstrate that it is in this time and place that the Quaker network and discipline is most meaningfully and densely constructed. It is an occasion informed by Quaker discipline within which the elements of “indiscipline”—for instance, arriving late at a meeting, making a ministry too long or obtuse, or adopting an “unquakerly” tone—prefigure an appropriate aesthetic. What Collins demonstrates is the manner in which this informal overseeing of discipline has over time contributed to the distillation of texts and to a cumulative codification and adoption of Quaker discipline. The Quaker case proves useful as a means for

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exploring the complex negotiation of self and social control, indicating the ways in which restraint may stand as the foundation for effective regimes of discipline. Drawing on a diverse range of ethnographic locales and disciplinary forms, the chapters in this volume take an important step toward rethinking and challenging understandings of the nature and significance of discipline in social life. In doing this, we hope also to propose a new appreciation of the dynamics of restraint in social life that contests various versions of structural determinism by insisting upon the recognition of agency, selfconsciousness, and the possibility of change. Although discipline, habitus, and practice may be overlapping conceptual terms, discipline may turn out to be the more useful and reflexive one for exploring the constitution of social and political life. Two other matters need to be noted briefly at this juncture. The first concerns the attention devoted to mapping out varying configurations and definitions of discipline not only in this introductory chapter, but, indeed, throughout the volume as a whole and particularly in the chapters by Wright and Collins. Adopting an ethnographic approach to the exploration of disciplinary practices and purposes must be expected to have the effect of multiplying the range and variation of relationships and regimes to be taken into account. Achieving and enforcing a singular and universal definition of “discipline” is less significant within the type of comparative approach promoted in this volume than is the aim of seeking to take account of the telling similarities and differences that appear within different contexts. Accordingly, we find ourselves not only obliged but also keen to acknowledge and address distinctions between the nature and organization of discipline within a variety of contexts. The second matter concerns the provenance of ethnographic locales and situations examined in this volume. Of course, comparative approaches may always benefit by engaging with an ever-widening range of contexts. Nevertheless, the issues raised by the “Writing Cultures” debate (Kuper 1994), not to mention the publication of volumes such as British Subjects (Rapport 2002), has long since put to bed any lingering notions that “proper” anthropology ought to adhere to a Noah’s ark principle of ethnographic composition. This introductory chapter has taken account of ethnographic work conducted in Europe, North America, Latin America, Africa, the Pacific, Asia, and many points in between. The Scottish hospital porters, Polish Catholic youths, Finnish farmers, and English Quakers, to name but a few of those whose disciplinary practices are considered in this volume, offer a remarkably broad ethnographic range of cases that can hardly be classified as being merely “western” or “European” in nature. We are pleased to invite others to join in this effort and to expand these comparisons still further.

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References Ben-Ari, Eyal. 1997. Body Projects in Japanese Daycare: Culture, Organization and Emotions in a Preschool. Richmond, UK: Curzon. Bernal, Victoria. 1997. “Colonial Moral Economy and the Discipline of Development: Gezira Scheme and ‘Modern’ Sudan.” Cultural Anthropology 12(4): 447–79. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Collins, Peter. 2002. “Discipline: The Codification of Quakerism as Orthopraxy, 1650-1738.” History and Anthropology 13(2): 79–92. Constable, Nicole. 1997. “Sexuality and Discipline Among Filipina Domestic Workers in Hong Kong.” American Ethnologist 24(3): 539–58. de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Steven Rendall. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. Farnell, Brenda. 2000. “Getting Out of the Habitus: An Alternative Model of Dynamically Embodied Social Action.” Journal of The Royal Anthropological Institute 6(3): 397–418. Feldman, Allen. 1991. Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland. Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press. Fong, Vanessa. 2004. Only Hope: Coming of Age Under China’s One-Child Policy. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated from the French by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books. Freeman, Carla. 1993. “Designing Women: Corporate Discipline and Barbados’s Off-shore Pink Collar Sector.” Cultural Anthropology 8(2): 169–86. Killworth, Paul. 1998. “The British Army in Northern Ireland: Internal Security Operations, Training and the Cease-fire.” Cambridge Anthropology 20(3): 1–20. Kuper, Adam. 1994. “Culture, Identity and the Project of a Cosmopolitan Anthropology.” Man 29(3): 537–54. Mahmood, Saba. 2001. “Rehearsed Spontaneity and the Conventionality of Ritual: Disciplines of Salat.” American Ethnologist 28(4): 827-53. Modell, Judith. 2002. “Abuse and Discipline: The Creation of Moral Community in Domestic Violence Groups on the Wai’anae Coast (Hawai’i).” Pacific Studies 25(1/2): 173–202. Ransom, John. 1997. Foucault’s Discipline: The Politics of Subjectivity. Durham, London: Duke University Press. Rapport, Nigel, ed. 2002. British Subjects: An Anthropology of Britain. Oxford, New York: Berg. Reed-Danahay, Deborah. 2005. Locating Bourdieu. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Salzinger, Leslie. 2000. “Manufacturing Sexual Objects: ‘Harassment,’ Desire and Discipline on a Maquiladora Shop Floor.” Ethnography 1(1): 67–92. Vincent, Robin. 2002. “Myths of Discipline: Beyond the Governmentalitizing of Law in Lower Shepton.” Anthropological Theory 2(3): 307–22.

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Winslow, Donna. 1998. “Misplaced Loyalties: The Role of Military Culture in the Breakdown of Discipline in Peace Operations.” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 35(3): 345–67. Worby, Eric. 2000. “‘Discipline Without Oppression’: Sequence, Timing and Marginality in Southern Rhodesia’s Post-war Development Scheme.” Journal of African History 41(1): 101–25.

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2 The Legacy of Vieskeri Performativity and Discipline in Amateur Trotting Racing in Finland

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Susanne Ådahl

The weather seems somewhat stable so Rainer decides to train Loistotar (The Shining One) and I join him on the training pass, as do both the dogs who skillfully escape from the yard when I open the gate. They bark excitedly and circle around the horse with leaps and bounds, but Loistotar is hardly moved by the ruckus. She shakes her golden mane and chomps at the bit, eager to head off into the lush landscape that surrounds the village that is her home in the southwest of Finland. Loistotar is in good shape and full of spunk. The rains have softened the forest roads which make it easier on her hooves. When she trots her head is slightly turned to the left and Rainer says it is typical of young horses. Driving a young horse requires a light and steady hand. You have to let the horse get accustomed to the bit because at a young age horses are soft in the mouth. When she picks up speed sand flies up in our faces and sprinkles our clothes. Rainer never wears protective goggles or a helmet on his training passes. He does not want anything to come between him and the forces of nature that the horse’s hooves stir up. It should be an experience of strength, speed, excitement and cooperation. The dogs run closely behind us, tongues hanging out, panting heavily. Rainer throws glances back to check whether they are still with us, to cajole them to hang on and keep pace with Loistotar and the sulky. I am more relaxed now in the training sulky because I know the road and recognise all its bumps and turns. I enjoy the regular thumping of the hooves, the wind in my face and the feeling of how the horse strives, how it wants to let its energy flow into its powerful legs and flanks. We take a round that is approximately a kilometre and repeat it three times, sometimes trotting and then walking again. Occasionally we have to call the dogs who are clearly exhausted already. Rainer has a love for animals that goes far beyond the thrill of training a horse to win or satisfaction over how well the dogs guard the house. Training the horse becomes a joint effort, a moment of togetherness in the intimacy of the

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forest, an age old bond between horse, man and dog that reminds us of how dependent we all are on each other. A horse embodies strength and gentleness, intuition and intelligence. Finding the cooperative link with a horse comes from finding a common language that you lead through the body. When you hold the reins you give of your body to signal to the horse that it is free to run. When you are driving it hard you lean up against it, feeding the reins forward. What is the goal of this training? Rainer hopes to race Loistotar in the fall. Back at the farm he seems satisfied with the run. His voice beams when he contends that she is in good shape, that she promises good things. He has waited through the winter to see how she will develop, to watch her strength grow. He will not let anyone else drive her. Not now, not at this crucial and sensitive moment. When she has grown into her racehorse role a bit more, when she has matured, then maybe I can try driving her so I will truly know what she feels like and how the will to race is in her blood. Then again, maybe nothing will come of her. Maybe she will never make it. It is all a gamble and that is part of the thrill. (Field diary, July 2002)

Rainer, a retired farmer, tells me he has been a horseman since early childhood.1 After being forced to give up his dairy farm in 1997 because he did not have the financial means to make the necessary improvements, and stipulated by the new agricultural regulations of the European Union, he became a part-time day laborer and a horse trainer. He could now finally dedicate his time to training the one promising trotting horse he had in his stable, Loistotar, and, I believe, this has been a vital anchoring point in a life otherwise characterized by uncertainty and financial difficulty. By closely following on a day-to-day basis, how Rainer trained Loistotar, I came to realize that in the world of amateur trotting training, the essence of disciplinary regimes lies in cooperation and mutual interaction in the environment of the home. When Loistotar won her first victory in the summer of 2004 it was an emotional event for Rainer’s family and friends as well as myself. It was a well-earned victory for a man who had lived through many struggles and times of despair. At the moment of victory, Loistotar embodied all the values, effort, patience, and skills—as well as the in-bred talent—that Rainer had believed in and employed through years of training. Through Loistotar’s performance, he told the world that he had succeeded in producing a prime racer. His public esteem among his peers rose by many notches, which was actually far more important than the trophy and the embroidered horse blanket that he received as a prize. The moment of victory contained a moral message, one that stated that practice based training regimes built on practical knowledge will produce concrete results. In this chapter I have chosen to focus on amateur trotting horse trainers2 who breed and train mainly Finnhorses (the Finnish breed of horse3). Using the specific ethnographic example of amateur trotting sports in Finland I ask how amateur training of Finnhorse trotters reflects preferred social values of the farming life and how training regimes reflect an alter-

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native perspective of discipline deeply embedded in the local context of farming in Finland. My findings are based on an ethnography of farming communities in southwest Finland and on participant observation of the daily life world of farmers conducted over a twelve-month period between 2002–3. It draws on three types of data: my field notes, personal experiences as a “horse girl,” and in-depth interviews with farmers.4 I opted to examine the amateur side of trotting racing due to its close connection to farming. Many amateur trainers are farmers by profession, and a minority of the farmers I interviewed engaged in breeding and training activities in their leisure time. Home-bred and trained horses are different from horses owned and trained as a business investment because they typically spend their entire lives with the same farmer’s family and in the same home. They are a symbol of continuity that has a very important value in farming—respecting the legacy of past farming generations by maintaining the family farm. Working horses played an integral role on farms and were an important symbol of work and the cooperative and emotional bond between humans and animals. I will also examine the question of why regimes of control and discipline enacted between horse and amateur trainer are particularly important in the current climate of agricultural production in Finland today. The European Union Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has put farming practice into a straightjacket of control regimes that are in direct opposition with what Finnish farmers believe to be “good farming practice.” In this framework of discipline and regulations that control the way farmers are to produce, it is all the more significant that some farmers use trotting activities as a coping mechanism and a means of fighting against an increasing sense of uncertainty in daily life. Trotting activities comprise a form of alternative control that provides farmers with the opportunity to demonstrate how practical knowledge of horses and the home-as-trainingground produces concrete results and sometimes victory. The life of the races—the associations of breeders and horse owners—presents farmers with an alternative social network, a moral world of their own where they can fulfill themselves by showing that hard work produces concrete results. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the verb “discipline” means to “subject to discipline; … to instruct, educate, train; … to train to habits of order and subordination; to bring under control”. In his seminal work, Discipline and Punish (1977), Michel Foucault explains that the chief function of disciplinary power is to train; this is dependent on three elements: hierarchical observation, normalizing judgment, and examination. Through constant observation, it is possible to control individuals, and any departure from correct behavior is punished so as to realign the individual with a “norm” of average behavior. If we follow this preordained manner of viewing human action, we can assume that control is facilitated

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26 ◆ Susanne Ådahl

by the workings of the habitus in individuals: this unconscious, habituated generation of dispositions (Bourdieu 1977). Based on my ethnographic examples, I argue that it is not discourse and control enacted through observation and the deterministic force of dispositions, but rather social performance and the desire to act honorably that guides the motivations of amateur trainers. Because horses are viewed as subjects and cooperation partners, they are valued for their individuality rather than the degree to which they conform to a norm.

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Farming in Finland In order to understand the intimate link between the working horse and the trotting horse, it is necessary to briefly outline developments in farming in the post-war period. The years following the Winter War (1939–40) and Continuation War (1941–44) were a time of reconstruction, hope, and enthusiasm over the common project of rebuilding the Finnish nation. The settlement and land-reform activities of post-war rural Finland were extremely significant milestones in recent Finnish history.5 One-tenth of the Finnish population had to be resettled on land either donated by the government or colonized from large landowners, which turned Finnish agriculture into a mode of livelihood based primarily on smallholdings, consisting of both arable and forest land. The most common form of agriculture was dairy farming combined with forestry, with the exception of southern Finland, where grains and sugar beet production were more predominant. (Granberg 1992: 53–54.) Forestry activities shaped the structure of Finnish agriculture at a time when Finnish wood exports provided a significant source of income for a government burdened with war reparations.6 In the 1950s farms expanded and the mechanization of farming was at its peak. People had not yet started migrating to the cities, and, as a result, basic services such as shops, schools, post offices, blacksmiths, and tailors were available to the farming communities.7 In the second half of the 1960s a migration wave from the rural areas to the growth centers of the south and the industries in Sweden cajoled the youth to leave the countryside and join the ranks of the wage earners. During this period, and continuing into the 1970s, the government started curtailing agricultural production. In a period of twenty years the welfare state went from supporting smallholders to imposing stringent regulatory measures to force them out of production and to expand the scale and production capacity of Finnish farms (Granberg 1999: 57).8 The development of new forms of livelihood and specialization of production in the rural areas has been characteristic from the 1980s onward. Rigorous policies to curb agricultural production were in continuous use in the 1990s, weakening farmers’ financial security and increasing their sense of vulnerability; this deepened further in 1995 when Finland joined

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The Legacy of Vieskeri ◆ 27

the European Union.9 Additionally, Finland, due to its peripheral location and harsh climatic conditions affecting the size of yields, can no longer compete with the cheap, mass-produced agricultural products of South and Central Europe. Finnish farmers are concerned about their future and embittered over now being compensated for not producing on the land.10 This goes against farmers’ perceptions of “good farming practice,” because the ethos of plentiful and high-quality production is part of the farmer’s backbone, a habitual stance toward life, particularly in a culture characterized by a “cult of work” (Apo 1996) and an ethos of honor based on survival through sacrifice (Kortteinen 1997).11 Farmers feel that their knowledge and experience-based practices are not respected, and that bureaucratic regimes have forced them to produce in what would seem, to them, a senseless manner. The new regulations also threaten the core values of farming life: permanence and continuity of the family farm.

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Trotting Sport The moral notions of Finnish nationhood are also evident in the recent history of trotting sport. Trotting activities enacted with Finnhorses have a significance that goes beyond that of sport alone. It is about self-actualization on a historical, collective, and individual level. It is intimately tied to the agricultural history of the Finnish nation and the vital role the Finnish working horse played in increasing the capacity of agricultural and forestry production, and as a heroic companion during the war. Because Finland is a recently urbanized country, many people retain fond memories of the working horses from their childhood homes. Finnish statesmen have supported racing, and visiting the racetrack has been a popular pastime for Finns of all social classes. Many of the most successful trotting stallions and mares of the Finnish cold-blooded breed are born, bred, and trained by farmers—both smallholders and large estate owners—from around the country. The tradition of horse racing has deep roots in Finland. Racing home from church was a regular activity in many districts and ice races have been held on the Aura River in the southern coastal town of Turku since the beginning of the 1800s. Official, government-supported races with larger sums of prize money were organized in 1865 (Dossenbach and Dossenbach 1996: 60). Today there are a total of forty-three racetracks and the industry has a yearly turnover of €140 million (Suomen Hippos 2004). Trotting sport is linked to breeding activities aimed at bringing forth a Finnish breed of horse—the Finnhorse—which was to be both strong and nimble, but of a light build so it could meet the challenges of multiple work tasks on both the fields and in the forests.12 The uneven terrain in the forest and the long distances it would have to cover required the horse to be agile and brisk in its movements.

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When Finland entered its most recent wars, the Winter and Continuation Wars, a large number of working horses were rounded up to serve in the war effort, and farmers were required to relinquish working horses to the army. Horses were very significant during the war because the Finnish army did most of its fighting on the ground (compared to the Soviets, whose fighting forces struck mainly from the air). Because horses were such a valuable asset in moving heavy artillery and ammunition, bringing food to the troops at the frontline, and transporting wounded soldiers to the field hospitals, they were also well cared for.13 When peace returned, the need for able working horses was greater than ever, but a slump in the horse population began around 1950 due to the mechanization of agriculture.14

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Horse People What, then, is so special about the connection between horse and human? Numerous anthropological studies show that domestic animals have been of such importance as to have been given personal names and counted as inferior members of the family. Studies such as Evans-Pritchard’s The Nuer (1940) show how sociality of humans has been interlinked with that of domestic animals (in this case, cows), forming the social basis of society. In the Finnish folklore archives there are records detailing the close relationship the peasants of yore had with their horses and cows. There is a great deal of anthropomorphism involved in the description of horses—attempts to apply human categories, properties, and emotions to them (Cassidy 2002). At the same time, the properties that are admired in “good” horses, such as strength, endurance, bravery, determination, independence, and loyalty, are also praised in “good” farmers. Horse owners often keep albums documenting the lives of their horses, tracing events from childhood through maturity. These may include pictures of a horse’s close kin, including brothers, sisters, and the mother, and important events in the horse’s life, such as entering the foal exhibition, the first race, and time spent at the stallion pasture. Many discussions among horse owners focus on issues of kinship, and the terms used are the same as those used when talking about human subjects. Homes of horse owners are adorned with pictures of their racehorses and other horse-related paraphernalia. The interchangeability of properties and emotions between human and horse come perhaps most aptly to the fore in the relationship between a male trainer and his stallion.15 Many male trainers want to have at least one stallion to train because it is more “lively” than a mare and it requires more strength to master. Another positive characteristic attributed to a good stallion is the potency of its sperm and its ability to guarantee pregnancy for a mare in heat. Stallions and other domestic animals become a means for rural men to express their masculinity. Training activities, therefore, become a work of engenderment, similar to that of the boxers described

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The Legacy of Vieskeri ◆ 29

by Loic Wacquant (1995), where the gendered being of stallion and male trainer embody and exemplify a definite form of masculinity: heterosexual and heroic. The relationship between owner and animal can also be paralleled to that described by Clifford Geertz (1973) in his work on cockfighting in Bali, where men’s identification with the cocks is an exaggeration of the male ego. Those who work and live with horses tend to view themselves as people apart—as “others”—and explain that people who do not belong to the horse-people group cannot understand why they would spend countless hours of their leisure time and large sums of money to get their horses onto the racetrack. Amateur trotting trainers call themselves “horsemen” (hevosmiehiä), and claim that horsemen have a bad reputation as men who drink a lot and swear and some of whom charm women at every racetrack. “Outsiders” (that is, those farmers who are not involved in trotting sports) view horsemen as dubious characters who waste their money on an activity that seldom provides any financial returns, requires a lot of work during one’s free time—already a restricted resource—and involves gambling.16 But horse people stick together, and they form closely knit social networks— through which they exchange equipment, feed, advice, and breeding material in the form of sperm for insemination—by covering or purchasing one another’s horses. To many farmers, who in the present day work alone and often refer to loneliness as being one of the heaviest aspects of their work, attending the racetrack gets them away from the home and their work and gives them an opportunity to maintain and strengthen social bonds with other men.

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The Making of a Racehorse Where does the lifelong interest in horses and horse racing actually start? Why is it that some people become “hooked” on horses? When I posed this question to my informants, there was a standard answer: they had been “bitten by the horse fly,” or had “caught the horse virus.” Seija, who has, together with her husband, trained a number of trotters on their farm, details what is so special about working and living with horses: It is the bite of the horse fly. It is in my nature this attachment to horses.… It is love of animals and then you get this type of gratification when you are around horses because [the horse] is such a noble individual. It rewards you with compliments by the fact that it puts you in a good mood when you foster it into a horse and you see how it develops, how it learns to understand so that’s its way of thanking. And then the horse—like Piritta [Seija’s mare]—is my best friend.… She knows me and knows that I am her friend and she is my friend. Then it’s really nice to harness her when she listens and she is so obedient and she is so brought up to be that way. Then when we go for a run it’s really nice to sit there and go along the forest roads and whistle and sing. It has that special

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something. It is wonderful and then it’s relaxing if you have had a heavy day at work what is nicer than to jump into the wagon and just go. That’s sanity. Then when the horse has already learned all the routes then next it will already learn to understand humans more and more. (Seija, September 2003)

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The intimate link with the horse is related to friendship and an understanding borne out of this friendship, as well as a facility of control that springs forth from good communication between horse and trainer, and through the embodied practices of shared training regimes. A trotter-to-be is socialized from an early age in its home environment to communicate with its caretaker, who is, most often, also its trainer. Seija explains how the training of a trotting horse begins: It starts when it is really small. It isn’t more than a few months old when you start lifting its legs. By that time you have already accustomed the foal to humans [because] it can be afraid. We go close to it and stroke it and scratch it so that it gets used to its carer.… There are rules, differences between families [of trainers/breeders]. Then you put the head collar on its head and you start gradually leading it by the head collar. When the foal starts being half a year old you can already start putting some straps and harnesses on its back so it gets used to it already that first winter. Still you continue the same process of leading it, tapping its hooves, washing its legs in the stable and all that sort of thing. The habit I had with the last foal was that … I played with it. It’s there in the stable and it’s dressed in all these harnesses and whatever I can find like kneepads, leg pads … so that it gets used to it. Even the blanket and all! And then you open the faucet now and then and wash its legs…. Usually you have to fuss with a horse daily when it is a foal. Of course you rule over and discipline the horse and then it learns to respect its master or carer and then it starts [to act] as if it understands my talk. It is really interesting to foster that foal. You can tell when watching [the horses] in the pasture which horse could become, or at least one can hope it will become, a runner. It is fast and has good movements. When you start training it you notice if it has the will to run. (Seija, September 2003)

The discipline that Seija mentions in the above interview excerpt is mostly verbal and seldom corporeal. The key to a successful relationship between horse and trainer is in employing all the senses in an effort to mould the horse to the world of humans. For amateur trainers, discipline is a social performance based on building a regime of trust that enables horse and trainer to read one another. Presence—accustoming the horse to human touch—creates a bond of understanding between horse and trainer. The goal of discipline is to teach the foal to listen to its trainer; they can then proceed with the task of reading and attuning their bodies to one another, because reading is also tied to watching the horse move, learning the poetics of its body, and to later incorporate these into the training regime. (“Reading” is a term also used by farmers to describe how they learn to communicate with their fields through observation, sensory inspection, and working the land during different seasons and years.) Trainers talk of

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reading when describing how training regimes are enacted. This reading can be likened with what happens between humans in the act of “mind reading,” which is dependent on knowing one another, something Bruner (1986) has identified as an inherent and fundamental aspect of human sociality that begins in infancy before we acquire the skills of language. Sociality provides the actors of a drama with a repertoire of cultural scripts that provide models for action (Carrithers 1992), and, in this case, it provides cultural scripts and action models particular to the world of amateur trotting training. Reading is also akin to the notion of skilled vision used by Cristina Grasseni (2004: 53) in her study of Italian cattle breeders, which she describes as a way of looking that implies “an active search for information from the environment, and is only obtained through apprenticeship and education of attention.” Obedience is inculcated at the stallion pasture, the playground or preschool of young, male horses. Here they learn about hierarchy in the horde—to fight, to defend themselves, and to be subservient when necessary. They build their strength and learn to socialize with their kind. It is also a significant step in the training regime of a young stallion. Seija tells me why:

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It is good to bring stallion foals to the stallion pasture. There they have social contact…. When the stallion foals are there together they first fight to win their own territory and they constantly have this small spirit of competition about who is the strongest and who is the fastest and they move a lot, and then when the stallions have been there the whole summer and have been together they are quite gracious and meek when you take them home in the fall. It is really good to immediately start, if they are two years old, to train them. It is really obedient and quick to learn the stallion when it has the whole summer cavorted there. (Seija, September 2003)

That is, once a horse knows its place in the social hierarchy, it is easier to control because it has learned the advantages of subservience. Fighting for its place in the hierarchy sharpens its competitive instincts. Attaining docility with a horse’s body is a vital aspect of training—it facilitates control of the horse, bending its will to that of the trainer. A disobedient horse reflects badly on the trainer and is unsuitable for the racetrack because it can be a danger to other horses and riders.

Home Comforts and Uncertain Outcomes Horses are personified by their caretakers and trainers because they are so closely linked to the home in a rural environment. The success of their horses on the racetrack becomes tied to the fact that they have been socialized into racing in one continuous and familiar environment characterized by constant care. The horses have been trained in an environment

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thoroughly familiar to the trainer—the back roads surrounding the farm. Trainers do not believe in the efficacy of modern training equipment, such as specially designed running pools and treadmills, but instead rely on what the home offers them—steep hills, snow sleighs pulled on gravel roads, running in the sea, on gravel roads, and on ice tracks ploughed onto the frozen sea in the winter. They believe in these natural and familiar solutions to building up a horse’s strength. And, most importantly, amateur trainers and their horses share a mutual home where the trainer provides for all the horse’s needs, just as parents would with their children. By their familiarity with the landscape where training regimes are enacted, the trainers can attune the horse to the environment of the home, gradually exporting this to the outside world and the racetrack. There are specific rules and common techniques used, acquired through reading books and magazines, but the most important source of knowledge remains that passed down from one generation to the next, something I term “knowing-by-doing.” Many trainers have a mentor who provides personal advice, or peer trainers who share their own experiences of success and failure in training. When amateur trainers win a victory on the racetrack they take it in stride. After smiles, grateful caresses, and treats for the horse, they are already looking to the future and will calmly state that second place would have also been fine. It is not the victory itself that is important, but rather getting your horse through the race in an honorable manner. It is the struggle and the hard work of training that trainers value in one another. When I ask Roland, who has bred many successful trotters, what it feels like to win he calmly states that you do feel proud, but also relieved, “Because you have succeeded. And then I remember with Solveig [his Finnhorse mare who has won numerous races] demands were placed. One placed demands on oneself because you were among the twelve chosen for the Queen’s race [Finnish Trotting Championships].17 You had to pull it off honorably so that you do not come there with a horse that isn’t trained” (Gita and Roland, October 2002). A good racehorse running a race honorably reflects the preferred values of rural Finnish society—endurance, loyalty, strength, and commitment. Thus, racing can be understood as a moral performance. One cannot deny the importance of financial rewards—naturally it is a welcome financial incentive for the trainer. But what, more importantly, is temporarily at stake is status. Trotting racing thus acts as a dramatization of status concerns. It is a means for trainers to portray themselves to one another, a form of “sentimental education” that reveals the values of their culture, much like cockfighting does in Bali (Geertz 1973). Through the manipulation of the home environment, trainers “make a race horse,” moulding it according to the specific features that the surrounding landscape offers. At the same time, the routine character of training regimes offers stability in a world where personal life experiences are in a state of flux through the substantial changes that have taken place in

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The Legacy of Vieskeri ◆ 33

farming practices as a result of EU membership. A trainer creates stability, safety, and regularity for the horse. Training, thus, becomes an arena of alternative control where one can, albeit partially, guide the outcomes of intentional acts. Also, the horse itself represents stability, permanence, and continuity through the fact that it is “home grown,” concretely and symbolically representing a product of the home and reflecting positively on the home if it is successfully molded into a good trotter. In this respect trotting training activities are a canvas that mediates between the household and the actual or imaginary social actors in ones environment: relatives, friends, neighbors, community members, and other trainers. Cheryl Mattingly and Linda Garro (2000), who have analyzed stories of illness and healing, remind us that when faced with uncertainty, individuals tell a story through their own enactment, through a performance of the known and the familiar. By trusting the present, they also construct a trust in things to come. The reasoning of trainers is that to build trust through repetition creates familiarity and a feeling of safety in the act of training horses. It is the familiar that is the source of innovation and motivation that keeps the performance going. Performance is here understood in a phenomenological sense as something concerned with the experiencenear aspects of social phenomena and with the social construction of reality (Schieffelin 1996: 59). Training and racing offer a window through which to explore how social actors, through performance, engage with and confront uncertainty in life. It promises hope for the future in a situation where the future of smallholder farming in Finland looks bleak. But it is not without its risks. Concepts of risk assume that contingency is a threat to individual experience or social order, but these theories employ a restricted perspective on the concept of risk in everyday life, separating it from the totality of life as lived. Taking risks, according to Rebecca Cassidy, is a way of life at the racetrack, and “every horserace is a microcosmic reproduction of all the risks taken by the various contributors to the sport” (2002: 167). Cassidy does, however, stress that the perceptions of risk for those at the racetrack differ from the standard definitions of risk presented in recent studies (Beck 1992; Douglas 1992; Lash, Szerszynski, and Wynne 1996), where risk is viewed as the hazards and insecurities induced by modernity itself. Risk in the horseracing world is a way for individuals to exercise shortterm control and can be understood as an idiom by which they progress in the context of their lives in racing (Cassidy 2002: 172–73). Trotting racing is about both accepting the risk of losing, but simultaneously retaining the hope of winning; ultimately, it is about believing in the future and moving ahead. It is a complicated web of chance taking, using available resources, making investments, and sheer luck. The practice of living with uncertainty is a form of knowledge one can only get from experience and from advice passed down from one generation to the next (or from mentor to rookie).

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A Discipline of its Own If we were to follow Foucault’s criteria of observation as a central tool of control used to effect discipline, the pertinent question to ask is, who observes? Within the trainer-horse relationship there is no higher authority whose aim it is to control and punish horse and trainer if they deviate from the norm. Trainers are fairly free to use the training methods they deem the most suitable to bring forth the best qualities in the horse. An informal code of ethics does exist, accompanied by an informal control of the “social eye” of other trainers. Observation pertains mainly to an informed gaze expressly aimed at improving the training regime. Trainers observe the movements of the horse so that they can better incorporate this knowledge into the training regime. Training is an activity that progresses over time, as it is closely related to the biological age of the horse. As each horse matures at an individual pace, so too must the practices be adapted to the biological constraints of bodily development. Foucault (1977) would argue that trotting as a sport epitomizes the idea of control enacted through discipline by controlling the movement and operations of the body in a constant way. It is a type of power that requires docility of the body. Trainers do not deny the practical advantage of docility, as illustrated by Seija’s comments on training. Racing itself is a regimented practice with specific rules regarding how riders and horses are expected to behave on the racetrack. The aim of creating docility in a horse is different than that of institutions wanting to control inmates, students, or military cadets, which formed the basis of Foucault’s theory of discipline. Docility is equated with cooperation and it is created in the process of raising a horse. Discipline in the case of amateur horse training is intimately linked to practice, a social technology aimed at transforming behavior to achieve an outcome that reflects a certain locally anchored morality and preferred local values. Trainers conform to the social role assigned to trainers and are expected to meet certain standards set by this social group. Similarly, horses conform to the standards set by the social group of other horses by, for example, spending time in the stallion pasture or sharing a pasture with other horses on the farm. The manuscript of the social performance of training and racing is based on expectations that are formed both by local cultural ideals and everyday experiences about what an honorable subject should be. Discipline in horse training entails a set of practices aimed at achieving specific results: controlling the horse’s gait so it will trot and not canter at high speed; “reading” the movements of the horse to improve the training regime; teaching the horse to mimic the gestures of the trainer; and accustoming the horse to the sounds and movements of the world of humans. Trainers talk about a successful horse being “hard-headed,” “kovapäinen,” or having a “good head,” which means that its head and feet are syn-

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The Legacy of Vieskeri ◆ 35

chronized and that it has the nerves to hold out until the end of the race before it spurts ahead to take the lead. Finnhorses trained by amateur trainers are not “consumed,” the way horses are in the professional sector. Amateur trainers believe in bringing a horse out on the racetrack only when it is ready, old and strong enough to endure the challenges of racing life. The issue of time is significant when dealing with Finnhorses. They mature later than warm-blooded trotters, but have a longer career and are, in general, more durable.18 According to amateur trainers, a horse should be treated humanely, letting it grow into its racehorse role both mentally and physically before it is put on the racetrack. Another important aspect of discipline in training a horse is the dependence on cooperation between horse and trainer—it takes two to make a racehorse. Training a horse to become a trotter comes down to discipline in the sense of coercion aimed at getting the horse to conform to certain behaviors. For coercion to be effective there must exist a cooperative link between horse and trainer, one that is born out of sustained and mutual presence in one another’s company. Cooperation is facilitated through the subjectivity assigned to the horse whereby the horse is imbued with human characteristics, considered to be a family member and cared for the way a parent cares for a child. Here, subjectivity is understood as a way of doing things where agents repeat cultural rules through embodied, dynamic acts in specific places (Austin 1962). This constant interaction is aimed at achieving the outcome of both docility and an embodied communication, a language of communication that is led through the body. Discipline is about the making of a racehorse through repetitive acts and mimicked gestures. The ultimate goal is for a horse and trainer to “read” one another, to become attuned to one another’s agendas. The embodied nature of the knowledge and practices used in training closely resembles Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, the taken-for-granted cultural repertoire that guides our perceptions and behaviors, a reproduction of social determinants that appear natural (1977: 78–87). In this respect, habitus is about the idea of a regimented self that facilitates control in the enactment of discipline. But is the logic of action so automatic and predictable? Brenda Farnell (2000: 397–403) has argued that the dispositions of habitus have a deterministic nature that render the actual role of agency unclear. Bourdieu’s take on habituality is that of a hidden apparatus containing implicit knowledge that people can draw from, which, Farnell explains, is a problem that arises when a Cartesian mind-body division is used. Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and Foucault’s notions of discursive practices exclude autonomous subjects, which is why these ideas lean on objectivist notions of individual practices as merely generated, and not as transformative. Michael Jackson (1996: 21–22) proposes a phenomenological approach that acknowledges intentionality in human action and recognizes the transformative force in the negation and suspension of the ordinary and habitual. Habituality in my material is linked to an embodi-

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36 ◆ Susanne Ådahl

ment of knowledge related to locally meaningful categories of experience. Training practices embody a particular knowledge repertoire that combines bodily and mind-related forms of knowledge, creating a domain of action guided by particular rules, but also practical means of dynamic movement. This conforms to cultural ideas of sweat and toil being prerequisites of success as a trainer or farmer. Knowledge is partially based on experience of acting, and a process of incorporating this experience into one’s bodily repertoire. Habitual routines carried out as part of the training regime are fundamental in understanding the relationship between discipline and self-identity. Trainers believe that the success of a trotter is dependent upon being trained in a home environment, and the home itself represents the central values of farming life: that of the centrality of the family, of continuity, autonomy, and hard work. In the making of a racehorse a trainer also makes and remakes himself by using his self-identity as an anchoring point in molding ideas about a good person and, by extension, a good horse. Through training the trainer illustrates the dynamic, interactive role of the home, equally reflecting the transformational nature of the agents residing in the home.

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Conclusions From the ethnographic examples presented in this chapter it becomes clear that the notion of discipline is tied to the microcosm of the local life worlds of farmers who train horses, and of a philosophy of acting honorably and in a morally acceptable way. Discipline is a product of the home and is enacted for the home in the sense that it is part of the pragmatism that characterizes farming life. Racing and training itself can be understood as a social, symbolic performance where both trainer and horse are positive agents creating and maintaining their own subjectivity, as well as inter-subjectivity, in running for the nation. In this act they represent a vital line of continuity from the horse’s role in agriculture and in defending the nation during the last war, to performing as an agent of entertainment and excitement. I have argued that amateur trotting horse training cannot be likened to the disciplinary power described by Foucault, because it is not based on observation solely or on discursive practices and preordained rules. Although docility is viewed as a necessary prerequisite for successful training outcomes, it is only one feature of the training regime. Training is, rather, based on the enactment of a social performance, of repetitive acts intertwined with subjective experiences that are constantly shifting. It is based on a pragmatic stance toward knowledge, a knowing-by-doing borne out of the experience of living and working with horses. Trainers use this pragmatically based knowledge to create routines, innovatively involving

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The Legacy of Vieskeri ◆ 37

their immediate environment as a training venue. Cooperation is dependent upon mutual understanding between horse and trainer, a type of sparring where they measure one another’s strength, and a mimicking act wherein the trainer convinces the horse to follow his actions. Although these acts are habitual, they are also transformative and dynamic. Michel Foucault’s concept of discipline and Bourdieu’s concept of habitus give precedence to social process, discourse, and habitual practices above the force of individual innovation. This restrictive perspective illustrates a narrow and insufficient appreciation of human motivation and ignores the productive potential and force of human agency. Because regularity and routine create a sense of safety in an animal, training aims to deal with the unforeseen, build a regimented daily life for an animal known for its reflex to flee when faced with the unknown. Trainers do not talk of a norm of average behavior, but, instead, stress the subjectivity of the horse, noting that each horse is an individual, which makes training an interesting challenge. Discipline enacted between amateur trainers and Finnhorses is about a performance based on trust, on a form of communication grounded in the practice of “reading” one another, in the attuning of bodies and minds, of mutual growth in the familiar environment of the home. Control becomes a cooperative effort where the ultimate aim is to show how successfully the horse has been molded to its trainer and how well the trainer has been able to bring forth the inherent racehorse qualities in the trotter, the will to run and to win. Winning, though, is not the ultimate reward; instead, it is pulling off the performance honorably. The training of a trotting horse becomes a vehicle for the consolidation of worldviews and the moral world of farming life. Being a good trainer can be likened with being a good farmer because by engaging uncertainty, farmer-trainers engage everyday life and the necessity of continuity. In spite of the inherent uncertainty surrounding these ventures, they believe in moving ahead and completing the job—risks have always been part of farming and trotting training life. Individuals engage with indeterminacies as a way of indicating their relation to others and the world (Malaby 2002; Whyte 1997). As farmer-trainers they endure the uncertainties of farming life, the whims of nature, price fluctuations, shifting agricultural grant policies of the European Union, and the indeterminacy of outcomes on the racetrack or in the enactment of training. They devise their own ways of making sense of the unexpected by being actors that engage contingency as a part of the totality of life, including the leisure activity of tirelessly fostering and training Finnhorses for possible success on the racetrack. Through these activities, which may seem dubious and counterproductive to outsiders, they show the world that they are agents, knowledge producers that employ innovation in the act of performing discipline to attune the horse to become a winner—that is, if lady luck is on their side.

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Notes

1. 2. 3.

4.

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5.

6.

7.

8.

The Finnish record for cold-blooded trotters is held by Vieskeri, who won the Finnhorse Trotting Championship—the renowned “Kuninkuusravit”—five times (Suomen Hippos 2004). Except for that of Vieskeri, all of the names used in this chapter are pseudonyms, including those of the horses. There is a total of seven thousand registered amateur trotting horse trainers in Finland (Suomen Hippos 2004). The Finnhorse is a multi-purpose breed of horse, mainly used for trotting in the present day. It measures about 156 cm in height and is of a solid build. It is usually chestnut colored and has a reliable and alert character. It is one of the most multi-faceted horses and one of the fastest cold-blooded breeds of horses in the world. There is no biological difference between a warmor cold-blooded horse. Warm-blooded horses are those descended from the smaller Arabian horse. All other horses—modern day draft horses and working horses—are cold blooded. They weigh more, are more stocky, stronger, and possess greater endurance (Suomen Hippos 2004). I spent twelve months (April–December 2002 and June–September 2003) conducting field research in a farming community in the southwest of Finland collecting data on notions of illness and metaphors of uncertainty among farmers. I interviewed farmers about their perceptions of anxiety, illness, land, food, and work and participated in numerous local events while also living and working on a local farm as a “horse girl.” Having previous experience of working with horses proved helpful in my field area and thus automatically became a daily focus of my fieldwork. Settlement activities have been practiced since the 1500s. After the civil war, a law was passed to give crofters (or tenant farmers) the right to purchase the property they had cultivated, and a fund was established to provide them with loans for that purpose. A total of 277,000 hectares of arable land was lost after the Winter War and Continuation War, and 460,000 refugees were in need of land. 40 percent of this land was appropriated from large landowners. Settlement activities continued until the 1960s. A total of 100,000 new smallholder farms were established as a result of these resettlement activities. Finland was the only Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member state where small-holding farming was practiced on a large scale (Alestalo 1980: 117). Because Finland sided with the Germans in the last stages of World War II, as a means of regaining land lost to the Russians, they had to pay war reparations of 300 million gold dollars to the USSR (amounting to an estimated $570 million in 1952) between the years 1947–52 (Jutikkala and Pirinen 2002). Over one-third of the labor force worked within agriculture and forestry, a situation that the other Nordic countries experienced in 1930 (Granberg 1999: 58). Prior to the Winter and Continuation Wars Finland was a “peasant state,” and the welfare state project made a late breakthrough from the 1940s onward as a result (Granberg 1999: 315). Between 1964 and 1980 the number of Finnish farms decreased by one-third.

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The Legacy of Vieskeri ◆ 39

9. The situation was aggravated by the drastic drop in production prices. In the municipalities included in my study, the number of farms has decreased by 25–35 percent since 1995 (Maa- ja metsätalousyrittäjien eläkesäätiö 2004). 10. Recent changes in the grant system of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) have meant that farmers are no longer compensated for their work input through the price of the product, but, rather, through the number of hectares under cultivation left fallow to protect the environment. The compensation system consists of three different types of grants: a national grant, the national component of the LFA grant (Less Favoured Nation), and a CAP grant (Helsingin Sanomat 2006). 11. In Finland a strong work ethic is central to the notion of self, and people are measured against the quality and quantity of their work (Roberts 1982, 1989; Silvasti 2001). The rationality of the Finnish farmer was based on selfcontrol, long-term planning, and the management of risk. The harsh climatic conditions and short growing season required farmers to have a broad-based knowledge of cultivation, food preservation, and building (Apo 1996: 29–30). 12. The present-day Finnhorses can all be traced to four forefathers: Jaakko, Kirppu, Eino, and Uljas Poika. 13. A total of 60,000 horses was gathered for the Winter War (1939–40), and an additional 4,000 were provided by the army. A total of 7,000 horses perished. 45,000 horses were used in the Continuation War (1941–44) and 15,000 of those perished. Of all the veterinary doctors available in the country, 70 percent were employed by the army to care for wounded and ill horses (Dossenbach and Dossenbach 1996: 66). 14. The greatest losses occurred in the breeding stock of working horses due to mechanization of farming. In 1949 the total population of Finnish horses was 402,000 and by 1967 the number of tractors (140 000) equalled that of horses. In 1970 the horse population dropped by a further 25,000, leaving a total less than 100,000 (Dossenbach and Dossenbach 1996: 83). During the depression years breeding figures dropped by 50 percent. Today the total horse population in Finland is 57,000, and of this total, 19,000 are Finnhorses (Suomen Hippos 2004). 15. The majority of trainers are still men, although women are steadily entering the field as breeders, trainers, and drivers. With the introduction of monté, a form of trotting sport where the driver rides the horse instead of sitting in a sulky, women have gained more visibility in the actual racing activities of the racetracks. The majority of monté drivers are women because they are light in weight (Dossenbach and Dossenbach 1996: 140–41). 16. Gambling is actually prohibited for those individuals holding a trotting license, which includes most amateur trainers. 17. The Finnish Trotting Championships—the “Kingsrace”—has been held in August of every year since 1924. Each year a trotting “King” and “Queen” are crowned and a total of fifty thousand spectators attend the event (Suomen Hippos 2004). 18. A warm-blooded horse can start racing at age two and a cold-blooded horse at age three. Some Finnhorse trainers will wait until the horse is four or five, depending on how its muscle strength and technique have developed.

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References Alestalo, Matti. 1980. ”Yhteiskuntaluokat ja sosiaaliset kerrostumat toisen maailmansodan jälkeen.” In Suomalaiset: Yhteiskunnan rakenne teollistumisen aikana. Edited by T. Valkonen, et al. Helsinki: Werner Söderström osakeyhtiö. Apo, Satu. 1996. ”Agraarinen suomalaisuus—rasite vai resurssi?” In Olkaamme siis suomalaisia. Edited by Pekka Laaksonen and Sirkka-Liisa Mettomäki. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society. Austin, John Langshaw. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage. Becker, Gay. 1997. Disrupted Lives: How People Create Meaning in a Chaotic World. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bruner, James. 1986. Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cassidy, Rebecca. 2002. The Sport of Kings: Kinship, Class and Thoroughbred Breeding in Newmarket. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carrithers, Michael. 1992. Why Humans Have Culture: Explaining Anthropology and Human Diversity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dossenbach, Monique and Hans Dossenbach. 1996. Tammen suuri hevoskirja, osa 3. Helsinki: Tammi. Douglas, Mary. 1992. Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory. London: Routledge. Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan. 1940. The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institution of a Nilotic People. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Farnell, Brenda. 2000. “Getting Out of the Habitus: An Alternative Model of Dynamically Embodied Social Action.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 6(3): 397–418. Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of a Prison. London: Penguin Books. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.” In The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Granberg, Leo. 1992. ”Vaikea rooli—pienviljelijän tie asustustoiminnan ajalta tietoyhteiskuntaan.” In Suuri muutos: Suomalaisen yhteiskunnan kehityspiirteitä. Edited by M. Rahikainen. Helsinki: Helsingin yliopisto ja Lahden tutkimus ja koulutuskeskus. Granberg, Leo. 1999. “The Emergence of Welfare State Rationality in Finnish Agricultural Policy.” Sociologia Ruralis 39(3): 311–27. Grasseni, Cristina. 2004. “Skilled visions: An Apprenticeship in Breeding Aesthetics.” Social Anthropology 12(1): 41–55. Helsingin Sanomat 2006, 16.12.06 Jackson, Michael. 1996. Things as They Are: New Directions in Phenomenological Anthropology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Jutikkala, Eino and Kari Pirinen. 2002. Suomen historia, 2nd edn, Helsinki: Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö.

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Korkiasaari, Jouni. 2000. ”Siirtolaisuuden syyt.” In Suomalaiset Ruotsissa: Suomalaisen siirtolaisuuden historia 3. Edited by Jouni Korkiasaari and Kari Tarkiainen. Turku: Siirtolaisuusintituutti. Kortteinen, Matti. 1997. Kunnian kenttä: Suomalainen palkkatyö kulttuurisena muotona. Hämeenlinna: Hanki ja jää. Lash, Scott, Bronislaw Szerszynski, and Brian Wynne. 1996. Risk, Environment and Modernity: Towards a New Ecology. London: Sage. Maa- ja metsätalousyrittäjien eläkesäätiö - MELA 2004: Accessed 30 June 2004. Malaby, Thomas. 2002. “Odds and Ends: Risk, Mortality, and the Politics of Contingency.” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 26: 283–312. Malaby, Thomas. 2003. Gambling Life: Dealing in Contingency in a Greek City. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Mattingly, Cheryl and Linda Garro. 2000. Narrative and the Cultural Construction of Illness and Healing. Berkeley: University of California Press. Roberts, Fredrick. 1982. Under the North Star: Notions of Self and Community in a Finnish Village. New York: City University of New York. Roberts, Fredrick. 1989. “The Finnish Coffee Ceremony and Notions of Self.” Arctic Anthropology 26: 20–33. Sagalunds Museum. 2004. Accessed 28 June 2004. Schieffelin, Edward. 1996. “On Failure and Performance: Throwing the Medium Out of the Séance.” In The Performance of Healing. Edited by C. Laderman and M. Roseman. New York: Routledge. Silvasti, Tiina. 2001. Talonpojan Elämä: tutkimus elämäntapaa jäsentävistä kulttuurisista malleista. Helsinki: Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura. Suomen Hippos. 2004. Accessed 12 July 2004 Wacquant, Loic. 1995. “Pugs at Work: Bodily Capital and Bodily Labour Among Professional Boxers.” Body and Society 1(1): 65–94. Whyte, Susan. 1997. Questioning Misfortune: The Pragmatics of Uncertainty in Eastern Uganda. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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3 Targeting Immigrant Children Disciplinary Rationales in Danish Preschools Helle Bundgaard and Eva Gulløv

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I don’t think that we should consider the “modern state” as an entity which was developed above individuals, ignoring what they are and even their very existence, but on the contrary as a very sophisticated structure, in which individuals can be integrated, under one condition: that this individuality would be shaped in a new form, and submitted to a set of very specific patterns. (Foucault 1982: 214)

In the summer of 1998 a clause in the Danish public school law concerned with stimulating “bilingual” children’s competence in Danish was changed from an opportunity to a requirement.1 The change in the law was partly a result of an economic rationale: an attempt to decrease the need for expensive special reception classes for children who have little or no knowledge of Danish. It was also a product of a specific historic period in Danish society, and Europe more generally, characterized by intense preoccupation with the theme of integration. This chapter is concerned with the disciplinary rationales that encompass preschool staff and immigrant children and their parents as the former, through their work in day care institutions, aim to integrate the latter into Danish civil society. Within this context we discuss, more specifically, the implementation of the recent policy meant to ensure relative fluency in Danish amongst immigrant children before they begin school. This policy, in other words, involves an intended regulation of the everyday life of immigrant children. Accepting that policy can be said to have a “career” or a “social life” (Appadurai 1986), it follows that it will never be a neutral matter, but will always be endowed with distinct “regimes of value” (Appadurai 1986: 15). Keeping this in mind we focus on the role played by those at the receiving end of policy, such as professionals, situated at different levels in the process whereby policy is enacted in practice. In the first

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Targeting Immigrant Children ◆ 43

part of the chapter we discuss the initiatives taken by municipality employees when working to implement the policy. This is followed by a consideration of the appropriation of the educational policy by local preschool staff in two preschool institutions, and by the parents of the targeted children. Finally we discuss the disciplinary rationales at stake in the policy implementation. This case illustrates a kind of disciplinary rationale characteristic of contemporary childcare institutions where control over children’s upbringing is of political significance. Childcare institutions function as civilizing agents that produce “good” citizens. This production builds on dominant norms of behavior that guide children throughout their lives, a guidance that can be seen as a disciplinary measure. This is, of course, not a new phenomenon. In Denmark “asylums” were established as early as the first part of the eighteenth century in order to keep orphans and poor children off the streets and to teach them “basic manners” through harsh discipline (Sigsgaard 1976: 26–39). What is new, however, is the way in which governance is increasingly concerned with the details of everyday life, among other things identifying certain issues as specific areas of public concern. In this analysis we discuss the attempted civic integration and disciplining of individuals through administrative procedure. The regulation of language can be seen as a mode of defining the individual needs of children in accordance with the totalizing demands of the state, singling out competence in Danish as an area for special educational intervention for the sake of the individual child as well as the state. However, as we will argue, this procedure is by no means as straightforward as intended. We aim to demonstrate, through anthropological analysis of microprocesses, that administrative procedures are interpreted differently depending on the personal circumstances of those involved. In other words, the ascription of meaning is far more varied and complex than the administrative structure suggests. As a disciplinary act the policy enforces a focus on staff as well as parents, but this focus generates different modes of action involving acceptance, resistance, and outright countermeasures. Though the policy establishes and installs an educational priority, the reactions to this priority are manifold. Preschools are an integrated part of the institutional foundation of Danish society and attended by about 91 percent of all children. They are part of a system of non-compulsory, early childhood programs, which include vuggestuer (nurseries) that serve children from six months to the age of three, and børnehaver (preschools or kindergartens) for children between the ages of three and six or seven, when compulsory school begins. Our analysis is based on six months of ethnographic fieldwork in two preschool institutions and their intake areas. Participant observation, informal interviewing, and formal interviews have served as the material for our analyses of everyday life in the preschool settings. We explored perspectives on the institutional everyday life of the children, their parents, and

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44 ◆ Helle Bundgaard and Eva Gulløv

the preschool teachers, and interviewed local authorities regarding their views of daycare, processes of integration, and the role of the educational system more generally. In this chapter we will mainly make use of the language evaluation forms constructed by professionals in the municipality, interviews with local authorities, informal talks with parents, and observations in the two selected institutions specifically related to the theme of Danish language stimulation.

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In the Wake of a Policy Change: Bureaucratic Initiatives As a consequence of a change in a clause of the public school law, “bi-lingual [sic] children must be offered support to develop their competence in Danish” (§ 4a of the public school law, emphasis added).2 The request concerns children between three and six years of age whom professionals deem to be in need of special support in Danish language training in order to be able to start school in a standard class at the age of six. The official focus on language springs from a political climate within Denmark that attempts to construct a “cultural unity,” a figment of imagination supported by various political initiatives meant to ensure that the nation builds on a common cultural heritage.3 Following the change in this law the municipality in which we carried out fieldwork set up a commission with the specific task of ensuring the implementation of the law through, among other things, a guiding set of questions used to evaluate the language skills of individual children. This assessment would provide the basis for deciding how the extra resources linked with the change of the law would be distributed. Commission members were assigned the task of enforcing the recommendations at the institutional level as well as ensuring appropriate distribution of resources. In order to ensure uniformity in the evaluation process they requested that teachers fill in forms for immigrant children of the relevant age group on the basis of five to six weeks of observation. Despite the existence of language evaluation materials already in use elsewhere in Denmark the commission members invested time and effort in designing a new form. This was strongly influenced by a dominant discourse on children as “whole beings” and resulted in a language evaluation form that considered all aspects of a child’s development. In contrast to existing forms that focused solely on language skills, the new design required a general description of the child as well as observations regarding the child’s emotional state and motor and cognitive development. Only the last part of the form deals directly with language development and is subdivided into the themes of understanding, vocabulary, syntax, and morphology. To summarize, the form comprises an engaging attempt to ensure a solid base for judging a child’s competence in spoken Danish, and a means of allocating resources in a politically responsible way. It also reflects the

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Targeting Immigrant Children ◆ 45

professional commitment of municipal employees whose appropriation of the language policy not surprisingly is deeply influenced by their professional belief in both a broad view of language acquisition and in the importance of public institutions in the process of integration of immigrants into Danish society. The perceived significance of the form changes, however, as it reaches first the staff members and later the parents of the children who are to be evaluated.

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Appropriation as Resistance As mentioned above, the form is a key tool in the process of allocating extra resources to the institutions. Depending on the estimated needs of a given child, the municipality finances a number of extra staff hours, earmarked, at least in principle, for language stimulation. In a period when budget cuts are the norm, immigrant children thus present a potential source of income for the preschools (Bundgaard and Gulløv 2005). Such resources do not, however, come for free but require a notable investment in time as the evaluations are based on observations and are recorded together with more general information about the status and situation of the child and his or her family. The procedure is that institutional staff are instructed to fill in the questionnaires, show them to the parents who are supposed to sign—although some refuse—and then return these to the two municipal officials who are in charge of reading through the approximately 150 questionnaires which come in from the different institutions in the district. In this section we shall look closely at the implementation experience at two preschool institutions, Springfield and Hillgate.4 The leader of Springfield, who holds a position equivalent to that of a school principal, closely followed the municipality’s work related to the policy change. During our fieldwork she was very critical of the design of the locally developed language form, that, in her opinion, included requests for information irrelevant to the purpose. For this reason she could not justify spending the time required to carry out the task. Furthermore the document would, to the best of her knowledge, cause immigrant parents unnecessary anxiety. This triggered what might be described as resistance to the practices of the municipality. She attempted to address these difficulties directly. First, she searched the Internet for alternative ways to judge children’s competence in Danish, and designed her own evaluation form strictly focusing on language. Second, she refused to involve the parents in the task and consequently returned the forms to the municipality complete in all other respects but without the requested parental signature. The commission members of the municipality did not, however, take her critique lightly and returned the forms marked with red ink, thereby accentuating tension between the two institutional levels. In the end the leader had to answer the required ques-

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46 ◆ Helle Bundgaard and Eva Gulløv

tions since additional resources as well as her position as a leader were at stake. Power relations between the different agents do indeed color the practice of policy. The red ink symbolizes the disciplinary act enforced on the leader. This case illustrates one possible position an actor can take in relation to a policy-related request, namely that of opposition. This position is in principle open to all agents, yet it requires not only reflection but also strong self-confidence and a certain amount of energy to deal with the conflict that might result from the act of opposition. It is therefore hardly surprising that the majority of actors—in this case preschool staff members—choose to follow the requirements. We discuss below examples illustrating more or less compliant positions. These positions, which involve relatively passive appropriation of policy-related initiatives, to our minds illustrate how disciplinary requests are met differently depending on individual motives, courage, and what Pierre Bourdieu terms a “feel for the game” (Bourdieu 1990: 64).

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Flowing with the Current At Hillgate neither the leader nor staff questioned the initiative taken by the municipality. Despite the stress caused by the language questionnaires, they were completed, signed by the majority of parents, and returned to the municipality in due course. In one of our conversations with the leader, she expressed awareness of her colleagues’ feelings of stress but emphasized that it was “one of those things one just has to do.” Interestingly, in her reasoning she referred to the personal attributes of the people representing the municipality rather than the subject matter: “I am sure they know what they are doing—they are really rather nice.” Interpretation is always part of the policy process. In this specific institution, however, application took a rather passive form and the policy related request was followed without further comment and perhaps without further reflection. This observation raises questions about the tendency in contemporary anthropology to focus on actions and strategies.5 “Flowing with the current” in contemporary Denmark involves, among other things, approbation of the moral obligation of immigrants to learn Danish. This issue has been one of the central concerns discussed in the Danish media, and which, since the late 1980s, has reflected the increasing concern with immigration issues amongst the general population (Andersen 2002: 14). During our conversations with the leader of Hillgate, she often mentioned how important it is that all immigrant children learn Danish before they begin school. In order to ensure this, she insisted that Danish be the one and only language spoken in the preschool.6 This local policy was rarely stated directly but became evident whenever two children held conversations in another language. The leader would tell the children that

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Targeting Immigrant Children ◆ 47

she felt sad because she could not understand what they had said. To our minds this reaction suggests that speaking Danish is not simply a question of language competence but a matter of moral concern. Speaking Danish becomes a signifier of willingness to integrate into Danish society. For this reason it becomes paramount for preschools to imprint on children the importance of speaking Danish. “Flowing with the current” is one way of looking at the leader’s rather compliant way of administering the policy. There are, however, other possible interpretations. At the time of our fieldwork the municipality, in accordance with contemporary political initiatives, was planning to amalgamate several as yet unspecified preschool institutions. This initiative, when enforced, would necessarily involve redundancies. It is possible that the leader carried out the request of the commission without any objections in order to show herself as a reliable partner of cooperation, thereby hoping to secure her position. In contrast to Springfield, the course of action followed at Hillgate indicates acceptance of the initiative of the committee. Staff generally never expressed any doubt that the commission members were highly competent and consequently would have good reasons for the specific design of the form. Some members of staff did, however, feel unsure of the purpose of some of the questions in the evaluation form and furthermore questioned the requirement of parental signatures. But the ultimate goal of the procedure, that immigrant children learn Danish, was never disputed. In other words, the moral agenda legitimized the administrative procedure despite the fact that the agents involved had reservations and doubts concerning the concrete tasks it involved. As Steffen Jöhncke, Mette Nordahl Svendsen, and Susan Reynolds Whyte have argued, it is difficult as a “decent person” to go against procedures which refer to central culturally defined ideals (2004: 391). Thus, it is interesting that the actors in this case carry out a disciplinary act for which they only partly understand the reasoning behind and do not entirely agree with, despite the stress it causes. This, we believe, is not an unusual position and could be seen as an example of the kind of behavior that Mary Douglas explains as being a consequence of institutional affiliation: “The instituted community blocks personal curiosity, organizes public memory, and heroically imposes certainty. In marking its own boundaries it affects all lower level thinking, so that persons realize their own identities and classify each other through community affiliation” (Douglas 1986: 102). What follows below is a closer look at the interaction that took place between a parent and a member of staff who, complying with the official request for parental consent, called a young mother to a meeting regarding her son’s language evaluation form. Three-and-a-half-year-old Hamid has, for the first time, to have his competence in Danish officially evaluated. His senior teacher Lisbeth has filled in the form

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48 ◆ Helle Bundgaard and Eva Gulløv

and calls his mother Mira for a meeting. One of the anthropologists, Helle, is permitted to be present during the meeting and later discusses the conversation with the mother as well as the teacher. The meeting takes place in the staff room where the teacher reads out what she has written about Hamid. Expecting to hear about her son’s competence in the Danish language Mira seems more than a little baffled to hear in detail about his social skills, occasional temper, and fierce expression of frustrated feelings. She requests an explanation and Lisbeth mentions how Hamid occasionally “pees” all over the toilet and floor, leaving—as she interprets it—clear signs of frustration. ”This kind of behaviour,” says Lisbeth, ”is not acceptable in an institution. We think that it might be related to his early potty training.” Mira looks at her in disbelief. Her mystification appears to increase when Lisbeth proceeds to read aloud details about her son’s motor skills and ability to answer questions of a personal character. Incomprehension turns to anxiety on hearing that her son’s pronunciation ”could be more clear.” With tears in her eyes, Mira requests Lisbeth to note, if she can, that this is only due to a common pronunciation problem and not a language problem as such. LISBETH: I get the impression that you are worried? MIRA: Yes, I am frightened. The people who finally evaluate Hamid do this on the basis of your observations. And if they see [in the form] that he has a pronunciation problem they are likely to think it is because he is bilingual. It turns out that Mira is worried that, among other things, her son will end up in a reception class and thus will be marked as different. Lisbeth tries in vain to convince Mira that Hamid, who has been in the preschool since he was 15-months-old, will, under no circumstances, have to begin his school career in a reception class. The statement about her son’s occasional outbursts of temper nevertheless causes Mira anxiety. She objects to the focus on “bad things.” How, she asks, can this be of any concern to the municipality and, she asks, how long will they keep this information? Lisbeth is not sure. Mira understands the relevance of statements concerned specifically with language competences but finds utterly incomprehensible what purpose information about Hamid’s emotional outbursts can serve. Lisbeth then explains that ”a center in the brain which controls the big muscles is placed right next to the center of speech and that is why some people think that motor skills are an important basis for learning language.” This explanation, however, does not seem to give Mira peace of mind and she departs deeply shaken.

The above account illustrates how both parent and teacher are encompassed in a disciplinary regime that aims to produce well-integrated and morally sound citizens. At the same time it also shows that not everyone has a voice in defining the relevant attributes of a good citizen. The teacher’s explanation of her choice of words in the form leads to a statement on morally acceptable behavior and a hint that elements in Mira’s style of upbringing (early toilet training) might be at fault. In other words, she uses the occasion to give Mira guidance on proper conduct in Danish society. At this micro level the situation concerning the language questionnaire can be seen as a policy with conflicting interests but as also comprising unequal power relations: staff members have the authority to fill in the questionnaires even when parents object to this act. The parents can refuse to

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Targeting Immigrant Children ◆ 49

sign the form, they can complain, but the questionnaire will nevertheless be returned to the local authorities as a basis for decision making related to children and families. As civilizing agents, institutions are, in other words, imbued with the legitimate authority to articulate children’s best interests. Thus it seems that the technological device that the evaluation comprises is simply carried through whatever the feelings of the involved persons might be. Looking more closely at the microprocesses of the social interactions, it becomes evident that the forms are ascribed with different meanings. Although the administrative procedure is carried out as prescribed, this does not indicate common understandings or general agreement. For this reason it is uncertain that the procedure will have the intended effect on the actual language education effectiveness of the preschool. In other words, it does not necessarily follow from the administrative focus on language stimulation that immigrant children will learn relatively more Danish during their years in preschool than might otherwise be the case. This should not come as a surprise. As Jöhncke, Svendsen, and Whyte have suggested, what is perceived as the right thing to do is not necessarily related to what is proven to be effective but rather what is deemed suitable in relation to central values (2004: 391). From our interviews it became clear that the forms were subject to many different emotional feelings, and some members of staff even felt so uncomfortable with the situation that they excused themselves, leaving the confrontation with parents to their colleagues. On one occasion a teacher simply reported that she felt ill half an hour before she was to meet a reputedly rather bad tempered father of a boy, Mehdi, who had severe social problems. In this case the evaluation form presented a very negative picture of the boy’s social and empathic abilities, and although she had completed the form herself, the teacher did not have the courage to confront the rather emotionally unstable father. She later explained that she found it difficult to comprehend why so many aspects of the boy needed to be noted in the evaluation, for which reason she felt uncomfortable presenting the form to the father. Consequently she resisted the confrontation but refrained from informing her employer of her decision. She perceived the request of the municipality as being beyond dispute and furthermore found that one could not possibly argue with the ultimate goal of ensuring that immigrant children learn Danish. It is of particular interest here that she thought of her fear of confronting the father as her own personal problem, rather than an issue of more general concern.

The Reactions of Parents Mira’s personal choices regarding the upbringing of her two sons reflect that she has responded to the public focus on Danish. In an interview held

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after the meeting she explained that she let her son start his institutional career when he was only fifteen-months-old in the hope that he would get accustomed to Danish institutional life and acquire fluency in Danish, and thus be able to begin school at the age of six as the majority of children in Denmark do.7 She was very annoyed with the routine problematization of immigrant children although she agreed that it is important to know the national language. Mira furthermore opposed the need for extensive documenting of her son’s personality. She feared that this procedure would have a stigmatizing effect on his future possibilities in the educational system. She is not alone in having these reservations. Many parents expressed a general discomfort with the evaluation forms and the situations arising from the need to fulfill the request of the municipality. Their critical stance was aired in interviews in which they otherwise stressed that language stimulation was one important reason (among others) for sending their children to preschool. Their skepticism was not about the priority accorded to Danish but concerned the consequences of the initiative. There were only two exceptions to this critical stance against the evaluation procedure. One was a father whose son spoke Danish rather fluently. He identified with the initiative and supported the line of thought of the municipal commission, thereby living out what Foucault has termed the technology of the self (1988): that is, regulating oneself in accordance with (spoken or unspoken) powerful demands. Similarly a family composed of educated and employed parents and two children, all of whom spoke Danish fluently, agreed with the official language priority, though they protested that the procedure might lump them together with other immigrant families from the local area. Like staff, parents have different positions and consequently differ in their attitudes toward the policy. The general discomfort expressed by parents can be interpreted as a protest against the evaluation and classification of their children by staff and a fruitless attempt to keep the ascriptions under control. Well aware of the inequality in power relations in this specific situation, they fear that their children are marked with consequences they cannot possibly foresee. The fact that only immigrant children are tested brings up the suspicion of discrimination. As expressed by a young Muslim mother who is fluent in Danish (she has been in the country since she was five), “I don’t think that my boy would have been tested if I wasn’t wearing the scarf,” pointing at her headscarf. The example of Mira illustrates the conflicting interests at stake when assessing and defining children and their problems. Her reactions reveal that she opposes the critical discourse evident both in the practice of municipal officials distributing the evaluation forms, as well as in the practice of teachers whose responsibility it is to observe and test the children. In this she is in agreement with several of the parents, some of whom have even stronger objections than she expressed. The negotiations, objections,

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and, in some cases, outright refusal to sign completed forms can be seen as a struggle over the right to define children and their problems, but also over who should be in charge of handling problems, that is intervening in children’s lives: in short, who has the legitimate authority to rear the children. The authority of the parents is challenged by contemporary institutional settings that define legitimate positions of upbringing, thereby creating a division between parents and professionals. Several of the parents explained in interviews that they saw the observations and questionnaires as a direct indication of mistrust of their parental ability and consequently feared that they would lose control over the upbringing of their children. In an interview conducted after the preschool meeting, Mehdi’s father explained his disagreement with the language test and, more generally, with the pedagogical objectives of the teachers. He said that he did not trust the teachers’ educative or, for that matter, caring skills. Furthermore, he could not see why the municipality needed documents regarding the social skills of his son. He refused, on principle, to sign any paper presented by any authority and had also forbidden his wife to do so. He explained that he did not go to the meeting himself because he was too upset about the registration and the way the staff had treated his boy in the institution. Instead, he had sent his wife, despite the fact that she could neither read nor speak Danish. The staff had told her that Mehdi was a very bright but extremely naughty boy.8 The father agreed, in principle, with this observation but saw it as a result of institutional mistreatment. A week after the interview he decided to withdraw his son from the institution as a result of his mistrust in the professionals’ priorities and their handling of children. Mehdi was kept at home until he could be admitted into an Arabic private school half a year later. This example is particularly interesting since this Arabic-speaking family in many ways represents precisely the kind of immigrant family that the authorities hope to reach: a family consisting of seven children, an unemployed, war-traumatized, uneducated father, who hardly speaks any Danish at all, and a mother with serious health problems, who has no command of Danish whatsoever, and who will probably never be able to enter the labor market. In other words, this is exactly the kind of family that causes the authorities concern because it is very far from their ideal image of sound upbringing and integration (see discussion in Ong 2003: 175–77). In our interviews with municipal officers they stressed the importance of daycare institutions and the provision of extra resources to support young children’s competence in Danish and enculturation into Danish society. They illustrated their points by referring to families similar to Mehdi’s. It is thought provoking that a family that so closely resembles the stated concerns of the authorities actively resists official initiatives by removing the boy from the institution. With this act they take him out of the control and jurisdiction of the municipality, thus tactically avoiding the strategies of the authorities.9

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These examples illustrate that policy is never a neutral, purely technical instrument but will always be a complex of social practices involving distinct cultural readings and actions, or, in the words of Bradley Levinson and Margaret Sutton, “an ongoing process of normative cultural production constituted by diverse actors across diverse social and institutional contexts” (2001: 1). At one level the administrative procedure functions exactly as intended. Though understood in different ways and perhaps not practiced quite as intended, the evaluation forms nevertheless force both parents and staff to relate to language progression. It is a disciplinary act that enrolls all involved into a specific politically defined logic. Yet at another level it does not fulfill these intentions at all, and may even have the opposite effect. Different meanings are ascribed and different tactics are played out. The disciplinary regime works as a means of focus, but that does not mean that everybody sympathizes with or collaborates in its outcomes. The procedure is carried through, but at the local level of implementation the original intentions have become hazy, over-shadowed by other more immediate concerns. And for a few people the politically defined logic calls for resistance to an extent where they prefer to withdraw their children from the official socializing system altogether.

Disciplinary Rationales as Shaping Actions

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Cris Shore and Sue Wright have noted that like the modern state (to which its growth can be linked) policy now impinges on all areas of life so that it is virtually impossible to ignore or escape its influence. More than this, policy increasingly shapes the way individuals construct themselves as subjects. Through policy, the individual is categorized and given status and roles as “subject,” “citizen,” “professional,” “national,” “criminal,” or “deviant.” From the cradle to the grave people are classified, shaped and ordered according to policies, but they may have little consciousness of or control over the processes at work (Shore and Wright 1997: 4).

The preschool evaluation forms are but one example of how policy impinges upon everyday life. They reveal a new kind of logic coming into welfare institutions with consequences for the actors involved. The political focus in Denmark has changed during the last ten to fifteen years from daycare being viewed as entailing pedagogical institutions internally defined but framed within an overall economic and political framework, to daycare conceptualized in economic terms as a societal investment and a locus of problem solving. This process correlates with neoliberal tendencies familiar from other public institutions and implies a rather instrumental way of defining and solving problems through specified technologies such as diagnostic schemes and demands on transparency, measurement, and explicit objectives (Gordon 1991: 3, 35; Rose 1996: 44).

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Targeting Immigrant Children ◆ 53

In the case of Danish daycare institutions, this logic has led to a political preoccupation with specifying potential problems defined as areas of public concern. When transferred into the preschool institutions it results in a new educational agenda concerned with predefined problems, such as children’s misbehavior, negative social heritage, non-integration of immigrant children, and inadequate preparation for school. These areas serve as focal points “for the rationalization of individual destinies” (Gordon 1991: 44), and the institutions become the administrative means of identifying the potentially problematic individuals. Preschool institutions are made responsible for targeting and finding solutions, and the purpose of the institutions has thereby changed from the caretaking of individual children to areas of broader societal concern. Professional focus has shifted from more general educational reflections to potential problems within predefined areas. In order to comply with the political requests for diagnosis new problem-solving technologies, such as tests, are adopted into use—both at the level of the institutions and in the municipalities that are obliged to insist on a certain pedagogical agenda. The language evaluation form is a good example of this new logic. Immigrant children are predefined as being potentially problematic in relation to school standards in cognitive terms as well as with respect to social behavior, and the scheme thus functions as a means to identify potential troublemakers in order to prevent social and academic problems. The language evaluation represents a rationale meant to increase professional as well as parental awareness of language and behavior. The policy can be said to install an educational priority where staff have to focus on immigrant children and their language abilities, irrespective of their professional judgments (and are rewarded with extra resources whenever a child in need is singled out). Problems and priorities are politically defined, but the responsibility to solve problems is decentralized and assigned to educational staff. The administrative rationale implies a disciplinary logic, as agents have to direct their attention toward specific practices. The installation of authoritydefined performance measures of language and specific social skills leads to certain codes of conduct that people are forced to relate to. The forms become symbolic expressions of a way of being: an institutional blueprint for proper behavior and education. Parents, staff, and municipal officials are obliged to focus on the politically defined problems. They can protest against the evaluation forms or try to reformulate the schemes, but they cannot ignore the request. Even the outright resistance of the Springfield leader can be seen as a kind of appropriation as she incorporates the policy into schemes of action, thereby to some extent making it her own (Levinson and Sutton 2001: 3). The distribution of public resources works as a powerful means to maintain certain types of focus and professional attitudes. The consequence of this logic is a targeting of immigrants that turns them into symbols of educa-

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tional efficiency; they become signs of professional responsibility in relation to the politically defined problem for municipality employees as well as educational staff. At the same time different forms of acceptance and resistance are performed as different meanings are attributed to the scheme. We have in this chapter given several examples to illustrate the variation in reactions to this seemingly uncomplicated administrative procedure, from the uncritical adaptation of the Hillgate leader and the staff member meeting with Mira to the accepting but evasive strategy of the other staff member, the opposing but powerless attitude of Mira, and the active resistance of Mehdi’s father. There are several tactical ways of responding to the political strategies despite the powerful framing of the professional focus and the priorities installed by the administrative procedure. The different tactics reveal that disciplinary regimes are simultaneously carried through and generate very different attitudes and performances, resulting in much more complicated social effects than intended, causing dissociation in the most extreme instances. The policy is at once unequivocal as a disciplinary procedure and complex in its significance. It works as a disciplinary act regulating the educational focus, but it is exactly the forcefulness of the device that calls for reactions of acceptance, compliance, opposition, neglect, and resistance depending on position, interests, and interpretation of the consequences of the act. As a disciplinary act imbued with authoritative power it is difficult to ignore, but as it is ascribed with different meanings the outcomes cannot be foreseen. Only from a very distant perspective can a policy be seen as simply a matter of fulfilling an administrative structure. In practical life distinct ascriptions of meaning and different performative tactics blur the original intention. As shown by this anthropological study of two preschools, disciplinary regimes can be seen as processes and acts that have consequences for social interactions, moral horizons, and professional priorities. These consequences, however, will not necessarily proceed as intended and occasionally might even backfire.

Notes 1. Since 1998 immigrant children whose parents do not have Danish as their first language must be offered support to learn Danish in their preschool institutions or, for children who do not attend preschool institutions, in daily language stimulation classes from the age of three (Law regarding strengthened integration of children of refugees and immigrants, LBK 486§ 4a). 2. In Denmark the official use of the term “bilingual children” refers specifically to children of parents neither of whom has Danish as their first language. 3. A recent example is the introduction of a canon of Danish authors to be used in Danish primary and high schools, an initiative taken by the previous minis-

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Targeting Immigrant Children ◆ 55

ter of education, Ulla Tørnæs. See also the homepage of The Danish People’s Party for another example of the priority placed upon Danish in contemporary political discourses. All names of institutions, teachers, parents, and children included in this chapter are pseudonyms. This raises issues that fall outside the scope of the present chapter but nevertheless deserve attention. Does this interest reflect empirical observations or rather the strength of the ideology of the individual as active agent in the Western world? Does the contemporary theoretical interest in agents as actors cause anthropologists to ignore the fact that some agents simply “flow with the current”? Apparently she was unaware of article 29 and 30 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child by United Nations, which has been ratified by the Danish state. In these articles it is specified that children have a right to learn and use the language and customs of their families, whether these are shared by the majority of people in the country or not (United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, emphasis added). For further discussion of language policy in preschools, see Just Jeppesen and Nielsen 2001: 90–93; and Holmen and Normann Jørgensen 1993. Children whose Danish is inadequate to follow instruction in school will begin their school career in a reception class. They will gradually be transferred to common classes as their ability in Danish improves. This euphemism covers what was in fact a seriously critical report on the boy’s social behavior. But the teacher (who was not Mehdi’s primary teacher, as it was she who had left the institution just before the meeting) took advantage of the illiteracy of the mother and reduced the critical aspects of the report in order to get the mother to sign, a demand the mother refused with reference to her husband. We use here Michel de Certeau’s distinction between tactics as the art of the weak and strategies as the defining measures of the powerful (1984: 37). .

4. 5.

6.

7.

8.

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9.

References Andersen, Jørgen Goul. 2002. ”Fremmedhad eller tolerance? Danskernes holdninger til indvandrere: En forskningsoversigt.” Paper presented at NOPSA, The Nordic Political Science Conference, 1–34. Appadurai, Arjun. 1986. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology. Oxford: Polity Press. Bundgaard, Helle, and Eva Gulløv. 2005. ”Sprogvurdering—et eksempel på politisk styring af det pædagogiske arbejde.” VERA: Tidsskrift for pædagoger 30: 60–70. de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Douglas, Mary. 1986. How Institutions Think. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1982. “The Subject and Power.” In Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutic. Edited by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 208–26.

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Foucault, Michel. 1988. “Technologies of the Self: A seminar with Michel Foucault.” In Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. Edited by Luther H. Martin et al. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press. Gordon, Colin. 1991. “Governmental Rationality: An Introduction.” In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Edited by Graham Burchell et al. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1–50. Holmen, Anne, and J. Normann Jørgensen. 1993. Tosprogede børn i Danmark: En grundbog. Copenhagen: Hans Reitzels Forlag. Levinson, Bradley A. U., and Margaret Sutton. 2001. “Introduction: Policy as/in Practice—A Sociocultural Approach to the Study of Educational Policy.” In Policy as Practice: Toward a Comparative Sociocultural Analysis of Educational Policy. Edited by Sutton and Levinson. London: Ablex Publishing, 1–22. Just Jeppesen, Kirsten, and Anne Nielsen. 2001. Tosprogede småbørn i Danmark. Copenhagen: Socialforskningsinstituttet 01:6. Jöhncke, Steffen, Mette Nordahl Svendsen, and Susan Reynolds Whyte. 2004. ”Løsningsmodeller: Sociale teknologier som antropologisk arbejdsfelt.” In Viden om verden: En grundbog i antropologisk analyse. By Kirsten Hastrup. Copenhagen: Hans Reitzels Forlag, 385–408. Lov om ændring af lov om folkeskolen (Forstærket integration af børn af flygtninge og indvandrere). LOV nr 486 af 01/07/1998. < http://147.29.40.90/_ LINK_B588930666/28&ACCN/A19980048630“ \t ”_blank>. Accessed 03 September 2007. Ong, Aihwa. 2003. Buddha Is Hiding. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rose, Nikolas. 1996. “Governing “advanced” liberal democracies.” In Foucault and Political Reason. Edited by Andrew Barry et al. London: UCL Press, 37–64. Shore, C., and Sue Wright. 1997. “Policy: A new field of anthropology.” In Anthropology of Policy: Critical Perspectives on Governance and Power. Edited by C. Shore and S. Wright. London: Routledge, 3–39. Sigsgaard, Jens. 1976. Folkebørnehave og socialpædagogik: Træk fra asylets og børnehavens historie. Copenhagen: Dansk Frøbelforening. United Nations. The Convention on the Rights of the Child. General Assembly resolution 44/25 of 20 November 1989. .

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4 The Discipline of Being Hospital Porters Transcending Hierarchy and Institution Nigel Rapport

Introduction: Being a Porter in Constance Hospital

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PAT:

You wear your uniform in the hospital all the time; you don’t wear it to and from work. No trainers are allowed: proper shoes. No earrings: don’t wear earrings [the man on the seat next to me blushes, golden earrings dangling from both ears]. Because they might get pulled off by a violent patient; or pulled off some other way.

The coercive nature of the hospital as an institution became apparent to me on the morning of my formal induction into the job of portering.1 For more than an hour, Pat, the portering submanager, dinned into me and six other neophytes a list of rules (regarding uniform and dress, cleanliness, smoking, timekeeping, telephone etiquette, patient handling, safety, and confidentiality), as well as the punishments for their infraction. At the same time the institution’s hierarchical nature was made plain: “You might think porters are a small cog in a large machine, but don’t think you’re nothing just because people say you are.” Pat paused. “People might say you’re ‘just a porter’ but it’s not true; no part of the hospital could run without you (the same with Domestics).” Being a porter meant dealing with being a nothing. This was a notion I was to find regularly repeated: “The porters are at the bottom: they’re nothing, rubbish. Or that’s how the doctors and nurses think of them” (Jim). Constance Hospital is a major teaching hospital in Easterneuk, a large town in the east of Scotland. State funded, it caters to a large catchment area, dealing with all manner of medical need from physical to psychological, surgery to therapy, acute to long-term care. Constance has thousands of employees among whom are some 137 porters (all but two being male)

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ranging in age from 17 to 64. The low status of the porter, and the diametric contrast with medical staff, in particular doctors, was signaled and made manifest in a number of ways: in uniform or dress (for the porter, blue or yellow polo shirt with name badge and title—“Support Services”— irrevocably ironed on, and blue canvas trousers; for the doctor, civilian dress and tie, with removable name badge, possibly with white coat, or else operating-theatre greens); in the different manner in which they were addressed (or ignored); in the different parts of the hospital plant their statuses led them to occupy, and the ways we would traverse the plant in fulfillment of their duties; in their differential knowledge of the running of the institution and the in-put they had into its policy; in their pay and their possibilities for advancement; in the homes and holidays they left for outside the institution, and the modes of transport that took them there. Let me give some examples of the ways in which such basic distinctions were encountered by porters on an everyday basis.2

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1.1 Immediately following our morning induction, we new porters were sent to a refectory for lunch. Mark, one of the other porters, looked around him: “I don’t think I’ll be coming to this canteen again: it’s for doctors and the like! There must be cheaper places, where you can prepare your own food—some microwave ovens and that—for porters.” Warily scanning the tables of the mostly female clerical and administrative staff beside us, the other neophytes mumbled in agreement. 1.2 I soon learn that the distance between porters and doctors means that porters are not taken so seriously; not only are we not to be particularly trusted in the carrying out of our duties, but those duties themselves, the regulations surrounding them, and the time it takes us to fulfill them, are not particularly valued. When Bill, a fellow neophyte, is allocated the task of ferrying patients between ward and operating theater and we meet in a corridor toward midday, he tells me: “This is only my second patient since 8 o’clock! You just sit outside the theatre till a doctor comes out with a list and tells you to get in this patient” Likewise, Roddy complains at a doctor’s offhand remark to “take the patient back; his wrist is fine,” after Roddy had walked half the length of the hospital to deliver him. It is a regular refrain that we porters are being called to cross the plant to undertake a task that would take the adjacent medical staff less time to complete than it took to even make the call. Porters’ time is seemingly expendable. 1.3 It does not escape the porters’ attention that doctors operate under a different regulatory dispensation, and it is a source of grievance. Dave, a portering chargehand, reports on a conversation he has had with management, who are concerned about the number of smoking breaks the porters indulge in and the places they take them. Porters are incensed: doctors smoke inside the hospital, even in the Maternity Block! As Brendan con-

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cludes: “It should be the same for everyone: either no one smokes at all, anywhere, or we all do.” The issue of pay also raises hackles, in particular from those who work closely with doctors and nurses in a medical team, such as Frank: “The real money here is with the so-called ‘angels’ [the nurses] and the doctors. They get great pay rises, and then they [the administrators] say: ‘Oh yes, the ancillary workers ... there might be a little for your pay rise next year!’ But without us ancillary workers in the plaster room it would shut. Is that not so? And everyone knows that.” 1.4 At the core of an initial reaction to being a porter around doctors—a “nothing” at the base of a hospital hierarchy—was a sense of indignity and of shame: I had a busy morning, Nigel: “Do this. Return with this. Do that” [he puts on a loud English-sounding voice]. “Nae bother”.… But you know, it’s not right what I’m made to do in the theaters. Like clean the doctors’ clogs after the operations! I mean, who knows what’s on them after an operation.… The doctors just leave them, and their greens, on the floor and I have to go in and clear up. And clean the floors. NIGEL: Don’t the domestics do that? ROGER: The domestics come in after. But I’m a porter! Why should I do that? I’m gonna write a letter of complaint.… I was told that porters do the job cos they always have. But that’s not right. That’s just porters not having the guts to stand up and say, “No.” I’m only wearing little rubber gloves, and my greens. I could catch anything. And I’m not properly trained for the job either; I haven’t been told what to do and what to avoid, like.” Copyright © 2008. Berghahn Books, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

ROGER:

A first principle to learn with regard to being a porter, it seemed, was that one’s time, one’s work, one’s happiness, health, and comfort counted for very little in the hierarchical order of things. Being a porter meant coming to terms with being a nothing, at the base of a hospital hierarchy topped by doctors. Shortly after the induction in Pat’s office and then his taking us to the laundry to be fitted for our uniforms—and before being sent off to the refectory for lunch—Pat had led the neophytes into the male ancillary workers’ locker room to assign lockers. The room was windowless, a kind of bunker in the bowels of the plant. When we entered as a group, it was also airless, foggy with great clouds of cigarette smoke. Piles of ash and cigarette butts rose out of saucers placed here and there on stools and chairs. Pat, who had only recently completed his lecture on how smoking on site was a cardinal offence—he would have no qualms about reporting anyone he caught offending—pretended not to see and smell the evidence.

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A frisson of enlightenment passed among us neophytes; it seemed to me that by the end of my first fortnight of portering I had witnessed infractions of every one of the rules Pat had declaimed. This chapter concerns the disciplinary regimen of the hospital and the engagements with it of the portering staff. That engagement is a matter of frequent if not constant concern for the porters, a complex and anxious issue. The conclusion of the chapter will be that the disciplinary regimen of the hospital is met by habitual—routine, even disciplinary—acts of transcendence by the portering staff. By way of a number of what I shall call practical “principles” of portering, it will be shown that a porter microsociety responded to hospital disciplinarity and hierarchy with a symbolic regimen of its own, constituting identities of portering in the hospital that its porter members found desirable and appropriate.

Principles of Discipline To their own satisfaction, the porters at Constance Hospital worked by a set of principles of their devising and expounding, whose pragmatic consequence was a sense of empowerment over and against the institution of the hospital, its so-called “disciplinary discourses” of “surveillance” and “gaze.” We have already encountered one principle: Being a porter means coming to terms with being a nothing, at the base of a hospital hierarchy topped by doctors. I now outline a further seven.

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Principle Two: Being a porter meant being ignorant about what life for the doctors at the top of the hospital hierarchy actually entailed, and viceversa Independent of considerations of status, the hospital as an administered unit was based on a differentiation of knowledge, skills, and working practices across the plant. This differentiation was functional to the hospital’s efficiency. The porters and doctors did not need to know the same things; if they did, it might in fact jeopardize the optimal fulfillment of their duties—knowing how to doctor might be an irrelevancy in terms of the skills and practices over which the porter had to maintain competency, not to mention the sense of frustration that might accrue to having skills that could not be operationalized. It was also the case that the division of labor, and the mutual ignorance this engenders, facilitates the administration of the institution, the administrators’ task made easier by controlling information that divided their staff. Besides the knowledge that their ignorance of the work of doctoring translated into a lack of status, however, the porters found this ignorance also to be a source of anxiety. For in order to be guaranteed the ability to carry out their portering duties, porters had to assure themselves of some

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knowledge of doctors’ practice—their use of space and time, the meaning of their commands, the extent of their power to lessen or increase the portering load, the implications of failing them—and there was concern that this knowledge might not be acquired. There was a sense in which the porters regarded it as part of their duty to find out for themselves the knowledge necessary to fulfill their duties; it had to come from their own efforts because no one else could be relied upon to explain it to them. 2.1 Working in the mailroom was not a popular location, partly because of the tedium: a small group of porters—without much chance for relief— sorting through some 7000 letters each day (not including parcels), franking some 3500 items of outgoing mail, and delivering three times a day along three different routes around the hospital. The level of knowledge of particular doctors’ names and locations which this required—not to mention that of student doctors who did not stay put for any length of time—meant that the room for error, and for being seen to have made a mistake, was large, and more than in other types of engagement with doctors. Porters’ anxiety, indeed, might be said to be attached to each item of delivered mail—making the anxiety tangible.

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2.2 There was a little relief, however, in recognizing that doctors could feel themselves in the same situation. As when Angus returned to the porters’ lodge with a broad smile on his face and repeated the exchange he had just had: “A doctor just said to me: [he imitates an Indian accent] ‘I can understand nothing of Easterneukian.!’” Angus laughs before explaining to me that, yes, it was an Asian doctor, but the point was how “our Balrymonth [a district of Easterneuk] language” was a closed book to him: his ignorance was that of a doctor, not an Asian. Principle Three: Being a porter meant turning the distance and ignorance between them and doctors into a source of stereotypical and apocryphal otherness The ignorance of the porters regarding doctors, the distance between the top of the hospital hierarchy and the bottom, represented a kind of informational vacuum or black hole. One way in which the porters resisted being swallowed up by their own ignorance—being drawn into anxiety as a workaday condition—was to fill the vacuum with their own apocrypha or mythology concerning doctors’ stereotypical otherness. Doctors’ practices, their characters, habits, and failings became the stuff of portering lore, into which neophytes were socialized, and of which all routinely reminded themselves of as explanatory resources. Mishap, failure, wonder, and chaos could be explicated by way of doctor-others whose stereotyped distance from oneself conjured them up as convenient objects of fear, dislike, criticism, laughter, and even transcendence.

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3.1 Dugald, the porters’ union shop steward, was repeatedly anxious or solicitous on my behalf when, new to the job, he found me making the specimens’ collection without wearing protective gloves. If the healthand-safety nurse ever saw me, I was assured, I would get “a right bollocking.” One never knew what one was carrying in the supposedly sealed polyethylene packages: “It could be AIDS, anything,” and “You can’t be too careful.” For while it was the case that particularly virulent specimens ought to bear a red dot, and the doctors ought always to put dotted specimens on top of the pile, they sometimes forgot to do either. Porters had to look out for themselves because the doctors were often lax and might use the porters to cover up their own failings. 3.2 Being uncaring and devious meant that doctors became fair game for porters’ retribution. If porters had to look out for themselves against an apocryphal other, then they would also give as good as they got. They would stand firm and support one another even in the face of doctors’ institutional superiority: STEVE:

I think I’m gonna be disciplined today! I told a doctor to “Fuck off!” [he informs a crowded porters’ lodge]. Not the best thing to do [he chuckles]! This doctor in Ward Seven said, “You’ll have to come back later; my patient’s not ready”; and I said, “Stick your patient up your arse!” [others join his laughter]. So the doctor wanted to know my name, said he’d report me.

Tales of portering one upmanship were common too:

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DESMOND:

I remember this doctor being annoyed at me, down the phone, for refusing to do a specimen job when he asked me. Then he asked my name. So: I put the receiver down on the desk, raced up to the Labs—where there was a long queue—came back and picked up the phone again, said “Who’s there?” “I am!” And it was still the same doctor!

Principle Four: Being a porter meant turning the distance and ignorance between doctors and them into a kind of contractual standoff Transforming their ignorance of doctors into characterizations of an apocryphal and stereotypical—a known and expectable, even if regrettable— kind delivered a note of bullishness to porters’ voices. Porters could successfully look out for themselves; porters could see doctors for what they were; porters could find the funny sides of the demeaning situations in which the hospital placed them. The logic of this bullishness, ironically enough, could be explained in terms of the hospital hierarchy, now flattened into a division of labor in which each part supplied something the

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others lacked: by virtue of the division of labor each kind of worker had a power base—of skills, routines, and peers—to call its own. It mattered less that some suppliers engaged in demeaning labor (or that others seemed to disrespect that labor and the skills behind it), than that by the terms of the institution the right to supply that (demeaning) labor was vested in some workers alone. A contractual relationship of differential supply and demand, in short, regulated the interaction of porters and doctors; the porters could feel they had a right to redress if the proprieties of that distance were not maintained. 4.1 It was a common refrain in the porters’ lodge that doctors would be lost without porters’ physical prowess and skills. On one occasion, Steve returned from the wards with news of a “loony patient still refusing treatment”; this then reminded him of other instances of a patient “going mental”: STEVE:

Gary McMurdo [a porter] got the plaudits for knocking out a guy in Ward 5, remember? All the doctors were sitting round not knowing what to do, as this patient went mad with a needle, rushing round stabbing things. Like IV bags. So, Gary says to me: “Here, hold these curtains closed!” then he goes in and deals with the patient! And after that the patient didn’t leave his bed the whole of the day [he laughs]!

It was also the case that without the porters, doctors would become physically lost in the hospital plant. They had no skill in estimating the logistics of their own—or their patients’—traversing of it:

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HENRY:

I went to take a patient from Ward 1 to Nuccy Med [Nuclear Medicine] with a chair, and I find him, with a bad leg, sitting on top of a trolley. And the doctors and nurses—and the patient— are all insisting he must go on this trolley. But I stuck to my guns, eh Nige? A chair with a leg rest is better, I tell them. Eventually, like, I win, and the patient—who’s been complaining all the time about having to move from this trolley—walks over to my chair! Then the doctor accompanies us to Nuccy Med, and when we get there he has to admit that a trolley would be hopeless.

4.2 Not only did the porters recognize that they possessed skills in the hospital—and rights to them—that were theirs alone, but they also took advantage of the leeway they possessed regarding how and when they put their skills into practice. The porters had their own reckoning regarding how worthy or necessary, how demeaning and avoidable or postponable, a particular job was. Wilbur, one chargehand, pronounced upon the porters’ need to take a stand against “all that stress”; on receiving a request for an

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oxygen cylinder in the Catheter Laboratory, from which a porter had only just returned, Wilbur’s instruction was unequivocal: “No. Fuck them!”

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Principle Five: Being a porter meant having the potential to develop the contractual standoff with doctors into relations of a joking and casual kind By virtue of the institutional division of labor in the hospital, and the mutual ignorance between the top of the hierarchy and the bottom, porters felt themselves to possess a certain contractual security—place in the institution and a set of skills that were by right theirs alone. They played on this security to engender a sense of portering pride, righteousness, and, if necessary, bloody-mindedness. It was also the case, however, that as an occupational grouping in the hospital, even a community (with members, traditions, and lore), porters could now look beyond themselves to the doctors with some confidence, even magnanimity, and construe a range of possible and growing relations between “us” and “them.” Once porters were assured of who they were—institutionally confirmed as being—then possibilities existed regarding how others, outsiders, might relate to them and know them. Porters and doctors became two group entities linked by a diversity of possible moments of their coming together: in love and war, in play and seriousness. This could even extend to kinds of relations that replaced and transcended the very institutional arrangements that caused the identification, the separation, and the possible coming together of “us” and “them” in the first place; the hospital division of labor transmogrified into a field of social possibilities that ranged beyond the logic of the institution as such. Deriving a confidence from membership of a social-occupational community empowered the porters to engage with doctors in ways which made light of, diverged from, and even obviated the very statuses of “porters and doctors,” and the institutional ignorance and distance of which these statuses were constituted. 5.1 This divergence from the distinctive statuses of porter and doctor was perhaps easiest effected while still staying within the social groups of porters and doctors—at least initially. This happened, for instance, in the frequent football matches that took place between porter and doctor teams outside the time and space of work. It is to be noted, however, that team matches came about by relations and planning between individual porters and doctors; also that in the playing of the matches it was not unusual for individuals to swap sides to even up teams as required. In other words, even though it was teams of porters playing teams of doctors, the casualness of the occasion made the boundary between these statuses permeable, with individuals easily moving between camps. 5.2 Casualness was also introduced into the situation of porter-doctor relations when porters entered the hospital plant in civilian dress and frame

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of mind. This they did on their days off, when they popped into the lodge to chat with their working mates or to attend a hospital clinic. On one occasion I found Dwayne, who made a point of being as slovenly and dirty in his portering uniform as possible, smartly dressed in leather jacket and black leather cowboy boots attending Clinic 4 with his three-year-old asthmatic son. He was relaxed and explained he had managed to get an early appointment, and to jump the queue, through negotiating with the doctor. Some hours later I saw him again; his son’s ear, nose, and throat had been checked, though the doctor had only found slight nasal inflammation. Now he was on his way down to Maxillo-Facial to see a doctor to whom he had promised a signed football from Easterneuk Rovers. Dwayne knew someone who worked at Rovers, and the doctor wanted the football as a Christmas gift for her boy; Dwayne was on his way to tell her that his friend would initially supply the ball for free, and that she could pay later.

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5.3 Whenever Dwayne and I met around the hospital, he informed me of his latest conquests: he had chatted to another doctor, “a little blond one in Ward 19, Nora Jane.” But Dwayne knew he was no beauty; his ribald relations with female doctors were a mutual, joking arrangement. The sexual repartee was a release and a contest that both enjoyed. One afternoon, then, it was a young female doctor who passed the window of the porters’ lodge and punched the air in Dwayne’s direction in an exuberant and sexually provocative gesture. Dwayne responded gleefully in kind, before sticking his tongue out to its full length and miming cunnilingus; his escalation won the day and the doctor went on her way showing the appropriate, joking disgust. Principle Six: Being a porter meant being used to regarding doctors as authority figures in everyday life, and bringing this regard into the hospital as a means to domesticate the work environment It was of course the case that porters and doctors inside the institution of the hospital replayed the relations that existed between patients and doctors in everyday life; doctors were not an unknown quantity to porters. In part this was a relationship of inequality that carried over into the workplace. However, coming to regard the distance and ignorance that separated them from doctors in the hospital hierarchy as a continuation of their everyday lives could also be used by porters to more paradoxical effect: to soften this status differential and the feelings of worthlessness that might accompany it. For “everyday life” comprised a complex array of feelings and statuses, and by reminding oneself that one’s distance from one’s doctor in everyday life was but a small part of that life—its contests, victories, and defeats—one could reappraise, “domesticate” the distanciation of the workplace, and find there, too, a diversity of sources and kinds of self-esteem.

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6.1 It was appropriate, then, for porters to admit to being on the books of a respectable and amenable doctor in the outside world. I was impressed by the way Sean—a hardman on the football pitch and in streetfights (with the scars to prove it)—put on a polite voice when “his” doctor entered the porters’ lodge one day to deliver a specimen: “Here’s my doc,” proclaimed Sean, blushing when he was recognized; “He’s a good doctor,” Sean admitted, as though grudgingly, when he had gone. It was evident that even the most macho portering hardman had uses for a good doctor. 6.2 It was also the case that the authority of doctors in everyday life could be brought to bear upon the institution of the hospital in a more direct way, so as to effect an immediate release of the porters from its strictures and control. “Tame” doctors—doctors who were part of one’s domestic world—could sign porters off work while still making them eligible for sick pay. This was not an unambiguous situation, and there was a fine line between extracting the sick leave one was “due” from the hospital authorities—even cunningly swindling more—and being seen to be work shy: leaving one’s colleagues to do one’s proper share. For this reason a porter’s dealings with his doctor were often accompanied by a kind of proclaimed passivity and ignorance: the porter’s ailments were beyond his control, he claimed, as were the doctor’s instructions and advice for their repair. This was the thrust of Leslie’s matter-of-fact account, after six weeks’ sick leave for a sport-related injury. “All the walking we [porters] do here,” Leslie explained, caused his ankle ligaments to keep flaring up. While “the doctor said six weeks was normal,” and that he would keep Leslie on his books for two further weeks “in case,” Leslie “could just go back” if needed. The emphasis here was clearly inclusive; Leslie hoped this was a story I could easily recognize—“As you would know, Nigel!”—and one that I might expect to be telling myself. Likewise, when a bar fight caused Oliver to lose part of an ear, requiring plastic surgery, it was always the doctor who said “another two weeks,” always Oliver who had been “told to take another week off work”; it was even the doctor who informed Oliver that the injuries were likely caused by a bottle, and not by teeth. Principle Seven: Being a porter meant using a general knowledge of everyday life to lessen the import of the hospital hierarchy and the authority of doctors as such I have argued that bringing their home relationships with doctors into the context of the hospital was a symbolic means that porters used to soften and domesticate the status differentials they found at work and their own feelings of worthlessness. More than this, however, the link to home, the wider world and everyday life, could become a route to a perceived equality, even superiority. The hospital, porters recognized, was not the only

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space—it was not the normal or paradigmatic space for the world at large— and doctors, their provenance, knowledge, skills, and relevance, diminished in power in the context of everyday practices which they did not control, of which they might be wholly ignorant. Outside the hospital, in the world at large, doctors could be simply human beings; doubly diminished, indeed, by the distances they fell from their workaday affectations. 7.1 Thus it was that doctors were made into comic objects: BILL:

There’s this doctor in Ward 22: Emma Cowe [he giggles]. And that’s funny up here—not like England—cos in Easterneuk, “Emma” is how you say “I am a”: “I am a cow!”.… And do you remember that doctor in Ward 15 with a nametag “F. Rug,” and we were wondering what her first name could be—and someone said maybe its “Fireside” [the laughter escalates]!

As well as objects of a purely sexual kind:

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DWAYNE:

[Staring at a young female doctor] The things you see when you don’t have an erection [he contorts his face to mock yearning]!

7.2 The point of this objectification was not now to delineate a stereotypical and apocryphal other, with whom one was bound to engage in working relations within the hospital division of labor, but to call the very judgments behind that division into question. One demeaned individual doctors so as to call into the question the very status of “doctor” as such. This was clear in the relish with which porters would rehearse accounts of medical mistakes for which doctors had been responsible. Sam was furious, for instance, because the doctor had sent his father to a nursing home before his father was ready; now he was back at the hospital, in a coma and coughing blood. There were procedures for releasing someone from hospital, Sam proclaimed, but clearly “some doctors don’t give a fuck!” Meanwhile, a BBC television program on hospital errors provides gossip for the entire lodge for a few days: the swab in a baby’s mouth that caught fire; the 4.0 milligrams of morphine that was injected into a patient instead of 0.4; the man who woke up to find that the wrong leg had been amputated. 7.3 This added up to a sense not only that doctors were fakes in the claims they made, the airs they assumed, the status they were accorded, but also that they were fools. They took themselves too seriously, took their work too seriously, and put too much store by their supposed skills, the hospital, its hierarchies, and institutional regime. It was also the case, then, that doctors were chosen as stooges—at best, spectators and witnesses—in the tales of derring-do that evidenced the porters’ true distinction for knowing life in the round:

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DENNIS:

Have you seen my brother at work today, Nige? D’you know if he came to work? Cos he was coughing up blood earlier; he called the doctor at four in the morning. So, I was wondering if he came to work?

JOSH:

This poof goes to A&E with a vibrator stuck up his arse, right. So the doctor goes: “You’ll have to have an operation to remove it.” “Remove it!? I just wanna get the batteries changed!” [The porters have heard it before and groan.]

Wed to a hospital regimen, doctors failed to apprehend the nitty-gritty of life. Principle Eight: Being a porter meant recognizing doctors as fellow human beings trying, like them, to make do and get on in a world of institutions, rules, norms, and circumstances they did not instigate

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Life for the porters, I have suggested, its nitty-gritty wholeness, was generally to be found beyond the hospital institution, and doctors could be seen to miss out on it inasmuch as they were more entangled in the institution, more coopted into its hierarchy. Porters could transcend the hospital and become real and distinguished human actors, while doctors could not. This could translate, however, into a sense of pity and of sympathy that the porters extended to doctors: an equalitarian ethos that all were human beings alike, trying to make do. 8.1 Porters would emphasize, for instance, how doctors were under the same institutional strictures as they were. If a doctor was on weekend shift, this meant, as Kevin commiserated with a glum-looking medic: “You’ll not be out drinking then!” If a doctor was “posted elsewhere,” this meant, as Martin calculated, that others would get a good price on the contents of their flats since they would be unable to “move them on to another placement.” If the flat the doctor could afford was in a particular part of town, then he was no more sheltered from the neighborhood than anyone else: “Did you lot hear?” Sean revealed, “A doctor and his wife were murdered in town! Up by Auchtermuchty Street.” 8.2 This also meant that porters and doctors might help one another out—as fellow human beings and not as members of an institution—and maybe even enjoy one another’s company. Social links and sociable activities might bring together individual porters and individual doctors in such a way that institutional statuses, distinctions, distances, and ignorances became superseded by relations that bespoke more inclusive social worlds. I found this sociality reaching out from my fieldsite in Easterneuk

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even to encompass me at the university: “Could you arrange a team of students and academics to play my team of operating-theater staff,” Rory wondered. He knew the students had a team—“weren’t those pitches by the Golf Course the university’s?” Dwayne, meanwhile, attended the leaving party (and pub crawl) for a doctor leaving for a new job in Exeter; I had seen the invitation pinned up in Ward 36. I asked Dwayne how he knew the doctor: DWAYNE:

I met Lance at Easterneuk Royal Infirmary, where he did his four years’ training. Then we both moved here. He’s been here about seven years; so I’ve known him about eleven. Good bloke! He promised me a job reference if I wanted one—cos you can’t trust these [portering] chargehands!

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Power of Discipline The eight principles I have outlined above, as an amalgam of the complex of relations and attitudes that the porters of Constance Hospital possess with regard to doctors, have come to take something of a processual form. Beginning with the nothingness of porters in the hospital hierarchy and the mutual ignorance that separates the top of the hierarchy from the base, there is a progression through stereotyping and contractual standoff, and through joking relations, to a domestication of the institutional hospital space, the diminishment of its import, and lastly the demotic impulse that sees doctors and porters alike as faced with institutional coercion, and able to help one another through. Here is a story of hierarchy and its obviations, of transcending institutional differentiation so as to arrive at relations deriving from an existential or at least wider, social awareness, and giving onto a generically human communion.3 The eight principles together compass a kind of developmental or ontological logic. Living the logical progression of their principles on a daily basis in the hospital, both mentally and affectively, the progression becomes a cognitive resort, a coping strategy with which porters deal with the constancy of the hospital’s institutionalism. I do not intend to claim that the above progression represents the only way in which these eight principles are used by porters in Constance. For the eight also exist independently of one another, in their own right, and might be differently related together. Not all the porters may know or effect all these principles, and some may occupy one or more relational and attitudinal positions in the hospital—as fearful, say, that their ignorance of doctors may jeopardize their ability to properly fulfill their portering duties, or as downplaying the respect accorded to doctors on account of their personal failings—to the exclusion of other propositions. Here is a range of attitudes and relations, a bundle of possible traits, and

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porters will distinguish themselves individually from one another according to whether they treat this range progressively, and unidirectionally, or whether they favor one part of the range over another in terms of the time and importance they accord it. Day to day, moment to moment, even the same porter may treat the principles differently; they form a logical progression but their narrative may be brought to life, experienced and lived in a number of ways. Used singly, partially, or in their entirety, however, their construal and practice represents a kind of discipline that the porters impose upon the institution of Constance Hospital and its members, and their time spent amid its regimen. Individually and collectively, by means of these principles, porters make sense of and order their engagement with the hospital’s coercive regime in their own way. In the closing part of this chapter I want to consider the implications of this ethnography for conceptualizing discipline as an aspect of everyday, practical empowerment as distinct from an attribute of institutional control. There has been a general tendency in social science—more or less pronounced from the pens of different analysts in different disciplines at different times—to regard causal or “because” motives as predominating in social life over intentional or “in order to” motives (in the phrasing of Alfred Schutz [1972]). The individual actor is construed as being put upon rather than “putting on.” Questions such as how individuals deal with life, how they make meaning in the midst of the everyday and of change, suffering and good fortune, become questions largely of social determination. In Michael Jackson's designation, in the rush to depict the “political power” of techniques of influence and oppression, a recognition of the “existential power” to act and constitute identity is lost (1996: 22). Plainly put, individual agency is seen to be overwritten, more or less vulgarly, by social structure (Levi-Strauss) and institutionality (Giddens), the unconscious (Lacan) and the habitus (Bourdieu), discourse (Foucault) and ideology (Gramsci). These abstractions are seen to be responsible for their own effects, controlling those individual functionaries said to be living within their compass, whether or not the latter are aware of their so being controlled. Indeed, post-structuralists would go so far as to say that such impersonal forces are responsible for giving rise to the consciousness of their human functionaries tout court—responsible for our conceiving of the possibility of there being something called “personal” experience and “individual” power—thus collapsing any distinction between social structure and agent, cultural form and will. Impersonal abstractions thus become “anthropomorphized agents.” In thematizing this volume, Noel Dyck has called upon anthropologists to overturn the tendency to conceptualize discipline solely in terms of external, impersonal structures of control and punishment and to elucidate its diverse workings: “individuals and groups demanding, formulating, imposing, evaluating, fine-tuning, subverting, and celebrating” discipline’s various forms.

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The Discipline of Being Hospital Porters ◆ 71

The place I would begin in theorizing upon seemingly impersonal, structural, or institutional regimes of discipline, is with the vital distinction between the forms of social reality and the force, the will, behind them, the significance, the meaning, they carry (Rapport 2003). There is no way that such experiential dualities (form and force, form and meaning) can properly be elided or eschewed; they are, Georg Simmel insisted (1971), “co-present dualisms,” and form should never be seen as overwriting content. There are, in other words, both political or institutional, and existential or personal manifestations of power—an experientially authentic distinction, a distinction clearly instantiated in the different ways individual incumbents of the same political office, functionaries of the same institution, fulfill (define, maintain, extend, subvert, personalize, anonymize) their role. But the relationship between the institutional and the existential is not a mutual one; it is not a relationship between equal things, between things that are equally things. Rather, there is a fundamental sense in which the institutional must be understood as conditional upon the existential. As Jackson puts it: “by dismissing the subject, [the likes of] Bourdieu and Foucault would deprive us of the very site where life is lived, meanings are made, will is exercised, reflection takes place, consciousness finds expression, determinations take effect, and habits are formed or broken” (1996: 22). The forces of behavioral determination, the discipline of instituting meaningful worlds, must be located in the individual as such. Only in this way does one do justice to the individuality of porters’ responses and their capacity as an occupational group to turn the hospital into their own microsocial space. Deterministic arguments regarding the power of the institutional are often framed in terms of language. The power of language over its individual speaker-hearers—individuals as “inhabitants,” willy-nilly, if not prisoners, of discourses, language games, and systems of signification—is often taken to be paradigmatic of the institutional or structural as such. By contrast, an “existentialist” appreciation might begin with a description of language as an institution whose nature is to function in “ironic mode” (Martin 1983: 415). Language is dependent on and determined by its being continually animated by individual speaker-hearers, who use it for construing personal meanings and furthering possibly private purposes (Rapport 1993). Of course, one can read significant give-and-take between these two positions. Without the institution of language, individuals would not have the medium through which to express and possibly communicate their meanings, to metacommunicate notions of register and code; perhaps they would not have the means even to formulate such meaning, certainly not with the same facility. Notwithstanding, there is something ontologically and qualitatively distinct in the agency with which each individual is responsible for imbuing language with meaningfulness, relevance, and validity through their continued, intentioned use of it—without which the institution would simply remain inert cultural matter—and so maintain-

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ing language’s role as a synthesizing process in social life. To claim for the institutional something akin to its own animating force and function is an hypostatization. It is administrators and doctors and porters who, individually and collectively, talk the language of the hospital; it is a synthetic medium, facilitating their coming together as fellow functionaries, but they use it to very different effect. George Steiner (1975) offers an apposite formulation (echoing Simmel) when he describes language as exhibiting a “dual phenomenology.” Here, he says, is a common surface of speech forms and notations, of grammar and phonology—the conventions of collective public exchange—resting upon a base of originally private meanings and associations, meanings which derive from the “irreducible singularity” of personal consciousness, from the specificity of a speakers’ ongoing, articulate somatic and psychological identity (Steiner 1975: 170–73). Speaking a language does not translate into that language possessing agency or achieving hegemony, then, determining or causing meaning, or eliminating the interpretive work of individual speaker-hearers. Linguistic norms and routines may institutionalize (also hierarchicalize) certain conventional avenues of expression, but they in no way determine what is meant as speakers and listeners partake of the language from within the personalizing contexts of their lifeworlds, relationships, and interpretive communities. Linguistic usage, moreover, is never unmediated by a creative improvisation of its conventions. Individual users at once partake of language’s rules and routines (take part in the continuing constitution of sociocultural milieus to which linguistic interaction gives rise), and make these into instruments of their own ongoing, changing understanding and purpose. Whatever the order and sense—the power—purportedly instantiated by the institutional logic of the language as such, the individual speaker-hearers partaking of its rules and routines animate them according to their own mental and bodily, verbal and behavioral, presence in those routines, and so are able to go on making their own sense. For this reason, there can be worlds of difference between shared grammatic-cum-paradigmatic competency—shared institutional membership—on the one hand and shared cognition or mutual comprehension on the other. Individuals in interaction can thus be seen to be both assisting in a continuing collective performance—in the performance of an institution—and, at the same time, creating, extending, and fulfilling ongoing agendas, identities, worldviews, and life projects of their own. More broadly, I would contend that the existential power—the energy, will, and force—which underlies the work of interpretation in linguistic usage equally underlies the extent to which institutions as such gain animation in public life, and continue to be a manifestation of power—the power of normativization, of hierarchicalization, of exclusion, and so on. There is a dialectic between the existential and the institutional, but the existence of a dialectical relationship should not interfere with our rec-

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The Discipline of Being Hospital Porters ◆ 73

ognition of the ontological priority of the existential, also its qualitative distinctiveness: the existential as a “real quality,” a “concrete thing,” prior to and independent of anything else (Helms 1993: 9). The power of the institutional is dependent on the animating work of individual functionaries (individuals who are active in the world, inter alia as institutional role-players). To begin to understand the “power” of institutions is to see their being worked, resisted, and negated in all manner of ways, for all manner of purposes, and in every moment, by willful individuals—porters and doctors and administrators alike. The individual role-player is never to be seen as subsumed within an institutional logic. For the individual always possesses the power—the existential awareness, the ironic capacity, and proclivity—to say: “Here I am partaking of an institution, playing a particular language-game.” Sometimes individuals play the game better than others, and sometimes the play is more trying and intrusive than at other times, but there is no moment at which individuals do not possess the capacity—and experience the mixed emotions—to recognize both where the logic of the institution (as personalized by fellow players) would take them, and the distinctive, individual place they stand—emotionally, cognitively—in relation to it. It may not always be an easy matter determining how to reconcile these positions—how to act, what to say, how to seem—both as institutional players and as themselves, but it is never difficult for individuals to see themselves both present and detached; conscious players in the game—however reluctant, however conventionally disempowered—but never played unconsciously, willy-nilly, by it. It is the existential power of certain porters in a Scottish hospital, put to both individual and collective purpose that this chapter has sought to demonstrate. They have exercised discipline against the structural power of the institution so as to create a working environment whose habitual practices reflect their own principled and meaningful constructions of order. As my fellow neophyte summed up: ROGER:

Anne [the portering manager] said to me that my job here was the real thing and should be more important to me than my band!... What!? Is she kidding? Has she never had FUN? These people ‘round here never have fun.… You know, only the porters ‘round here have a sense of humor.

Notes The research on which this chapter reports was funded by the Leverhulme Trust (grant no. XCHL48), under the aegis of their “Nations and Regions” program, and part of the “Constitutional Change and Identity” project con-

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vened by David McCrone of Edinburgh University. I am grateful to Noel Dyck for the opportunity to explore my data through the lens of disciplinarity. 1. With the permission of the hospital authorities (the Chief Executive and the Dean, to whom I wrote), the portering chargehands and union (to whom the hospital authorities then spoke), I undertook, in a voluntary capacity, the dayto-day shift work of a porter over a period of nine months. I hoped, as far as possible, to insinuate myself into a porter’s lifeworld at Constance Hospital (and, to a lesser extent, outside the hospital too) by doing as and what other porters did. 2. My fieldwork practice was not to tape record informants but yet to aim for a detailed accounting of interactions I witnessed. As soon as possible after an interaction’s end, I would therefore discreetly transcribe key words onto paper, for a full writing-up in my journal later. 3. This is akin to what Victor Turner (1982) described as “the ritual process”: the common human practice of moving experientially from structure and classification in everyday life to a more “liminal” state (in the margins of that life) where we engage in non-structural, even anti-structural, relations with our fellow human beings, now recognized as facing the same existential conditions. We move from workaday institutionalism to a sense of universal “communitas” where true worth and real communion are achieved.

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References Helms, Mary. 1993. Craft and the Kingly Ideal. Austin: University of Texas Press. Jackson, Michael. 1996. “Introduction: Phenomenology, Radical Empiricism, and Anthropological Critique.” In Things As They Are. Edited by Michael Jackson. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Martin, Graham Dunstan. 1983. “The Bridge and the River: Or The Ironies of Communication.” Poetics Today 4(3): 415–35. Rapport, Nigel. 1993. Diverse World-Views in an English Village. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ———. 2003. I am Dynamite: An Alternative Anthropology of Power. London and New York: Routledge. Schutz, Alfred. 1972. The Phenomenology of the Social World. London: Heinemann. Simmel, Georg. 1971. On Individuality and Social Forms. Edited by Donald N. Levine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Steiner, George. 1975. After Babel. London: Oxford University Press. Turner, Victor. 1982. The Ritual Process. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

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5 Governance as a Regime of Discipline

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Susan Wright

The Isle of Skye—or Skye, as it is commonly known—is an island off the west coast of Scotland. Its population of ten thousand depends on access to the mainland for many services, and, in some cases, for work. In the 1980s, the government-run car ferry was aging and frequently breaking down. The government said a bridge would be built for the islanders. There was a spate of bridge building in Europe to connect islands to mainland communities at this time. But this was not simply a new bridge: it was the first experiment in the UK to provide services through a new system called a Private Finance Initiative. This method was started by the Conservatives and taken to new heights in Labour’s “third way” partnerships between government, private industry, and citizens in a new form of governance for a new modern Britain. This chapter explores first what happened in Skye, and then uses that very contained example to highlight the features of a system that has also been applied to housing, schools, hospitals, universities, and most other publicly funded services. This sea change in the governing of Britain is what Tony Blair, in his final years in power, hoped would be the legacy of his government and would affect Britain for the next fifty years. In its early stages, the Labour government described this aspiration as a shift from government to governance. An examination of these political discourses reveals that there are three separate dimensions to notions of governance: the methods of setting a country in good order, the practice of managing particular institutions, and the conduct of individuals. The three meanings of governance emerged from quite different contexts and debates in the 1980s and 1990s, and they are still represented in separate literatures. This study shows that the three facets of governance refer to three kinds of discipline—the discipline of market competition, the discipline of accountability, and the discipline of self-management. Whereas the three meanings of governance and their associated disciplines have been treated

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in the literature as separate developments, the interest here is to see how they work together conceptually in the creation of new forms of power. The aim is to take a holistic approach to governance by exploring how the three dimensions of governance interrelate—not necessarily coherently.

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The Skye Bridge: Governance and Discipline In many cases, a government will claim that it no longer has money to pay for new bridges, roads, railways, schools, hospitals, or prisons. Instead, a consortium of private corporations builds an installation and operates the service. Then the corporations levy fees against the users in order to recoup the cost of the building, cover management costs, and make a profit. Often this means that the government leases back the school or the hospital. In the case of the Skye Bridge, opened in October 1995, the private corporations charged islanders in this impoverished part of Scotland £5.70 for car access each way—the highest road toll per mile in Europe. Islanders without cars used to travel for free on the government’s ferry, but the opening of the new bridge meant they had to pay a toll to go by bus. They weighed up each journey: was the cost of crossing the bridge worth it, would it pay off? Based on an economic calculus many islanders resisted this new form of governance and the discipline it introduced into their lives.1 They argued in terms of older civil and social definitions of citizenship. The British government told the European Union that the Skye Bridge tolls should be classified as taxes. One leading protester discovered that this contravened the Act of Union that forbade the levying of different taxes in Scotland than in England. As no English islanders paid bridge tolls, the Skye Bridge tolls contravened their constitutional rights (Monbiot 2000: 22). The size of the toll also affected the social citizenship of Skye residents because it limited their ability to access services and participate fully in economic and political life on the mainland. Skye islanders also found that, whilst the bridge tolls attached a new kind of accounting to their participation as citizens, government and the private corporations were becoming less accountable. In order to try and make government take notice, very respectable, middle-aged islanders staged non-violent, dramatic, often humorous, monthly actions to block the bridge and ensure that clearly understood images kept the issue in the media. They also held mass refusals to pay. The government passed legislation that turned refusal to pay the Skye Bridge toll from a civil matter into a criminal offence. The courts (located a toll away, on the mainland of course) became jammed with 378 cases against protesters, and some islanders were jailed. The idea of these so-called public-private partnerships or Public Finance Initiatives (PFI) is to use the disciplines of the private sector to improve the efficiency and cost effectiveness of the public sector. But both the island-

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ers, who examined the financing of the Skye Bridge, and a highly critical Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons revealed that the deal was neither efficient nor cost effective. The bridge and associated infrastructure cost £25 million to build (Monbiot 2000: 27). To finance this, the government raised £13 million from the European Investment Bank (Monbiot 2000: 51) and paid £12 million to the construction companies to cover the costs of approach roads (Public Accounts Committee 1998: para. 44). In other words, it seems the bridge was financed by public funds alone. In addition, “a single investor” contributed £7.5 million while the construction companies only contributed £0.5 million. Neither these contributions, nor the contractors’ expected return of 18.4 percent per year in real terms, were determined competitively (Public Accounts Committee 1998: paras. 41, 42, 59). The government had not even made any comparisons between the proposed PFI deal and alternative ways of funding and providing a reliable link to the mainland—a “serious omission” (Public Accounts Committee 1998: para. 7[i]). As the Public Accounts Committee’s report concluded, the financial terms of the deal were not fully satisfactory, toll payers’ interests were insufficiently protected, and a better comparison of alternative options was needed. But “the Department achieved their primary objective, the provision of a privately funded tolled crossing to Skye” (paras. 7 [i–iii], 8). It seems the only need for tolls was to make the project attractive to private corporations. The government agreed that the private corporations could raise tolls totaling at least £24 million (at 1991 prices) and maybe as much as £37 million (Public Accounts Committee 1998: 6 [Minutes of Evidence], para. 2). For example, a Parliamentary answer revealed that the corporations’ toll income was £3.25 million in 1997 alone (Monbiot 2000: 30). Whilst the project was underway, the government supplied a brand new ferry to keep the service running. But the government agreed to give the bridge contractors a complete monopoly, so the government withdrew the ferry service on the day the bridge opened. This cost the government a foregone income of £1 million per year from the ferry service. The deal was therefore mainly financed by the taxpayer, but yielded an annual profit, in the form of tolls, for the private sector. As Monbiot put it, “So the people of Skye must pay a fee to [the PFI consortium] every time they want to go to or from their island, despite the fact that most of the costs of the bridge have already been met by the taxpayer” (2000: 53). The protesters followed the changing ownership of shares and found that the ultimate recipient of their tolls was Bank of America. When Labour came to power in 1997, they responded to islanders’ protests, not, as promised, by abolishing the tolls, but by subsidizing the tolls of regular users. This meant the government also paid £3 million per annum to Bank of America. Eventually, in December 2004, after nine years of protests and political pressure, the Scottish Executive intervened and bought out the tolls from the private company for a cost of approximately £27 million.

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The Skye protesters had demonstrated that the first Private Finance Initiative was a financial and political failure; they had resisted this “partnership” between government, corporations, and fee-paying citizens. They resented that the PFI enforced an accounting discipline on them whilst weakening the accountability of the government and the PFI consortium. Many of their protests and actions reasserted an older social and civil notion of citizenship, even if several islanders acquired criminal convictions in the process.

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Setting The Country in Good Order: Private Profit in Public Services The Skye islanders are not alone in resisting the introduction of private profiteering in the public sector and associated changes in the meanings of democracy, public service, and citizenship. The British government has pledged that all “council housing” will be brought up to a decent standard by 2010, but will not allow the councils to raise the necessary £20 billion to do this work themselves. Instead councils must transfer ownership of their social housing-to-housing associations to PFI consortiums that can borrow private money to pay for refurbishment. The government then promises to write off the council’s housing debt and makes various promises about making large sums of public money available to help the private companies with the cost of repairs. But to transfer the ownership of council housing requires a ballot of tenants. In 25 percent of the ballots, comprising more than fifty cases, tenants have rejected this option. Notably, in Birmingham, the council with the largest public housing stock, the vote in April 2002 was 2:1 against, and in Prime Minister Blair’s own constituency, Sedgefield, the vote in July 2005 was 58 percent against.2 To avert this unpopularity, the government has asked councils to transfer the management (not the ownership) of housing to private companies called Arm’s-Length Management Organizations (ALMO). This ploy avoids the ballot requirement. Camden council however, still held a ballot and tenants rejected this scheme in January 2004. Opponents argued that the government was trying to con tenants into the first step toward privatization, an argument reinforced when the deputy prime minister’s office suggested that ALMOs would be given complete ownership by 2006 (Martin 2004). The British government has told councils and tenants that they will only receive funds for housing refurbishment if they choose one of the three options: stock transfer, PFI, or ALMO. As the chair of a group of twenty-seven opposing Labour MPs said, “Our housing policy is essentially ‘choose between one of these three options, or you rot in hell.’”3 Councils have often sung the same tune in expensive public relations campaigns: rejection of a PFI or ALMO is depicted as a vote for dereliction. Pressure groups and unions have argued that such privatization

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Governance as a Regime of Discipline ◆ 79

is too expensive because repairs are funded through high interest bank loans and the rents have to provide the PFI consortium with a profit. At the same time, democracy is diminished because tenants have fewer rights and councils have difficulty policing the contract. In September 2005 the Labour Party conference agreed unanimously to demand that the government provides a “fourth option”—direct public investment in houses owned and run by the council.4 Tenants in many places continue to reject the spin and pressure from the government and have mobilized turnouts greater than those recorded in general elections (70 percent in Birmingham, 73 percent in Sedgefield). Similarly, the British government has been transferring schools and even the running of councils’ education departments to the private sector (Walker 2000). There has been a sequence of PFI schemes, each with a different name. “Building Schools for the Future” (BSF) involves the transfer of ownership of schools to a private sector consortium that designs, builds, finances, operates, and manages the new school buildings under a 25–35 year contract. Private investment in the first seventy-eight schools totaled £2.3 billion.5 However, the government matched this capital investment: in 2005–2006 it concentrated £2.1 billion, two-fifths of its total capital budget, on two hundred schools in fourteen councils chosen to participate in BSF.6 Taxpayers further subsidize the scheme because the government provides annual revenue support for the PFI school at the same level as for council owned schools (£350 million in 1999–2000; Whitfield 1999: 6). As Whitfield argues, “PFI is not a solution to local authority’s [sic] financial problems, but a project to marketise and privatise public services and the welfare state” (1999: 6). He had long predicted that providing public services in a private space was not credible in the long run. The private sector consortium that owns the infrastructure would not just want to rent the buildings to the council and run sports and other facilities commercially, they would want to run the educational provision profitably themselves (8). In the next scheme, the government invited local businessmen, religious groups, or voluntary organizations to contribute 10 percent (up to £2 million) toward the cost of rebuilding a school as an “Academy.” The government provides 90 percent of the capital cost and pays for the annual running costs. In return for their investment, the sponsor takes the school out of the control of the local council and appoints the majority of the governors. The governors use their business expertise to run the school, which no longer comes under national agreements on teachers’ pay or restrictions on the use of unqualified teaching assistants.7 Finally, whilst covering the core subjects, the governors set their own priorities for the curriculum. The Academy becomes a “specialist” school, not a local school, and can introduce some selection of pupils.8 By 2004, seventeen Academies had been established: nine funded by businessmen or companies, three by the Church of England’s United Learning Trust, and one by the Vardy Foundation of a car salesman who promotes creationism.9

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The Department for Education and Skills expected Academies to take over schools that audits deemed to be “failing.” The department also “expected” sponsors to involve “local stakeholders” in establishing the new school, but this vague formulation did not seem to include parents.10 Parents in Doncaster, for example, were surprised to find that their school, which inspectors had labeled “good and improving” one year, was the next year, after getting the best exam results in its history, deemed “failing” (Harris 2005: 99–118). Soon they found that the council wanted to give the school to the Vardy Foundation to build a new Academy. Another school in the same council area had gone through a similar process; the headmaster had resigned, reportedly under pressure from the council (Harris 2005). The council had sent a two-sentence questionnaire to parents for their assent to the building of a brand new Academy (but making no mention of the Vardy Foundation’s involvement). Parents and teachers had each only been allowed to ask one question at a meeting, with no chance to follow up. By the time parents had worked out what was going on, the deal had been done. In this case, parents and staff learned from this experience. Parents organized a petition of 1,100 signatures prior to the council’s consultation and teachers organized sequential questioning at their meeting. As a result of the enormous efforts of principally two parents, knowledge of what lay behind the apparently wonderful offer to build a state of the art Academy became widespread. Opposition grew so intense that the mayor dropped the proposal (Harris 2005). There are other examples of resistance to businesscontrolled schools (for example in Newcastle upon Tyne; Hughes 2005). Still, when schools transfer to the private sector there is as yet no statutory requirement to ballot those involved, which was initially how tenants found out about and resisted the glossy deals for private consortia to take over and refurbish their council estates. In what Tony Blair called a “pivotal moment” and “the final and logical conclusion of all the government’s education reforms since 1997” (Wintour 2005a), the government’s 2005 education white paper or policy statement (DfES 2005d) proposed making all schools into Academies, now called “Trust Schools.” The proposal is that each will have a sponsor (for example, a business, church, or charity) with the same freedoms as Academies to own the school’s buildings and assets, appoint the governing body, establish the brand and ethos of the school, become their own admissions authority, set the curriculum, and apply to the secretary of state to set their own pay and conditions for staff. Schools will no longer serve a locality: popular schools will be allowed to expand, even if that means other schools will have to close. Each school will become “independent” of the local authority. The council will no longer be a direct provider of education for its area. Instead, the council, with a commissioning and monitoring role, will become the “parents’ champion,” ensuring that parents have the information available to choose a school, make complaints, replace

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Governance as a Regime of Discipline ◆ 81

unsatisfactory school leaders, and close schools (Blair 2005, Taylor 2005). Blair no longer presents the policy as an invitation for businessmen to take over school leadership; in a discourse far adrift from the experience of the parents in Doncaster, Blair says these changes are to “equip parents,” through their exercise of “choice,” to join the “drive for excellence” (Blair 2005). This white paper at last provoked an organized response from politicians. One of the government’s former secretaries of state for education, Estelle Morris, and fifty-eight Labour MPs, including eight former Labour ministers, launched an alternative white paper (Compass 2005a, Wintour 2005b). Their central test for educational reform was that it should help pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds and schools in the poorest areas. They argued that these proposals do the opposite: the unregulated expansion of popular schools, their ability to skew their intake, the irreversible transfer of public assets into unaccountable organizations, and the reduction of local authorities’ powers to deploy local resources to achieve the optimum performance of all schools in their area, all militated against improvement of the weakest schools (Compass 2005a). The deputy prime minister, Tony Blair’s bridge to traditional Labour party members, even joined the opposition for a time, bluntly saying he was against a twotier system that widened the gap between middle-class and poorer pupils (White 2005). Soon eighty Labour MPs supported the alternative white paper (Compass 2005b), whereas the Labour majority is only sixty-seven. Conservatives, who claim such policies originate from their era, are now in a strong position to shape legislation that Blair sees as his historic legacy to the nation. The reform of the National Health Service is the other issue that Blair sees as his domestic legacy. Only 4 percent of the capital for new hospital projects now comes from public funds. In a study of thirteen completed PFI projects to rebuild hospitals, the cost of capital was more than double the cost of public finance and the post-tax return on shareholders’ funds was more than 100 percent (Shaoul 2004: 50). According to a pressure group of health professionals in London, the bloated costs and late completion of projects “makes a nonsense of ministers’ claims that PFI delivers ‘on time and to budget’” (Lister 2006). The House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee has challenged the scale of debt commitments when hospital trusts contract private companies to build and run a hospital. For example, the Barts and Royal London Hospital, a PFI project of £1.89 billion, commits the hospital trust to annual index-linked payments totaling £5billion over 35–40 years (Lister 2006). The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in London, built by PFI in 2001, has become technically insolvent as its debt rises toward £100 million by 2008–2009 (White 2005). The PFI policy has also run into conflict with other government policies. Each hospital’s performance is audited against more numerous and detailed targets than in any other sector. The results are presented in a system of stars (similar to

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the system used for gourmet restaurants). Hospitals win stars by shifting resources into the specific medical areas under scrutiny at any time, or by simply going over budget (Shore and Wright 2004). The government then offered hospitals a measure of independence from audit if they maintained high star ratings and could operate within budget. The government set a tariff for every treatment, and where a treatment actually costs more, hospitals will simply cut that operation, regardless of patient need, in order to balance the books.11 Now, in an echo of parental “choice” over schooling, the government is giving patients “choice” over which hospital to use. The government’s rhetoric is that patients, by exercising choice, will join the drive for excellence. But it means that hospitals will be paid by results and their revenues are no longer guaranteed. At the 2005 Labour Party conference, leading figures in medicine, health politics, and the arts protested fiercely that the marketization of hospitals through profit-driven competition with international corporations threatened the National Health Service’s ethos of free and equitable health care (Hunter et al. 2005). In hospitals, as in housing and schools, far from introducing the disciplines of the private sector into the public sector, these public-private sector partnerships have proved very attractive to companies searching for a risk-free source of income. The private sector has been reorganizing itself to take advantage of this publicly funded bonanza. First, the big four accountancy firms, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Ernst & Young, and Deloitte, have come to play a central and lucrative role in analyzing public service organizations, defining needs and writing job descriptions (Gosling 2003). Second, building firms that initially received contracts to construct roads, hospitals, prisons, and defense establishments set up new divisions to manage these services on completion. Initial leaders in the field were WS Atkins, Serco, Amey, and Jarvis.12 Third, new firms, notably Capita, currently the largest outsourcing company, were set up specifically to gain management contracts from central and local government.13 Former teachers and public education administrators have established companies such as Nord Anglia, Centre for British Teachers and Cambridge Education Associates, to take over the running of “failing” education authorities.14 Fourth, companies without even the most tenuous connection to public services are now entering the fray. For example, Vosper Thorneycroft, one of the UK’s main warship manufacturers, has decided there are not enough contracts for new ships, and has set up a branch to run education services for local authorities instead—they have a £100 million contract over seven years from Surrey County Council to provide governor advice, curriculum support, and financial and personnel services, and to manage the contracts for catering, grounds maintenance, and cleaning. Vosper Thorneycroft’s education division intends to have an annual turnover of £200 million within three years (Gow 2004). In all, over half of current government spending in the UK goes to private companies (up from 28 percent in 1977) (Leys 2001: 20; Shaoul 2004:

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41–42). Contracts to build and manage the Skye Bridge, run a hospital or an education service, or take over aspects of a university’s operations are investments with minimal risks for corporations, with a guaranteed income from the state and from citizens, and with no competition.15 As Shaoul (2004: 53) puts it, “In effect, under these new forms of procurement, the government guarantees to collect tax from its citizens on behalf of the private sector over the next 20–30 years.” And this “means that de facto, the giant corporations that carry out these contracts will more and more come to control public expenditure and public policy.” These are not merely economic transactions and the agenda is clearly not just, or at all, an attempt to bring the disciplines of the private sector to bear on the public sector. These changes are part of what the Labour government heralds as a shift from government to governance. What does the government mean by governance? Indeed, what are the many, overlapping meanings of governance? And what are the meanings of an associated constellation of terms—market discipline, choice, empowerment, freedom, regulation, accountability, and control? How do they operate as ordering concepts, that is, in the dual sense of establishing new ways of seeing and being in society, and in commanding or eliciting obedience (Roseberry 1994)? And where, as seen in the empirical examples above, are these concepts not accepted as the new order and are resisted?

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Meanings of Governance Anthony Giddens, author of The Third Way (1998) and a major influence on the New Labour government, used the term “governance” to try and capture contemporary political changes. He argued that the economic and political forces of globalization combine with “institutionalized individualism” to create a sea change in political order. By this he meant, first, that although national governments retain considerable political, economic, and cultural power over their citizens and externally, they increasingly wield those powers in collaboration with others: with other nations, transnational organizations and corporations in the international arena, and with companies, voluntary associations, and citizens’ groups in regions and localities. Second, by institutionalized individualism, he meant that employment, educational, social, and welfare organizations all invite people “to plan, understand, design themselves as individuals” who exercise choice, reflect on and regulate their own conduct and pursue aspirations (Beck 1998 quoted in Giddens 1998: 36). “’Government’ hence becomes less identified with ‘the’ government—national government—and more wideranging. ‘Governance’ becomes a more relevant concept to refer to some forms of administrative or regulatory capacities” (Giddens 1998: 32–33). Giddens’s book was part of a sudden resurgence in the 1990s of the use of governance, after it had long been out of common parlance. As Henry

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Watson Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1965) put it: “Governance has now the dignity of an ARCHAISM, its work being done, except in rhetorical or solemn contexts, by government and control” (emphases in the original). The 1989 Oxford English Dictionary (710) was clearly published just before this resurgence in the use of “governance.” It gives no twentiethcentury meanings for “governance,” and most of its examples of usage come from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. Its gives four main definitions:

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1. Setting a country or an estate in good order; being under the control of a person or abstract agency (Fortune, Virtue, Love); and the action of controlling, directing, holding sway or regulating influence. 2. The authority, office, authority or permission to govern (e.g. the command of a ship). 3. The manner in which an institution (e.g. the Court, a hospital) is governed, the system of regulations, rules of practice, discipline. 4. The conduct of life or business, virtuous behaviour, demeanor, wise self-command. Three things are striking about these definitions. First, all the definitions are very abstract. Governance derives from the Greek kubernan, meaning to steer a cart or vessel, which Plato first used as a metaphor for the activity of steering human affairs (Stade n.d.: 38). The OED definitions retain that abstractness: they are not concerned with the power of particular individuals or institutions, but with the way order is maintained and governing is conducted. Second, they convey optimism, an assumption that these processes generate good order and virtuous and wise people. Third, and most important, governance is a holistic concept, encompassing three contemporaneous and connected levels or scales of governing: the good order of a country, the practice of managing a particular institution, and the conduct of individuals. Governance fell out of use in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when governing became the specialized role of a government, which, with the machinery of a centralized bureaucracy, managed the discrete population and economy of a nation state.16 Governance burst back into use with the onset of “globalization” as a “postmodern” form of political and economic organization. Discourses about governance served to justify nation states’ weakened control over their own national economies (Shore forthcoming) and to hasten an alternative to the bureaucratic management of society, which was criticized for creating inefficiency, paternalistic control, and a dependency culture. Instead, governing was to be done through a network of contracts between government and the organizations of capital and civil society. Contractual obligations for performance and accountability would provide the more arm’s-length disciplinary frameworks through which organizations and individuals were to feel they exer-

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cised freedom to manage their own conduct and, in so doing, severally and cumulatively, they would achieve the government’s vision of order, enterprise, and growth. This argument underpinning the promotion of “governance” presupposes that three of the dictionary definitions of governance can be brought into a coherent relationship: the setting of a country in good order, methods of managing particular institutions and the wise conduct of individuals. These three facets of governance reemerged in the 1980s and 1990s from quite different contexts, debates, and literatures. As is developed further below, they also refer to three kinds of discipline—the discipline of the market, the discipline of accountability, and the discipline of selfmanagement. Rather than see the three facets of governance and their associated disciplines as separate developments, the aim here is to explore how government’s concepts of governance depend on them working together coherently. The study indicates however, that there are important inconsistencies between these three facets of governance, both conceptually and in practice.

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Good Governance Good governance, in the OED’s first definition of setting a country in order, first emerged in the 1980s in the discourses of international development. Ronald Stade (n.d.) traces this to the World Bank, which argued that its policies of structural adjustment were failing because of poor public institutions. Structural adjustment programs had bypassed and weakened central and local government, but now good governance argued for a strengthening of all the agencies involved in setting a country in good order. “Private sector initiatives and market mechanisms are important, but they must go hand in hand with good governance—a public service that is efficient, a judicial system that is reliable, and administration that is accountable to its public” (World Bank 1989: xii). African activists introduced “good governance” into a 1989 World Bank report with a spirit of political renewal. Their agenda was to strengthen civil society, human rights, and the independence of the judiciary and of the press against authoritarian governments, and, in reaction to structural adjustment, to put Africans back in the driving seat of their own development. Ronald Stade traces how this political meaning of “good governance” has traveled into the United Nations system, for example in the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the International Labour Organization (ILO), and, especially clearly, in the United Nations’ Development Program (UNDP): Governance is viewed by UNDP as the exercise of economic, political, and administrative authority to manage a country’s affairs at all levels and the means by which states promote social cohesion, integration, and ensure the well being of

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their populations. It embraces all methods used to distribute power and manage public resources, and the organizations that shape government and the execution of policy. It encompasses the mechanisms, processes, and institutions through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their legal rights, meet their obligations, and resolve their differences. (UNDP 1998 quoted in Stade n.d.: 28)

The World Bank itself quickly subverted this meaning of political renewal. In a booklet (World Bank 1992) good governance was converted into New Public Management and an economic rationale for efficient procedures of public management. In pursuit of these efficiencies the Bank works through euphemisms like “good governance,” “capacity building,” “voice,” and “empowerment” to understand and change political institutions in the countries in which it operates.17 This economic meaning of good governance has traveled into the World Bank’s sister organization, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and into the World Trade Organization (WTO). As the concept travels downstream, to country programs and specific projects, Stade argues that there are continual confluences, subversions, and alternative readings of these two meanings of good governance—an economic rationality for public management versus political renewal in all the domains through which social life is ordered. As the concept migrated from the Third World to Western contexts, this tension between political renewal and economic rationality was sustained whilst the sectors to which good governance was applied became much narrower. The concept was especially associated with the 1997 New Labour government.18 Whereas the initial, African-inspired notion concerned all the public, private, and civil society agencies responsible for fostering democratic participation, in Britain in the 1990s, the government’s use of governance focused almost exclusively on service delivery.19 Janet Newman (2001: 1–3) identifies a tension between New Labour’s politics of renewal and its economic rationale, similar to that found in international development. The Third Way, a centrist political philosophy of governance, tried to combine a version of neoliberalism’s market mechanisms, competition, and individualism with a new political alliance to modernize the welfare state. Governance involved reimagining and redrawing relationships between the state, private sector, and civil society, and between the state, professionals, managers, users, and citizens (Mandelson and Liddle 1996: 4–8; Newman 2001: 5). New Labour’s three Ps—partnership, performance, and participation—aimed to equip the UK workforce to compete in a globalized knowledge economy and to deal with deep seated problems of poor schooling, ill health, child poverty, rising crime, and urban decay. At the same time the Third Way was an intensification of neoliberalism’s three Es—economy, efficiency, and effectiveness—with more stringent targets, performance indicators, audits and inspections, value for money reviews, and sanctions on “failing” organizations.

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There seems to be agreement in the political science literature that governance has been linked in Britain to a number of changes in central government. It means dismantling government’s previous role of providing and managing services through bureaucracies. The realigned role of government is, first, to set the aims of policy and the criteria through which to judge their achievement. This role is partly carried out by the office of the prime minister and partly by ministries. The second role of government is to contract out the work and regulate and monitor the performance of contractors. David Osborne and Ted Gaebler (1992) echoed Plato’s early metaphor by saying the role of central government departments is no longer “rowing,” that is, directly delivering services. Other agencies row. Instead central government tries to “steer” by focusing on policy priorities by using funding to try and make sub-contracted organizations respond to policy directives, and by establishing arm’s-length agencies to regulate and audit the performance of subcontracted organizations. By 2000 the civil service had been broken up into small, central, policymaking ministries. Around them they established a huge range of arm’slength national and local executive agencies responsible to ministers, but often with no clear duty to consult locally or make their deliberations public. Some of these agencies establish a vast array of contracts with “partners” who actually provide the service. As seen in the examples of the Skye Bridge and other PFI contracts for housing and schools given above, these partners can be commercial companies, voluntary sector organizations, privatized units, or residual elements of the public sector. Other Quangos (Quasi-Autonomous Non-Government Organizations) specialize in auditing the economic probity, service performance, and organizational effectiveness of the contractors. The results are published as league tables that are used by government in the case of schools and university research departments to concentrate funding on those that perform best and punish those that are “failing.” The league tables are also intended to make recipients of state funding accountable to their “stakeholders,” although this kind of accountability does not equip citizens or workers with democratic representation through which to hold an organization to account. Political scientists disagree about the effects of these changes on the role and power of government (Pierre 2000). The effects may vary between sectors, and this may to some extent explain the differences between political scientists. M. Saward (1992), who studies the civil nuclear industry, thinks these reforms gave the center much more effective control because they entail making a clear separation between politics and administration. Freed from the major bureaucratic and management burden of actually delivering services, ministers and their departments can focus on defining clearly their policy aims and targets. Ministries have devised funding mechanisms to steer their public, private, and voluntary sector contractors

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in the direction set by the policy and developed regulatory and auditing mechanisms to monitor their performance. Rhodes (1997), in contrast, considers that the mechanisms available to government departments for steering the networks of contractors are too weak. He studies local government’s relations with central government. By contracting out services, government departments become just one of many agencies in a network of public, private, and voluntary organizations. Public managers cannot assert any real control over these “self-organizing inter-organizational networks”; they rely on a “game” of bargaining, interdependence, and negotiation to achieve their policy objectives. 20 Government proclamations about funding being tied to “performance measures,” “best practice,” and “value for money” merely camouflage what he calls a “hollowing out” of the state. Instead of Saward’s picture of increased central control over the nuclear industry, in local government services Rhodes identifies networks that are susceptible to little central guidance and that are “governing without Government” (1997: 59). Both sectors have experienced similar changes in the organization of central government associated with “good governance”—ministries concentrate on setting policy directions, and they contract out services and manage contractors at arm’s length to achieve policy objectives through target setting and performance auditing. Do Saward’s and Rhodes’s analyses suggest that these changes have had very different effects on diverse sectors? Or are increased central control and governing without government two coexisting facets of “good governance”? Different sectors offer different rhetorical possibilities and legal constraints. For example, universities are independent organizations, so the government cannot sell or PFI them. The government has used universities’ utter dependence on public funding to micromanage the sector at arm’s length. Through a combination of audit mechanisms, under-funding of teaching, and competitive funding for research, the government, with the voluntary cooperation of university leaders, has restructured the sector as a market (Wright 2004). In the 2004 Higher Education Act, the government won the argument that higher education is no longer a public good, but is a personal, positional good, and that students should therefore pay toward their education. Although Tony Blair was quoted in the House of Commons as saying that this will be the model for all other public services (Hansard 2004: col. 181) the government has, as yet, no possibility of openly applying this argument to other sectors, even where, as in hospitals, it has more direct control. Ernest Bevin’s original statement that the National Health Service (NHS) must be free at the point of need is still sacrosanct. The secretary of state for health restates “we will never abandon the principle that healthcare should be free at the point of need, not based on the ability to pay” (Carvel 2005c) even though the NHS estate and management is increasingly transferred to private companies (Carvel 2005a, 2005b). Leading figures in medicine, health politics, and the arts

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have protested fiercely that the NHS is at a crossroads: “at the heart of the changes is the creation of a market that welcomes profit-driven international corporations and will compel hospitals and health professionals to compete with each other” and these reforms therefore threaten both the ethos of the NHS and equitable delivery of care to patients (Hunter et al. 2005). The same could be argued equally strongly for universities, but academics, public figures, and politicians are not making such a public stand. Even though inherited rhetorical resources and legal constraints require the government to follow different tactics in each sector, the governance of each sector is informed by a similar rationale. The changes in each sector are being achieved by making an appropriate assemblage from a repertoire of funding conditions, performance indicators, audits, and requirements for accountability. When these have succeeded in instilling a new discipline based on an economic rationale, instead of a professional or service ethos, the elite institutions in each sector are released from the trammels of the state to work in partnership with, and in competition with, private sector providers. Government expresses an agenda of political renewal, of autonomous self-regulation, meritocratic success, and social inclusion whilst its funding conditions clearly “steer,” if not micromanage, the sector toward economic rationality and marketization, and maybe ultimately privatization. The contrary political and economic agendas of good governance come together whilst the language, as echoed by Rhodes, suggests that governance is all, as if government hardly exists.

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Consumer Choice and Governance of the Self Alan Finlayson (2003) explains how the new Labour project to create a modern Britain extends economics and a market rationality into all areas of social life, including those like education and health that were previously ring fenced under social democracy. “Economics … is a privileged space within procedures of rule. Because the state can’t or won’t act on the economy directly, it must instead act on people in relation to their economic acts, attempting to create conditions of conviviality” (155). Governance at arm’s length therefore has what Stuart Hall (2003) calls a “subaltern” political dimension: if the government will no longer produce the good society through direct intervention, then it will produce the good citizen who can (Finlayson 2003: 160). In this aspect of governance, government is steering individual citizens to adopt subject positions, conceptions of themselves, and appropriate conduct, seemingly through their own choice and free will—in Foucault’s terms, through governance of the self. For example, “One can see a form of governance behind welfare to work that aims at the individual claimant. A ‘work ethic’ is encouraged, and the claimant is individualized, so as to regard him or herself less as an

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object of state policy and more as a subject who must take on the responsibility for change and development” (Finlayson 2003: 189). Within the dominant market model of modern Britain, a central subject position offered by the government is that of “consumers” of public services. Conceptually this shifts power from the “producer,” the service professional who used to determine a standardized provision according to a professional ideology and, maybe, an attempt to ameliorate structural inequalities. By exercising “choice” among competing providers, so the Public Choice argument runs, the sovereign consumer will be able to fulfill their own needs and aspirations, and the sum total of their individual demands will have the result of raising standards. As Tony Blair put it,

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Choice puts the levers in the hands of parents and patients so that they as citizens and consumers can be a driving force for improvement in their public services. We are proposing to put an entirely different dynamic in place to drive our public services; one where the service will be driven not by the government or by the manager but by the user—the patient, the parent, the pupil and the law-abiding citizen. (Blair quoted in the Guardian, 24 June 2004: 1, and cited in Clarke and Newman 2005: 3)

Government reforms intend consumers to feel that by pursuing their individual aspirations they will generate not only improvements in their own life but in the service and society. Some aspects of this policy were seen above, where hospitals’ income is to be determined by patient choice, and where in education, contrary to the experience of parents in Doncaster, the education white paper now claims to be empowering parents to choose to set up Academies, select their children’s schools, drive up quality, and cause unpopular schools to close. The government pursues this image of the citizen as consumer regardless of protests by the Skye islanders, housing tenants, and parents of school children seen above, and in the face of patients’ sophisticated understandings of the other, multiple identities and relationships in play during their interactions with the health service (Clarke and Newman 2005). Citizens are just expected to exercise their freedom to choose wisely to create the conditions for their families and communities that accord with New Labour’s image of modern Britain. The same figure of the self-managing citizen, who contributes to processes of governance, is also imagined to have the ambition and ability to form him/herself as a successful worker in the modern economy. Accordingly, New Labour’s current constructions emphasize the role of higher education in producing the responsible, self-managing, life long learners who are skilled “symbolic analysts” (Reich 1991). To New Labour, this figure will be the go-ahead worker who will attract to Britain, or even create, industries in the knowledge economy. This same figure is intended to associate their own go-ahead spirit with New Labour as the creator of a wide market in educational and other services from which they choose in their individual projects to prosper and thrive (Wright 2004). These images

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of the worker, the consumer, and the political voter revolve around one another to create a picture of New Labour’s responsible, self managed citizen.

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Conclusion: Marketing Governance as a Disappearing Act This chapter has explored three different facets of governance, each associated with a different form of discipline. In “good governance” the government tries to move more and more parts of the public sector into not just simulated market relations but into actual competition with the private sector. Then government tries to steer these purportedly independent and commercial organizations, through contracts and performance indicators, to perform in such a way that they achieve the government’s social agenda and visions of moral order. In some sectors, government is using public money to subsidize commercial involvement in policy delivery; in others, like higher education, government is starving the sector of funds to press it to marketize and ultimately maybe privatize. But good governance, as a new way of ordering the country, and as expectations about the internal management of contracted organizations, also relies on “the governed,” as workers and citizens, exercising “virtuous and wise self-command” to contribute to processes of governing and the maintenance of moral order.21 As an instrumentality of government, these three meanings of governance connect, at least in government discourses, with three forms of discipline that endeavor to make citizens and workers conform to the government’s vision of modern Britain. Whereas government rhetoric is about empowering citizens to exercise “choice” over their use of services and to “drive up quality,” the examples given above indicate that it is very difficult from the standpoint of a citizen to find mechanisms to make “public” services responsive and to hold them to account. In each of the above examples, it took an inordinate effort for activists, and even service professionals, to track the network of agencies involved and grasp the transformation of public services and of processes of government that is underway. Arm’s-length mechanisms are indeed intended to make government invisible. It is meant to look as if organizations and individuals are acting according to the government’s vision out of their own volition and through the agency of their own autonomy and free will: in other words, as if governance is all and government did not exist. This only works if citizens and workers either do not see the mechanisms at work, or misrecognize them, or do see them and agree with them, and—either way—fall in with the subject positions they are offered. For some citizens, governance only becomes visible or understandable when they are confronted with the privatization of one of their hitherto public facilities. This includes the protesters on the Isle of Skye, the doctors and public figures opposing the transfer of profitable parts of the NHS to the private sector, and parents resisting the privatization of their school or

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tenants of council housing estates. These professionals or users are protesting against their services being given to private companies that are paid out of public funds but without adequate mechanisms for workers and citizens to hold them to account. Few are drawing connections between these particular instances of resistance to discern the overall pattern of transformation across the sectors, to which this chapter is pointing. So far there has not been widespread popular opposition to governance as an overall concept and as a practice of government. Governance still carries the warm and friendly tone of a product aiming to become a household name and much-loved brand. Thus New Labour presents itself as the board of directors of UK public limited company, with glossy annual reports, modeled on a company’s annual report, trying to convince voters of their successful performance, managerial competence, and leadership abilities. The party offers a variety of policies to attract a range of consumers. The role of the leader and his electoral adviser on the electorate is to use opinion polls and focus groups to discover these voter preferences, present them in conformity with the new reality of global markets, and market them like a commodity.22 Peter Mandelson, the party’s election manager in 1997, told the Institute of Directors in 1998: “It has been the job of New Labour’s architects to translate their understanding of the customer into offerings he or she is willing to pay for. And then, and only then, to convey to potential customers the attributes of that offering through all the different components that make up a successful brand—product positioning, packaging, advertising and communications” (quoted in Leys 2001: 68). The radical magazine Red Pepper (1999: 16) published as a spoof an ostensibly “confidential” memo from the Downing Street electoral adviser to the prime minister. This memo catches the dilemmas posed by “governance” relations between people and government: New Labour believes in government, but identification with government will threaten their popularity as voters distrust government. The solution is first to modernize government so that it is run like a multinational corporation that focuses on “outcomes that deliver to customers.” Second, New Labour has to “alter the way people feel about government so that voters see it as something that they consume, not as a power over them.” People do not want to be sold things to; it makes them feel manipulated. Instead, a corporation learns what people want and creates a fitting image of itself and its products, so that consumers are provided with opportunities to which they already aspire and through which they discover their true selves. The subordination of the government machine to modern populism must proceed without publicity so that voters do not notice policies. They should enjoy a better service and feel good but must not be alarmed by awareness of change or the danger of conflict. The spoof concludes: “For policy to be what it really is, it must become what it is not. This is the modern way. People do not want government with a capital G. They want a distinctive,

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bright and modern government that uses normal consumer language and not ‘political’ terms. A government they feel ‘at home’ with, a government that has become what it is not.” In keeping with this Alice in Wonderland language, government disappears from view, until like the Cheshire cat, only the grin of the leader is left, as the enduring image of governance without government.

Notes

1.

2.

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3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the European Association of Social Anthropologists conference at Vienna, and another, “Hollowed Out Education?”, was the keynote address to “Questions of Order,” the conference of the Danish Research School in Anthropology and Ethnography at Kørsor, Denmark, 29–31 January 2003. On later versions, I am especially grateful to Anwar Tlili, Cris Shore, Robert Gibb, David Mills, and Noel Dyck for their comments that were rich in ideas and drew comparisons with other contexts. This account is based on the websites of Skye and Kyle Against Tolls (SKAT) and one of the protesters between 2003 and August 2005, and Monbiot 2000. Defend Council Housing, accessed 29 August 2005, and accessed 30 September 2005. Austin Mitchell MP quoted in Weaver 2005. Twenty-seven MPs formed the House of Commons Council Housing Group and produced a report, Support for the “Fourth Option” for Council Housing (2005). accessed 29 August 2005. The pressure group, Defend Council Housing, reported on the adjournment debate in Parliament on the Fourth Option on 29 June 2005, accessed 4 August 2005, and on the unanimous motion in support of the Fourth Option at the Labour Party conference on 29 September 2005,

accessed 30 September 2005. See also Lynne Jones MP’s arguments prior to the Birmingham vote, accessed 4 August 2005. Research to support the Fourth Option comes from the Centre for Public Services (2004), and the public sector workers’ unions, Amicus and UNISON. See UNISON’s Positively Public campaign, accessed 4 August 2005, and Gosling 2004. accessed 29 August 2005. accessed 30 August 2005. The Department for Education and Skills 2005 and their Standards Site, accessed 3 August 2005. The Department for Education and Skills’ Standards Site, accessed 3 August 2005.

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9. Department for Education and Skills 2005 “Academies/ Academies that are in development/ Academies that are open,” Standards Site, accessed 3 August 2005. 10. The Department for Education and Skills’ Standards Site, accessed 3 August 2005. The education white paper (DfES 2005d) grants parents a larger role. 11. Oxfordshire announced it would no longer carry out cardiac ablation. Tony Blair had just received this treatment himself. The National Health Service’s “framework” recommends this simple procedure that relieves patients’ suffering and reduces much higher health care costs in the long term. It costs £7,500–£8,500 in the private sector. The National Health Service fixed the tariff at £2,000. Oxfordshire had a great demand for this treatment, which meant they either lost money on each case, or, if they spread out the caseload, they were in danger of penalties for failing to meet the government’s six-month waiting list target (Boseley 2006). 12. For example, Serco, established in 1929, operates in thirty countries and its pretax profits for 2001 rose by 22.9 percent to £46.4million. In the UK it participated in early PFI schemes for prisons, young offenders’ institutes, a hospital, urban metros, and railways. Most employees are now in the arm it developed to manage such facilities, not least the Atomic Weapons Establishment. It runs the education services of Walsall and Bradford, the latter for £360million over ten years is based on cutting costs by 10 percent and gaining 10 percent profit. 13. Capita, born in 1984 out of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, purchased thirty companies and government agencies. In June 2002 its half yearly profits rose by 38 percent to £40million. Its contract for administering the national Individual Learning Accounts ended two years early amid losses and fraud. Its contracts for setting up the Home Office’s Criminal Records Bureau and for running Lambeth Council’s housing benefits have either been terminated or subject to fines because of the levels of chaos and complaints. A fifth of its turnover comes from the education sector and it has contracts with 158 local education authorities. 14. Nord Anglia, established by Kevin McNeany, a former English teacher, is a provider of education services worldwide and runs Hackney council’s education services. In 1999 it had a £62million turnover and a 9.8 percent rise in pre-tax profits to £2.78million. Neil McIntosh, former director of VSO and Shelter, established the Centre for British Teachers. They started in teacher recruitment and Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) inspections and moved into education management with a contract to run Lambeth’s education action zone. This firm had a £50million turnover in 2000. Cambridge Education Associates was founded by Brian Oakley Smith, former Cambridge deputy chief education officer. This firm started as a consultant on Local Management of Schools, is the largest contractor for OFSTED inspections and for inspector training, and became part of the international construction company Mott McDonald to finance a successful bid in 2000 for the contract to run Islington school services, with a profit cap of £600 thousand per annum. 15. Even so, after a rail crash in 2002 in which seven people were killed on the track it was contracted to maintain, Jarvis effectively went bust with £354million losses in 2005. The company caused havoc to public services with delayed

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16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

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21.

22.

building work on schools, etc., and eventually closed its facilities management department that managed PFI projects after their construction (“Jarvis Chief Admits ‘Shocking’ Results,” Guardian, 16 July 2005). I am purposefully avoiding the association of governance with English bastard feudalism, not only to avoid poor history, but because I want to stand strongly against the current Social Darwinian discourses which associate good governance with Western “modernity” and ascribe the problems of “Africa” to a deficit model—a corruption of traditional forms (often wrongly equated with feudalism) combined with a failure to achieve modernity. This is in apparent contravention of its mandate, which prohibits the World Bank from taking political considerations into account (Economist 2005: 82– 83). The World Bank now commits 25 percent of its budget to “law and public administration.” Countries have to meet the World Bank’s criteria of good governance if their crippling loans, which were made under structural adjustment programs, are to be annulled. R. A. W. Rhodes (1996) had already begun to explore governance before the 1997 election, and afterward there was a burgeoning political science literature, trying to work out what the New Labour government meant by a shift from government to governance. Now Tony Blair’s speeches predominantly use “good governance” in reference to Africa or the EU, not Britain—it is something he exonerates other places to develop, but which is apparently not lacking at home. Rhodes (1997) reads like an extension of the 1980s “Rhodes model” of relations between central and local government. He considered the two tiers to be interdependent. Each deploys resources (finance, knowledge, etc.) on which the other is dependent, and uses negotiating tactics in a fluctuating game to maximize their influence over outcomes and minimize their reliance on the other tier of government. This approach is in contrast to much political science that may be interested in government discourse and policy making (a good example is Finlayson 2003) or may focus on the internal workings of particular agencies or tiers of government. Rhodes, for example, proclaimed that his intention was to keep the formal institutions of government as the subject matter of his discipline in order to preserve “the historic heart of political science” (1997: 5, 6, 19). The more holistic approach taken in this paper is to begin to include “the governed” as part of the picture. The closed world of Downing Street policy making was exposed by Benji Pell the Binman, who earned his living by going through the rubbish bins outside the private homes of the prime minister’s advisers, reassembling their discarded draft reports and selling them to the press. For example, he exposed the overconfident and incoherent advice arising from the focus groups of Philip Gould, the leader’s electoral advisor in the 1990s.

References Beck, Ulrich. 1998. “The Cosmopolitan Manifest.” New Statesman, 20 March. Blair, Tony. 2005. “Full text: Tony Blair’s Speech on Education Reform.” Guardian, 24 October.

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Boseley, Sarah. 2006. “NHS Trust Scraps Op that Cured Blair.” Guardian, 2 January. Carvel, John. 2005a. “Plans to Hand Over NHS Staff and Buildings to Private Sector.” Guardian, 22 September. ———. 2005b. “Unapologetic Hewitt Denies Trying to Privatise NHS.” Guardian, 23 September. ———. 2005c. “Coalition to Keep NHS Public.” Guardian, 24 September: 1. Centre for Public Services. 2004. The Case for the 4th Option for Council Housing and a Critique of Arm’s Length Management Organisations. Sheffield, UK: Centre for Public Services. Clarke, John, and Janet Newman. 2005. “What’s in a Name? New Labour’s Citizen-Consumers and the Remaking of Public Services.” Paper to CRESC conference, “Culture and Social Change: Disciplinary Exchanges.” Manchester, UK, 11–13 July. Compass. 2005a. “Shaping the Education Bill—Reaching for Consensus,” . Accessed 12 Jan 2006. ———. 2005b. “Shaping the Education Bill—Reaching for Consensus,” list of supporters. . Accessed 12 Jan 2006. DfES (Department for Education and Skills). 2005a. Academies Sponsor Prospectus 2005. Nottingham, UK: DfES. ———. 2005b. “Academies/Academies that are in Development/Academies that are Open.” The Standards Site. < http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/acadmies/ projects/development/?version=1>. Accessed 3 August 2005. ———. 2005c. “Building Schools for the Future.” . Accessed 3 August 2005. ———. 2005d. Higher Standards, Better Schools for All: More Choice for Parents and Pupils (White Paper). London: The Stationery Office. . Accessed 29 January 2006. 2005. “A Regime Changes.” Economist, 4 June: 81–83. Finlayson, Alan. 2003. Making Sense of New Labour. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Fowler, Henry Watson. 1965. Dictionary of Modern English Usage. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Giddens, Anthony. 1998. The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy. Cambridge: Polity. Gosling, Paul. 2003. “Stitched Up: How the Big Four Accountancy Firms have PFI under their Thumbs.” London: UNISON. . Accessed 25 September 2005 ———. 2004. “Against the Public Interest: Why a ‘Licence to Print Money’ can also be a Recipe for Disaster.” London: UNISON. . Accessed 25 September 2005 Gow, David. 2004. “Quantum Mechanic: Paul Lester, Chief Executive of VT Group.” Guardian, 24 April: 30. Hall, Stuart. 2003. “New Labour’s Double Shuffle.” Soundings 24: 10–24. Hansard. 2004. “Higher Education Bill (Second Reading),” 27 January, cols. 167–284. . Accessed 29 March 2004.

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Harris, John. 2005. So Who Do We Vote for Now? London: Faber and Faber. House of Commons Council Housing Group. 2005. Support for the “Fourth Option” for Council Housing. London: House of Commons. . Accessed 29 August 2005. Hughes, Solomon. 2005. “Newcastle Joins Resistance to Business-Controlled Schools.” Red Pepper, February: 8. Hunter, David, et al. 2005. “The Future of the NHS is at Stake.” Guardian, Letters, 24 September. Leys, Colin. 2001. Market Driven Politics. London: Verso. Lister, John. 2006. “Counting the Real Costs of Private Finance in Healthcare.” Guardian, 2 January. Mandelson, Peter, and Roger Liddle. 1996. The Blair Revolution: Can New Labour Deliver? London: Faber and Faber. Martin, John. 2004. “Council Housing Transfer Plans ‘Betray’ Tenants.” Guardian, 3 September. Monbiot, George. 2000. Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain. London: Macmillan. Newman, Janet. 2001. Modernising Governance: New Labour, Policy and Society. London: Sage. Osborne, David, and Ted Gaebler. 1992. Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector. New York: Plume. Oxford English Dictionary. 1989. Vol. VI. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Pierre, Jon, ed. 2000. Debating Governance: Authority, Steering and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons. 1998. Forty Second Report: The Skye Bridge. London: The Stationery Office. . Accessed 7 Sept 2004. Red Pepper. 1999. “Brand Loyalty.” January, p. 16. Reich, Robert. 1991. The Work of Nations. New York: Vintage Books. Rhodes, R. A. W. 1996. “The New Governance: Governing without Government.” Political Studies 44: 652–67. ———. 1997. Understanding Governance. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Roseberry, William. 1994. “‘Comment’ on Wolf’s ‘Perilous Ideas.” Current Anthropology 35(1): 1–12. Saward, M. 1992. “The Civil Nuclear Network in Britain.” In Policy Networks in British Government. Edited by D. Marsh and R. A. W. Rhodes. Oxford: Clarendon. Shaoul, Jean. 2004. “The Impact of Privatisation on Financial Statistics: Accounting for Public Money after Privatisation.” Radical Statistics 86: 40–56. Shore, Cris. Forthcoming. “’Government without statehood’? Anthropological Perspectives on Governance and Sovereignty in the European Union.” European Law Journal. Shore, Cris, and Susan Wright. 2004. “Whose Accountability? Governmentality and the Auditing of Universities.” Parallax 10(2): 100–16. Stade, Ronald. N.d. “Global Concept Chains: Cultural Engineering, Political Contestation and Global Scenarios.” Unpublished manuscript. Taylor, Matthew. 2005. “How the Changes Will Work.” Guardian, 26 October.

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UNDP. 1998. UNDP and Governance: Experiences and Lessons Learnt. New York: Management Development and Governance Division, UNDP. . Accessed 31 October 2005. Walker, David. 2000. “Privatisation Stalking LEAs.” Public Eye 32 (April–June). . Accessed 24 September 2005. Weaver, Matt. 2005. “Anger over Council Housing ‘Dirty Tricks.’” Guardian, 30 June. White, Michael. 2005. “Prescott Stands by Attack on Labour’s School Reforms.” Guardian, 19 December. Whitfield, Dexter. 1999. “Private Finance Initiative: The Commodification and Marketisation of Education.” Education and Social Justice 1(2): 2–13. Wintour, Patrick. 2005a. “Blair Risks Anger over Reform of Secondary Schools.” Guardian, 24 October. ———. 2005b. “Labour Rebels Publish Alternative Schools Plan.” Guardian, 15 December. World Bank. 1989 Sub-Saharan Africa—From Crisis to Sustainable Growth. Washington, DC: World Bank. ———. 1992 Governance and Development. Washington, DC: World Bank. Wright, Susan. 2004. “Markets, Corporations, Consumers? New Landscapes of Higher Education.” LATISS, Learning and Teaching in the Social Sciences 1(2): 71–93.

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6 Creatively Sculpting the Self through the Discipline of Martial Arts Training

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Tamara Kohn

In this chapter I will suggest how and why we might usefully extend the scope of traditional renderings and definitions of discipline in order to recognize and highlight the positive and potentially creative energy that may come from disciplined training. A focus on embodied and often reflexive experiences of disciplinary process will throw light on related notions of power, agency, self, and intersubjectivity. Emphasizing the processual—the “how” rather than the “what” of disciplinary action and experience—allows us to look at how ideas about choice, transformation, and the celebration of self may reframe our understandings of “discipline” more broadly. My ethnographic focus will be on materials gleaned through my personal training and research in the UK, Continental Europe, and the United States in the Japanese martial art of aikido, which is, like all the traditional Japanese arts, a highly disciplined practice. A notion of “discipline” defines the art itself and appears quite frequently in spoken and written reflection about its practice, especially in discourse on both the “what” and the “how” of the art. It encompasses the ritually enclosed space of the mat, the teaching of aikido, the rules of etiquette, the huge range of techniques, the repetitive bodily training, the testing, the notion of chosen life path that informs the way in which practitioners envision themselves and others in their social and sometimes spiritual worlds. The disciplined self occupies a classificatory space in society (for example “I am an aikidoist,” or, more accurately, “I am, through my interactions with others, an aikidoist”) as well as reacting to social environments in new and creative ways (see Kohn [forthcoming]). The discipline of aikido is broad, potentially positive, non-prescriptive, playful, and creative rather than purely controlling, limiting, rational, rule bound, and punishing, and I will draw from some literature that suggests this is true of many other disciplinary practices as well. Most of my examples, though, will come

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from the lived experience on the training mat that I have felt and as expressed by other aikido practitioners and teachers of various levels and capabilities. Selves are sculpted in many social arenas in life, but the discipline of in-body practice provides a particularly challenging example to think with. With substantial reference to the aikido example, there are several key points about “discipline” that I wish to introduce and illustrate in the following five sections and which I believe are of more general relevance. The first section examines discipline as choice, power, desire, and agency, while the second attempts to understand how such disciplinary qualities and potentialities are achieved through mimesis and contact over time. The third describes how disciplinary practice is often framed in terms of power over the revealed and celebrated self rather than power over others. The fourth studies the centrality of intersubjectivity and the teacher/student relationship in notions of “discipline,” and the final section looks at the way in which it may be possible for fellow practitioners to somatically “read” the disciplined social body.

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Discipline as Choice, Power, Desire, Agency The dictionary definitions of “discipline” imply a focus on the disciplined self as being controlled and affected by more knowledgeable and powerful others and the notion that the disciplined subject may often lack control or agency in his or her training. While this may sometimes apply to particular disciplines in forced or obligatory institutionalized contexts (prisons, military schools, and so on), these contexts only provide a small proportion of disciplinary situations within which humans find themselves. In the dictionary summation of “discipline” and in the use of the term by many educationalists, for example, A makes B do (or not do) X. Without A’s effort, B wouldn’t be disciplined. But I believe that the form of “discipline” examined in a number of the chapters in this volume is about B making B do X for him or herself, or A leading B to do X for him or herself. The ultimate power is discovered and then applied by B, even if it is initially demonstrated by A. The externally meted out (and not always welcomely received) rationality associated with discipline in some institutionalized contexts may be challenged by individually chosen and passionately pursued commitments to voluntary disciplined practices in the realms of religion, sports, and elsewhere. The stories of how people first encounter many disciplinary regimes are, in fact, often filled with tales of choice, commitment and desire despite the hardships that must be endured during the disciplinary process. The disciplined body in this sense has agency, and that agency develops out of the desire to accept such training. To illustrate this let me introduce the discipline of aikido.1 Aikido is a “modern manifestation of the Japanese martial arts (budo)” (Ueshiba

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1984: 14) that requires one to “blend” or “harmonize” with and then redirect the energy of an attack to throw or pin an attacker. Coordination and athleticism is required through paired practice, and yet unlike most “sports” and many martial arts, it is non-competitive. Aikido was founded by Morihei Ueshiba (1883–1969), also known as “O-Sensei” (Great Teacher) to his students. “Ai” may be translated as “harmony,” “Ki” refers to “spirit,” and “Do” means “way”—hence aikido can be translated as the way of harmony of spirit. With aikido, even a small physically weak person can learn to redirect the energy of a strong attack if he or she learns to apply basic principles of movement. Circular or spiraling movements are key in understanding how to execute aikido techniques. Aikido practice is centered on learning a series of forms/movements (kata) in which the student must participate as the executor of the technique and alternately as the receiver in paired exercises. Unlike the kata practiced in other martial arts, in aikido emphasis is placed upon the correct “feeling” of execution rather than visual correctness. It is often said that receiving the technique (ukemi) is the key to understanding aikido, for in ukemi one conditions the body and learns the art of blending with and absorbing the energy of an attack. In the 1950s and 1960s, O-Sensei sent a number of his senior students to establish aikido dojos around the globe, and now thousands of dojos may be found worldwide. One of the earliest of O-Sensei’s students to leave Japan was Kazuo Chiba, who brought aikido to England in the early 1960s— first to the northeast (Sunderland) and then London. He eventually settled in San Diego, California, where he has established a very successful dojo that attracts students from all over the world, including Japan, who wish to study with such a fine master. In many respects, the San Diego dojo has become a pilgrimage site—a destination that people will travel from far to attend for spiritual as well as physical training. Much of my ethnographic material comes from several months spent training with and working with Chiba Sensei and his students. This martial “way” of aikido is a “technology of the body” (Foucault 1977) and it is also a discipline in the way that anthropology and other branches of study are disciplines. It is both an object of study and a method of study. According to Foucault, disciplines are “micromechanisms of power whereby individuals are molded to serve the needs of power” (Ransom 1997: 59). In this way he suggests that “a body is docile that may be subjected, used, transformed and improved” (Foucault 1977: 136). He says, further, that discipline produces subjected and practiced bodies, “docile” bodies, and that it “dissociates power from the body” (138). I find Foucault’s notions here useful to describe the appearance of the aikidoist’s body at particular moments in the training process—for example, in the times when a student is being directly worked with in a focused way by a master teacher, and is thrown hard again and again and whose movement as uke is corrected/guided with words and bodily actions. At such times you may imagine the student’s body as docile, subjected, and

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in the process of being improved through the disciplinary training. But I would argue that the body is never completely docile. We are always engaging with our environment through our bodies. Even when “being disciplined” rather than subjecting ourselves to discipline, there is a personal somatic response to the requirements placed on the body. And yet I have been told that it is a body with too much “ego” in the martial arts disciplines that can become stuck in a more docile phase in its training and is therefore unable to empower or truly enrich itself. As Kris Chapman writes for karate practitioners, “It is important to emphasize the task of tempering one’s ego, because it is through training in this ‘way’ that identity can be examined and defined more personally from within, rather than simply prescribed and imposed by sources external to the self” (2004: 326).2 The realization of “tempering the ego” is sometimes described in Japanese discourse as mushin (no-mindedness), which suggests that the aim of practice is for action and intuition to be unified without conscious intention. Yet as we will discover in the next section, not all practitioners are aware of such esoteric aims (Chapman, personal communication). Aikido experience as well as aikido discourse does allow for an empowering sense of self-guidance and independence that emerges from the guided training. Carol,3 a senior teacher in California, told me: “There is a power that is in me in aikido. I feel that I am very strong in that way, very powerful, and I think my students get to experience that. I know that I don’t look like I’m a very powerful person so it’s deceiving. It’s very hard for male students to recognize it as being a real power—only as they are more into training do they recognize it, otherwise they wouldn’t stay. And only then does the power of their own aikido emerge.” Here we see that the power shown by A is an embodied demonstration that keeps B on the path in the hope that he can learn how to generate such power in himself. The same could be said for any disciplined body practice or academic pursuit. A is not necessarily in the business of controlling B, but rather of maintaining a lineage, preserving an art, of helping people help themselves. Perhaps it is even more apt to suggest that A is in the business of controlling A, and in doing so A effects control on B. The practice generates a sense of self-control that in turn is transmitted through contact in practice to others as an evolving art form. Disciplinary “power” here is not about conflicting interests that entail force, coercion, or manipulation (see Lukes 1974). Its expression in this ethnographic context is a collaborative and agreeable, if often difficult and painful, one.

Discipline through Mimesis and Contact—Creative Power The method or “how” of disciplinary study is lacking in most dictionary definitions, and I would like to suggest that it is in understanding the “how”—the process—of discipline that it may be more clearly under-

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stood. Creative power comes out of the imitation and then the absorption of that which came before. Michael Taussig has written about how one may “get hold of something by means of its likeness.” “Here,” he said, “is what is crucial in the resurgence of the mimetic faculty, namely the twolayered notion of mimesis that is involved—a copying or imitation, and a palpable, sensuous, connection between the very body of the perceiver and the perceived” (1993: 21). Taussig’s description of these dual modes of mimesis resonates with J. G. Frazer’s two types of sympathetic magic: homeopathic magic that acts upon a law of similarity, and contagious magic that works upon the idea that things in physical contact will affect each other (1957: 16). We will see how disciplined practice and teaching, certainly for aikido, works upon both of these principles. Chiba Sensei often tells his students they need to be better thieves—in other words, to learn on the aikido mat one needs to effectively steal from other bodies in motion, to steal tiny subconscious elements, attitudes, postures, and hints of movement.4 These are then absorbed and refigured in one’s own body over long periods of time. Disciplinary mimesis doesn’t occur merely in a moment or an act or a list of rules. It is said by various Zen masters and aikido masters and teachers that a discipline is absorbed from the air or training environment through the skin’s pores. When used as metaphor, air and skin suggest a holistic process of disciplined learning that doesn’t privilege one sense over another. But the skin is also quite literally the point of contact or touch. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s work on the mutuality of touch or inter-corporeality suggests that embodiment is not a single experience—I touch and am touched at exactly the same time (1968: 142). The discipline of touch is the “how” of touching. It is an example of controlled intimacy. So mimicry evokes Frazer’s ideas of homeopathic magic while notions of touch evoke Frazer’s ideas of contagious magic, and the two work together to suggest ways in which an artistic discipline is thought to be transmitted both physically and metaphorically. Discipline through mimesis naturally involves creativity and freedom since the copy made with the body in motion is never the same as the original; the focus on contact and “getting the right feeling” is a personal one. There is always going to be a smaller or greater lack of convergence between the demonstrated form and the mimetic performance. I would argue that the creative involvement in disciplinary activities like aikido, through and beyond mimesis, absorb our full attention, actively capture our imagination, and constitute activities full of enjoyment and potential creative freedom and power. The work of psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi identifies these challenging creative moments encountered deep in the doing of a chosen task as moments of “flow” (1991). The joy comes not out of achieving a goal, but out of the activity for its own sake, an “autotelic” experience (1996: 122), and this is the point at which creativity emerges. Csikszentmihalyi defines a flow experience as one in which you

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are fully engrossed in some activity purely for its own sake without any attention to time or events outside of that activity and which involves all your senses (1991). In “flow,” you stop thinking altogether and just “do.” It is what athletes often call “being in the zone” or what artists have called “rapture” (1991). Flow offers a sense of happy control, and in flow activity a concern for the self disappears, giving way to a stronger sense of self when the flow experience ends. I believe these ideas apply usefully to the study of processes and experiences of much disciplinary practice.

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Disciplinary Process—Revealing and Celebrating the Self Control and power may be as revealing and celebratory of the disciplined body as they are restraining. Such revelation is not necessarily about creating a good citizen out of a criminal, a soldier out of a thief, nor about new moralities and vocations and changing one into a new and better self, but instead about the process of unpeeling the excess and revealing a self that has always been there. Ultimately discipline includes the control that comes from the disciplined subject rather than just from a disciplining other. One may initially follow a teacher for form and instruction, but then proceed on one’s own to experience the training, the difficulty, and the flow. Discipline in this way is often felt to lead to the discovery and exposure of an estranged self, but a self that is “everywhere reciprocal to other selves, both behaviorally and experientially” (Jackson 1998: 10), and, in the case of training, also physically. In aikido, the discipline of hard physical training of repeated forms can give way to a sense of freedom and power in performance. As Peter Collins’s chapter (this volume) on Quaker discipline reminds us, there is a big gap to deal with here between the “oughts” and the “is.” What aikido demonstrates is that while the philosophies that encircle its practice can be useful to think with, they are not intrinsic to the training. They tell us a great deal about various notions of the self as individual and the self in society. Chiba Sensei has suggested, for example, that individuals are gems and that we should all be polishing our own stones. This implies that the individual inside is pure and shiny despite whatever physical and mental processes have tarnished it and that the friction of discipline polishes it. O-Sensei, the founder of aikido, often said that one’s body is a miniature universe. The body is the site from which one thinks, and it’s the object of thought (Gallop 1988). Control, as we found earlier, works from within the self—not only from a teacher or guardian. Teachers are guiding tools that are used in order to develop control of the self. Chiba Sensei has told his students, “Aikido is the art of self discovery—don’t add to the self that is already there.”5 So the aikido student’s body is never perceived of as an empty slate and his collaboration in the disciplinary enterprise is as central to the process as is the influence and power of the teacher. These emic un-

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derstandings allow us to see the enabling and celebratory aspects of committed disciplinary training quite clearly. Following Nietzsche (1987), we can appreciate the way such training can release a tremendous creative energy from individuals that is realized through power over the self rather than power over others. All such notions of polishing, peeling, releasing, or emptying are familiar themes in Zen discourse, and aikido practitioners who also follow Buddhist teaching easily recognize them. But these may also resonate with someone hearing this for the first time—a practicing or non-practicing Christian, Muslim, or Jew who has never been exposed to the philosophies of the East. One could extend this discussion on discipline to a much larger, ancient, and cross-cultural debate about the relations between body and mind or the relations between self, other, and universe. But for the purposes of this chapter, I simply wish to suggest that only some aikidoists engage in the whole cultural package, demonstrating, for example, their commitment to Zen training, the practicing of zazen (seated meditation), the study of iaido (drawing of the sword), and the dedicated reading of Japanese martial history and philosophy. Some committed aikido students I have encountered have little awareness of Japan as a country or as a cultural homeland of their practice, they only read papers like the Daily Sun, but they express clearly how deeply they love the way aikido training makes them feel and move—how it allows them to lose themselves in the moment and not think about anything else.6 Practitioners at both ends of this spectrum of cultural awareness could, I would argue, achieve the same levels of proficiency in the art of aikido. Neither is privileged, although their experience of their respective variations of the art might be expressed in very different terms. O-Sensei, for instance, was a deeply spiritual man, but one needn’t mimic his study of Shintoism to study aikido. My teacher, Chiba Sensei, turned away from O Sensei’s spiritual Shinto path early in his intense training with the founder and followed a different practice of Zen Buddhism. He urges his students to follow this too and to practice zazen in the interest of understanding fully where his aikido comes from and also for their own personal development. Yet he is the first to recognize that this is not necessary in order for one to be committed to the discipline of aikido. Contact and imitation together make for a practical lineage regardless of a depth of difference in the practitioners’ off-mat experience. Aikidoists sometimes feel that their aikido is especially enriched or more “authentic” because of spiritual training or familiarity with Japanese culture and language, or particular teachers or their other training regimes, but they still train together with others who pursue the discipline of aikido with equal dedication. We share experience of in-body disciplines directly through our physical contact with others. It is through the experience-generated body-self in practice that one’s self, agency, and power are “disciplined” or transformed (Zarilli 1998: 7).

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Discipline’s Intersubjectivity and the Teacher/Student Relationship Discipline is an expression of particular relationships—with oneself, with other students, and with teachers. As an expression of relationships, discipline “moves continually between positive and negative poles” (Jackson 1998: 9); it is a prime example of what is now popularly called in anthropological discourse “intersubjective experience.” Aikido discipline is experienced through an awareness of one’s own body felt in physical contact with others within the ritual environment of the mat during practice. It may appear initially as an ironic contradiction that a paired practice is about working on the self, and yet the self has no meaning in isolation. In fact, in the Japanese language, self translates as Jibun, that “literally means ‘self-part’—a part of a larger whole that consists of groups and relationships…. Self attains form through relating to others” (Rosenberger 1992: 4). Similarly, Foucault has suggested generally that “discipline ‘makes’ individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that regards individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exercise” (1977: 170). So the individual aikido body working with others finds itself changing. Change is sculpted into the body unselfconsciously over years of training and hard effort as one works on distance (ma-ai), timing, posture, contact, center, and so on (see Kohn 2001, 2003). Such discipline of the socially defined self is a life-long pursuit. Along that life path of practice emanates a notion of power that is deeply personal, explaining the commonality of the usage of the word “power” in individuals’ understandings of transformations occurring in their bodies and their social lives. Christoph Menke, in a critical study of Foucault’s works on practice, suggests that according to Foucault, “disciplinary practices are meant to produce subjects who are able to adhere to norms or degrees of normality, whereas aesthetic-existential practices develop subjects who are able to lead autonomous lives or make personal decisions” (2003: 203). Popular and dictionary usages of “discipline” evoke the first production and are relevant to the observable study of aikido techniques and the development of skills in the controlled environment of the mat. An understanding of aikido as aesthetic practice interwoven with skilled practice evokes the latter and helps us to understand the individual potential to recognize power as a revelation of individual freedom. Such power, however, is always relational (for example compared to what one might have experienced in the past) and, following Arendt, it always possesses a “potential” character. It is never an “unchangeable, measurable, and reliable entity like force or strength” (Arendt 1958: 200). However, Arendt also posits, “power springs up between men when they act together and vanishes the moment they disperse” (200). This is perhaps a relevant observation in a political context but maybe less so in the study

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of power within the context of disciplinary praxis. Surely the language of embodied experience and reflection used by practitioners contests the notion that power cannot be held by individuals in isolation. I would rather extend the notion of power, as Foucault does, to allow for a sense of power to remain within the individual after the encounter that produces it, if that allows for the voices of the subjects of such study to be heard. As W. I. Thomas famously wrote, “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (1928: 572).7 Hence, the teacher who earlier spoke of “the power that is in me in aikido” is indeed experiencing “real” power. Despite the earlier discussion that shows how transformations shown and felt through working closely with a senior teacher are ultimately generated and controlled by the self, the teacher/student relationship is critical to the discipline of martial arts training, both on and off the mat. There are clear ideas of hierarchy in such study reinforced by a rigorous and highly ritualized system of testing and ranking. Foucault has observed that grading and ranking is part of the disciplinary process that affords hierarchy to different abilities and also punishes and rewards (1977: 181). In martial arts practice, highly ranked seniors expect to be treated with particular respect that is scripted into the rituals enacted on the mat and the social interactions off it. Serious students look for a teacher whom they feel will both embody the art they wish to “steal” from and one who will be someone they can really trust. Once they find that, then they can accept a level of authority and discipline that they may not tolerate from any other senior in their lives. In the following excerpt, a senior student of Chiba Sensei’s, who has her own dojo in California, reflects on her teacher’s qualities: Sensei showed me that at the centre of us all is an aikido that he is trying to liberate. And the process of teaching is to help students liberate this themselves, through the physical training of aikido, the body training. Now fear is a core element in everyone that prevents us from being liberated. Sensei has a way, through the force of his personality and the strength of his teaching, to bring up that fear in students immediately. He can walk into a room and you feel it immediately. I think it’s the awareness you have that you are going to confront your own fear—I think that’s the power of his teaching…. Because his own practice and training is so sharp…. When you’re taken to that edge there is no room for fear—absolute amazement—like being in a terrible accident and surviving. You have to give your body to him and he works with it—with your insides as well as your outside. Learning how to let go of fear is part of the process that allows you to express aikido in a more authentic way until you start to move appropriately, instinctively. That teacher/student relationship is the core of his work with his students. The degree to which you give yourself to him is the degree to which he will work with you.

Many ideas about discipline and the teacher/student relationship are expressed in this monologue. Ideas about the “liberation” of a self that is already there empowers the subject of disciplinary practice as does the

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notion that one only gets something from the teacher that is offered first from the student. The student, thus, has the agency to make discipline effective. Chiba Sensei has over the years been known to throw senior students out of the dojo for a number of different reasons and not allow them to return to train there for a long time. Some choose never to return, not to accept this discipline as part of their training. Others have come back to their teacher’s forgiveness, accepting the punishment as something selfinflicted rather than something unwarranted, undeserved, and unnecessary. Receiving and choosing to accept such discipline is thus seen as a positive “good thing” because it is part of the process of self-definition, even if it is administered by an “other” authority figure. Dorinne K. Kondo’s ethnography of an ethics center in Japan reveals the center’s doctrine that “Hardship is the gateway to happiness”: hardship (kuro¯) gives one the inner energy and resource to get through hard times (1990: 108). Interestingly, she uses this concept most often to describe the way an apprentice worker or artisan must polish his skill. The useful general point that emerges from this is that there has to be a sense of personal commitment and acceptance by the disciple in order for “discipline” to work, no matter how punishing the process. Discipline on an aikido mat can feel like joyful “flow,” as well as terrifying punishment, but engaging in it is always a matter of choice not captivity. Hardship, however, is not in every case the gateway to happiness, as just occasionally it may be the gateway to misery. If, for example, a teacher is felt to have willfully abused his or her disciplinary power and the teacher/ student relationship of trust is totally compromised, then we can see how the student’s own power through training may be subverted. However, in the context of disciplined “leisure practice,” the power of the student to leave the dojo and find another teacher, or to give up the art entirely still remains. This allows for another level of freedom and choice not possible in the institutional contexts of a prison or school, for example, where the State has imposed sanctions on the disciplined subject’s mobility. Mobility is an aspect of discipline, at least in some contexts, which may demonstrate the disciplined subject’s recognition of self-empowerment and choice developed through the training process. The final and related point I wish to introduce regards the extent to which one may move beyond the recognition of disciplinary change in one’s own body and the power of self that emanates from one’s contact with others to be able to “read” the bodies of others.

Reading the Disciplined Social Body We write culture—we write our own experiences into our anthropology texts and into our own understandings of our own embodied leisure prac-

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tices. We imagine a community through rhetoric (McCutcheon 2003: 62), but we verify it through body contact—training, talking, touching. The intersubjectivity of disciplined training would suggest that the bodily and spiritual transformations effected by dedicated disciplined practice is something that one feels in oneself and that can also be read in others’ bodies with time. American aikido instructor Leonard writes, “After you’ve been doing the art for a while, it’s amazing how much you can learn about people simply by how they grasp your wrist or by their reaction when you grasp theirs. Episodes of childhood trauma loudly announce themselves by the way a person’s head shrinks back and to the side as a partner’s hand comes near. Inability to express emotions proclaims itself in bodily rigidity. Fear of touch or of intimacy, unless remedied, can eventually drive one from the mat; aikido is a tactile, intimate art” (Leonard 1999: 166). Here we see how there is a habitus of past social experience felt through the body in contact. Somatically recognized, these social and emotional issues are then felt to be part of the embodied condition of the aikido student and worked with indirectly through training. The many tales of personal transformation I’ve collected over the years attest to the felt efficacy of disciplined training to address such problems (although granted I cannot include the people who disappear from the aikido community when their fears and issues cannot be overcome). The important point to note here is that the teacher is reading a whole gamut of social meanings into qualities of physical contact experienced somatically on the aikido mat. Chiba Sensei has likewise suggested on several occasions that he “can tell a lot about a person’s life from the way they move on the mat.” An aikido teacher in California told me: You have people who come to you who are tall and big, and I have to try to wake them up to their own blindness about what is in front of them, what happens with someone grabbing them, so they can start moving. It takes them out of themselves and then extends into daily life. I think receiving some sort of shock to the system is the fastest way to wake up. Joe comes in with his head down and I’ll hit him—slap his face. I have so many students who are psychologists and psychotherapists who are so inwardly involved and that hold their bodies back—they process the art through their brain, and not their body. Joe is extremely intellectual about it all. Takes his ideas of aikido into his life and creates a reality in his mind and thinks he’s doing what he’s meant to do— but he shortcuts the body experience. Intellectual understanding of principles are wonderful—we all want peace—but if you come to understanding them through the physical training you understand them differently—no romantic idea of love and harmony—you have a reality in your body that is part of your daily life … and aikido will be there for you.

In these words, then, we learn how serious practitioners observe the primacy of the disciplined body in physical contact with others as a route

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to the understanding of the social self. If you think too much instead of processing the art through touch and movement, you don’t really open your eyes fully to what the art is felt to reveal within yourself and within others. And yet, part of the training involves the processing of words— lectures by the master, reflexive essays students write as part of their black belt tests, and ideas shared amongst students in the changing room or pub after classes finish. Spielvogel, in an engaging study of women “working out” in Japanese fitness clubs, suggests that this concatenation of mental and corporeal training is to be found in many mainstream social institutions in Japan, including the sports clubs that are the focus of her ethnographic study (2003: 87). Discipline is integral to such training in these institutions and an important element of this is the encouragement of selfreflection in journals and files, reflecting ideas about the activity involved in the training process as well as shortcomings that need to be dealt with (87). There is a curious symmetry to be observed between the transnational practice of Japanese arts in the West and American-style aerobics classes experienced by Japanese women in Japan. Both discipline the body in reflexive training that is rigorous but not punitive, chosen, but not imposed. Once one escapes the locality in the study of transnational practice, then it is less relevant to revisit old themes exploring western versus eastern philosophies of body and mind, and it becomes more relevant to talk about the diversity of culturally shaped but individually experienced ideas expressed by practitioners in their written and spoken reflections. This variety of ideas is what critically extends the limiting gloss offered by an Oxford dictionary that is formally called upon to educate the Englishspeaking world on the meaning of discipline. As bodies may change through disciplinary practice, so too may the meanings of words as they become used in different contexts and with different intentions. “Discipline” in training is, from my own experience in the aikido community, an expression of liberation, choice, and the celebration of a growing power of self, despite the rigors and pains of intensive physical and emotional sanction and instruction. In this chapter we have studied the way in which disciplinary practice may usefully extend and occasionally challenge extant popular notions of discipline that arise out of the study of disciplinary training in particular institutional contexts. From the vantage point of an ethnographic perspective on a particular embodied martial practice and drawing on emic understandings of discipline within the community of practitioners, I have emphasized the agency and desire exercised by the subject of disciplinary practice, the processes by which creative power is manifest through physical contact, the ideas of “self” expressed through practitioners’ discourse, the importance of the teacher/student relationship in training, and the power a disciplined body may demonstrate in its somatic “reading” and translation of others.

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Notes

1. 2.

3. 4.

5.

6. 7.

I am grateful for useful feedback on this chapter from Peter Collins, Adam Kaul, Kris Chapman, Steve Lyon, and, of course, the editor of this volume, Noel Dyck. I am also grateful to my aikido teachers, Coryl Crane Sensei and T. K. Chiba Sensei, for their continued support of my practice and study of the art. This short description in this paragraph comes largely from one of my earlier publications (Kohn 2001). Kris Chapman’s anthropological fieldwork on karate and kyudo dojos in Japan has now been written up as a PhD thesis (2005) for University College London. Note that most personal names have been changed. The idiom of “stealing the art” (gei o musumu) is well established in Japanese discourse around the acquisition of skill (Chapman 2004, personal communication. Note that a great many of the quotes and examples in this chapter come from my interviews and from notes following on-mat lectures and comments by T. K. Chiba, Shihan. I am describing the ideas and the stories that present themselves through my own training, so his words are clearly privileged in this discussion. One could as easily focus on the expressions heard by other masters in other training contexts to comment on notions of discipline in similar ways. The Daily Sun is a tabloid newspaper in the United Kingdom, generous with sensationalist local gossip and certainly thin on international/world news. Thanks to Peter Collins for reminding me of this useful citation.

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References Arendt, Hannah. 1958. The Human Condition, 2nd edition. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Chapman, Kris. 2004. “Ossu! Sporting Masculinities in a Japanese Karate Dojo.” Japan Forum 16(2): 315–35. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. 1991. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper Perennial. ———. 1996. Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York: Harper Perennial. Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Penguin. Frazer, J. G. 1957. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd. Gallop, J. 1988. Thinking through the Body. New York: Columbia University Press. Hastrup, Kirsten. 1995. A Passage to Anthropology: Between Experience and Theory. London: Routledge. Jackson, Michael. 1998. Minima Ethnographica: Intersubjectivity and the Anthropological Project. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Kohn, Tamara. 2001. “Don’t Talk—Blend: Ideas about Body and Communication in Aikido Practice.” In An Anthropology of Indirect Communication. Edited by J. Hendry and C. W. Watson. London: Routledge.

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———. 2003. “The Aikido Body: Expressions of Group Identities and SelfDiscovery in Martial Arts Training.” In Sport, Dance and Embodied Identities. Edited by N. Dyck and E.P. Archetti. Oxford: Berg Press. ———. (forthcoming). “Bowing onto the Mat: Discourses of Spiritual Change through Martial Arts Practice.” In The Discipline of Leisure: Embodying Cultures of “Recreation.” Edited by S. Coleman and T. Kohn. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Kondo, Dorinne K. 1990. Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Leonard, George. 1999. The Way of Aikido: Life lessons from an American Sensei. New York et al: Plume. Lukes, Steven. 1974. Power: A Radical View. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd. McCutcheon, Russell T. 2003. The Discipline of Religion: Structure, Meaning, Rhetoric. London: Routledge. Menke, Christoph. 2003. “Two Kinds of Practice: On the Relation between Social Discipline and the Aesthetics of Existence.” Constellations 10(2): 199–210. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1968. The Visible and the Invisible. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Nietzsche, Freidrich W. 1987 [1901]. The Will to Power (Der Wille zur Macht) Translated from the German by R. Hollingdale and Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random House. Ransom, John S. 1997. Foucault’s Discipline: The Politics of Subjectivity. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Rosenberger, Nancy R., ed. 1992. Japanese Sense of Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spielvogel, Laura. 2003. Working Out in Japan: Shaping the Female Body in Tokyo Fitness Clubs. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Taussig, Michael. 1993. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. London: Routledge. Thomas, William I., and Dorothy Swain Thomas. 1928. The Child in America. New York: Alfred Knopf. Ueshiba, K. 1984. The Spirit of Aikido. Tokyo et al: Kodansha International. Zarilli, Phillip B. 1998. When the Body becomes all Eyes: Paradigms, Discourses and Practices of Power in Kalarippayattu, a South Indian Martial Art. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

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7 The Fertile Body and Cross-Fertilization of Disciplinary Regimes Technologies of Self in a Polish Catholic Youth Movement

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Esther Peperkamp

Catholicism has always offered a variety of techniques for the cultivation of virtues. These have been cultivated in different ways throughout the centuries, and the physical body has often been a central focus. The Middle Ages saw the rise to prominence of flagellation, which is still practiced today in some small Christian communities. Confession was characteristic of the period that followed. Confession manuals and spiritual guides, such as Luis of Granada’s Guide for Sinners and Mirror of a Christian Man, appeared in the sixteenth century along with St. Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises. Talal Asad and Michel Foucault have described confession as an institution through which particular virtues were cultivated (Asad 1983; Foucault 1978). Confession is one of the technologies of the self that Foucault defines as those “which permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality” (1988: 18). Through confession, the body became part of a verbal discourse. In particular, sexuality was subjected to scrutiny, although Foucault has rightly pointed out that rather then repressing sexuality, confession caused a proliferation of discourses on sexuality in the seventeenth century. I will argue here that the twentyfirst century again offers new modes of cultivating Christian virtues, and that contemporary medical knowledge is essential to them. Science and religion have often been regarded as opposing categories. Science would ostensibly cause the demise of religion and replace it as the

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most important institution by which power was exercised over the human body. The age of modernity has witnessed a decline in the power of religious authorities to define and regulate bodies, and, simultaneously, a growing power of the medical profession to do so (Turner 1984). In this chapter I will show that medical knowledge about the human body, in particular its attribute of fertility, can contribute to the development of new techniques for the cultivation of Christian virtues. Such a technique is known as “fertility charting,” which is called “natural family planning” in a Catholic context. The technique involves the recognition of a woman’s fertile period, on the basis of which couples can decide whether to have intercourse or not. The technique is employed by Catholics throughout the world, but is particularly prominent in predominantly Catholic Poland. I consider the technique of fertility charting as an instance of a modern form of discipline that contrasts with other forms of discipline such as obedience, external surveillance, or outright repression. Indeed, as Foucault contends, outright repression is not the most general form of discipline in contemporary society. Modern discipline developed from the pastoral power exercised in Christianity with its ultimate aim of salvation. This pastoral power is exercised through knowledge about the individual—in particular in relation to his or her body, as becomes clear from Foucault’s The History of Sexuality—and of the individual about him or herself. Indeed, pastoral power could not be exercised “without knowing the inside of people’s minds” (Foucault 1982: 783). This form of power then spread from the Church to society at large, in particular to the state (resulting in new ways of governing through the creation of docile bodies), but also to medicine. In the process of the spread of pastoral power into other institutions, the ultimate aims became “worldly” aims, such as well-being, happiness, and so on. Central to these new power techniques is the existence of the subject in a double sense, for example, “subject to someone else by control and dependence; and tied to his own identity by a conscience or self-knowledge” (1982: 781). One of the key questions for Foucault was how human beings transform themselves into a subject, or, in other words, discipline themselves, which will be the subject of this chapter. My argument here consists of three interrelated observations: that modern technologies made possible by the availability of new knowledge about the female body are contributing to the cultivation of Christian virtues; that these technologies make possible new ways of cultivating Christian virtues; and that they are simultaneously altering the face of Christianity in perhaps unsuspected ways.

Polish Catholicism Catholicism is strong and visibly present in Poland. It exercises its influence on every sphere of life, including sexuality, both through the efforts

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of Church officials, as well as through the religious laity that organizes itself in advocacy groups, such as the pro-life movement or the anti-alcohol campaign. Influence is also exercised informally through social control, especially in small settings. The strong hold of religion on Polish society makes it possible for a large number of people at least to be aware of the existence of “natural family planning,” and to be aware of it being propagated by the Church. Two environments where young Poles encounter Church teachings on sexual ethics are school and marriage. Sexual education as a separate subject has become part of the school curriculum in post socialist Poland, but only after long debates. A religious lobby forced efforts to introduce the subject of “sexual education” into the school curriculum to be renamed as “education into family-life.” The new school subject not only addresses the physiological aspects of sex, but also particularly emphasizes relationships; “natural family planning” is discussed as one of the methods of birth control. It depends on the particular manual and the teacher whether this Catholic form of birth control is presented as a better alternative to other forms or not. Furthermore, the majority of Poles marry in the Church. To be able to do so, they need to fulfil certain conditions: they must have confessed, and they must have followed one of the courses that prepare them for marriage. “Natural family planning” is one of the elements of this course, and additional courses are organized for people who want to learn more. However, these courses do not seem to have a large impact. Many couples will have already decided upon which method of birth control to use. They will indeed already have had intercourse prior to marriage, contrary to Church teachings. Nevertheless, the course causes them to acquire at least some knowledge. Thus the institutions of school and marriage ensure that every Pole acquires at least some knowledge about “natural family planning.” Acquiring knowledge about the technique of “natural family planning” does not, however, mean that the technique is invariably applied. Many Poles use artificial contraception, even though access to certain forms of chemical and mechanical methods of contraception is not always readily available. Moreover, the application of the technique itself, while supported by the Church, does not imply that the person applying it is a “good” Catholic. “Natural family planning” under different names—but still employing the same techniques—figures also in other contexts. Throughout the world, in the context of decreased fertility, the same technique is applied as an aid to assist women in conceiving. In feminist circles the technique is said to empower women. Furthermore, given contemporary preferences for a healthy lifestyle, the technique is popular because of its assumed naturalness. None of these motives can be called Catholic, but in the context of religion, the very same technique that in other contexts satisfies the desire for a child, or leads to feelings of empowerment, can come to embody Christian virtue.

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The development of Christian virtues in connection to “natural family planning” takes a prominent place in religious movements that constitute a third source of information, in addition to school programs and premarriage courses. It is estimated that about 4 percent of the Polish population belongs to a religious organization of some kind (Gowin 1999). However, it should be noted that these address a wide range of concerns, ranging from spiritual renewal, charity, recreational movements, to pro-life movements. Thus the number of people applying “natural family planning” as part of their religious affiliation is extremely small. Nevertheless, although small in numbers, these movements wield an influence disproportionate to their size. They fuel the debate about contraception (for example, Jankowiak, the spokesman of Light-Life Movement and a teacher of “natural family planning,” is published in the weekly Tygodnik Powszechny), provide the model to be lived up to, conduct courses for future couples, and educate future course leaders.1 Although all religious movements attempt to hold up the Church’s teachings in as many spheres of life as possible, different religious movements do so in different ways. Pro-life movements, of course, focus upon the sphere of sexuality, family, and gender. Knowledge about using fertility charts is an integral part of such movements. One movement is totally devoted to transferring information to couples, and is called the Liga Małz˙en´stwo Małz˙en´stwu, a local branch of the international Couple to Couple League, of which the name is a literal translation. Furthermore, there are religious movements focusing on individual spiritual renewal. In these movements “natural family planning” is but one of the elements of seeking to live a truly Christian life. It is part of a larger project of cultivating oneself as a virtuous Christian. The “natural environment” of “natural family planning” in Poland is the parish-based religious movement, Home Church (Domowy Kos´ciół), and its youth section, Oasis (Oaza), both part of the more encompassing Light-Life Movement (Ruch S´wiatło-Z˙ycie). The movement was founded in the 1950s—the most repressive years for the Church in Poland—by an ambitious priest, and its summer retreats, an important component of its program, annually attract around fifty thousand children, teenagers, young adults, and spouses. Throughout the rest of the year the members meet in their respective parishes. Oasis is the largest and oldest section of the movement and comprises children and teenagers in its three subsections, with the eldest members functioning as animators of the younger ones, who ideally start with the four-year (four levels) Oasis program when they are about fourteen years old. The youngest members, children between seven and fourteen, fall beyond the scope of this chapter. The oldest members are young adults in their early twenties, who have entered higher education. Home Church is made up of married couples, usually from one parish, that meet in one another’s houses. It identifies the family as the basic unit of the Church. The first groups of Home Church were recruited in the

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early 1970s from among the youth who had grown too old for Oasis and who had married among themselves. Part of Home Church is still functioning in this way. Couples that joined after a longer period of marriage, usually after having experienced marriage problems, constitute another large group. For them, “natural family planning” might be new, since it has not always been taught at pre-marriage courses. It is difficult to typify the members of Home Church. Whereas the teenagers and young adults I met from Oaza constituted a fairly homogeneous group (higher educated or aiming at higher education; lower-middle-class background), much more variety existed within the much smaller groups of Home Church. The movement publishes the magazine Wieczernik (among others) in which these issues are touched upon. The aim of the movement is to create “new people” who practice their religion out of “conviction” instead of out of habit or as the result of social control, as members tend to think the majority of Catholics in Poland are prone to do. On the contrary, being a “new Christian” means reflexivity as to whether one’s actions are in agreement with God’s will, and engagement in endless self-improvement to ensure that one’s life becomes more and more in accordance with God’s will. Confession is one of the most important tools with which to arrive at this new ideal and becomes almost a kind of self-therapy rather than a means to disperse “institutional grace” (Weber 1978). These “new people” would also live according to the Gospel in every other aspect of their lives, including the use of their bodies. The subject of “natural family planning” hinges on the border between Oasis and Home Church. The teenagers and young adults are not yet supposed to be practicing birth control since, as good Christians, they are supposed to remain virgins until marriage; the married couples, on the other hand, are already supposed to know everything about it. Nevertheless, teachings about “natural family planning” are part of both group’s concerns. Couples from Home Church are often invited to meetings of Oasis and organized retreats to explain what a Christian marriage looks like, and “natural family planning” is usually touched upon. The teenagers and young adults also exchange information among themselves. Some of the eldest members of Oaza—young adults in their early twenties—are married but have not (yet) exchanged Oasis for Home Church, and they talk with younger members about these issues. Some of them take courses in order to be able to teach the method in parishes where courses in “natural family planning” are given. In this chapter I focus mainly on the teenagers and young adults who are part of Oasis, the section of the Light-Life Movement in which, not coincidentally, regimes of self make themselves felt the most. In general, youth has been the category of people about whose morality the Catholic Church is most concerned, and attempts are made to attract youths to the Church and have them implement Catholic teachings in their lives. Furthermore, this phase in life is very much directed to discovering one’s

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body and sexuality, which calls for the effort to channel these new experiences in religiously acceptable ways. The approach to the human body taken in Oasis coincides with official Church teachings in this sphere of life. At their informational meetings and retreats, the teenage members are taught—in accordance with the teachings of the Church—that the body is to be respected. At one such occasion, the priest explained to the teenagers that throughout history the body had often been treated with contempt, but that since it will be raised in resurrection, they had to respect their bodies. He argued that maltreatment of the body, as had occurred in earlier periods, was not in fact Christian at all, and he continued: “Wanting to have your body raised is just the beginning. Resurrection demands cooperation with and adjusting to Jesus.” With these words he aptly summarized the status of the body in contemporary Catholicism. Simultaneously, he stipulated the need to discipline the body in a specific way: it had to cooperate and adjust itself. This call for never-ending disciplining was congruent with the general emphasis in Oasis to “work on oneself” (pracowac´ nad soba˛). Respect for the human body does not preclude subjecting it to disciplinary regimes. The body should no longer be beaten and mortified, but should “cooperate” and “adjust,” as the priest phrased it. Oasis offers one such form. The new Christian body is a body that has to be “tuned into” Jesus and His message. It has to experience religious truth with all its senses and even to become physically part of this religious truth.

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The Technique The technique of “natural family planning” could only have become possible because of interrelated transformations occurring within both the Church and medicine. The transformation in Church teachings comprises a different perception of the human body and of the institution of marriage itself. In medicine, a similar change of perception of the female body can be discerned, making possible the acquisition of knowledge upon which the technique of “natural family planning” depends. It is generally thought that the teachings of the Catholic Church emphasize the soul over the body, and spirituality over the evils of the flesh. The body was “evil flesh” that needed to be controlled (Shilling 1993: 55). However, especially since the Second Vatican Council, there is a discernable trend in Catholicism that re-appreciates or, so to speak, rehabilitates the body. These changes are reflected in the new catechism that quotes Gaudium et Spes, one of the documents from the Second Vatican Council: “Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity. Through his very bodily condition he sums up in himself the elements of the material world. Through him they are thus brought to their highest perfection and can raise their voice in praise freely given to the Creator. For this reason man

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may not despise his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honor since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day” (Catechism, art. 364). Although the traditional approach to the body in Christianity has often been presented as one of physical discipline (see Asad 1993), the new approach to the body opens up new and subtler possibilities of discipline, as I will show below. Not only did the perception of the body as such change, but so too did teachings about the role of sex in marriage. Thus Gaudium et Spes states: “The sexual characteristics of man and the human faculty of reproduction wonderfully exceed the dispositions of lower forms of life. Hence the acts themselves which are proper to conjugal love and which are exercised in accord with genuine human dignity must be honored with great reverence” (51 § 3). The document adds that no methods of birth control may be used that are not in accordance with the teachings of the Church. “Natural family planning,” a technique already known at the time of the Second Vatican Council, is seen in contemporary Poland as the only method of birth control that is in accordance with Church teachings. However, the technique behind “natural family planning” was only made possible by a simultaneous development of knowledge in the field of medicine about the female body, and the rationalization of the human body. These two developments are intertwined: a different view of the female body made the development of such knowledge possible. The technique used in “natural family planning” had been first developed in the 1950s, drawing on observations about the female body from still earlier periods. The website of the Billings method—one of the most famous contraception methods within “natural family planning,” albeit not the only one—describes the beginnings of the technique to predict fertility on the basis of observation of the human body, including observation of changes in vaginal mucus: “The word leucorrhoea means simply ‘white discharge’ and there were occasional references to leucorrhoea in textbooks of gynecology, that some women reported the presence of such a discharge in the menstrual cycle, with the added comment that it did not have any serious significance. It was even suggested by one gynecologist that it was a psychosomatic disorder. There was no suggestion seen that it could be of physiological significance and therefore worthy of further study.”2 In contrast to earlier understandings about women’s bodies, the preferred technique to assess a woman’s fertility nowadays seems to take as a point of departure that every bodily sign is important in determining a woman’s fertility. Indeed, the charts that are used to organize data allow for a wide variety of data to be recorded. Temperature is but one of the elements measured. The vaginal mucus that is observed can be classified in terms of several categories. Furthermore, a woman can check whether the mouth of her uterus is “hard” or “soft,” “closed” or “open,” which provides further clues as to whether a pregnancy is to be expected after intercourse (that is, when the mouth feels soft and is open). Thus “natural fam-

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ily planning” consists of a set of techniques that usually are employed together. The combined “technique” is said to be just as reliable as the pill, an important thought that I will return to below. The technique involves the use of a so-called fertility chart to get insight into the menstruation cycles of the woman (see figure 7.1). A com-

Figure 7.1

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bination of measuring one’s temperature (preferably with a mercury thermometer), daily observation of one’s mucus (its color and its consistency), and controlling whether the mouth of the uterus is open or closed, or hard or soft, produces data that are then charted. From this chart, fertile and infertile periods in the menstruation cycle can be recognized and used to decide whether to have sex or not, depending on the couple’s desire to have children. However, to be able to recognize a pattern, the woman has to lead a regular life with little stress, although proponents of the method claim that it will work when women lead irregular lives—when working in shifts, for example. Still, assessing fertility in this situation involves the extra effort of additionally charting the hours when a woman worked and the time at which she took her temperature. In a normal case the temperature is measured in the morning, before getting out of bed. A course of instruction is required in order to be able to interpret all the symptoms. The reasons to use fertility charting are countless, and overlap partly with reasons present in the context of fertility treatments, feminism and, in particular, ecological lifestyles. “Natural family planning” is sometimes talked about as being “ecological,” one of the buzzwords in contemporary Poland, meaning that it is something natural and healthy, or healthy because it is natural. The word has distinctly modern connotations in Poland and puts Catholics practicing this method at the forefront of modernity. Despite this lengthy list of reasons, most of the people I met use “natural family planning” because it was deemed appropriate for a Catholic. Anna was 25 years old at the time I interviewed her.3 Recently married, she and her husband had been together for six years prior to their marriage. On her initiative they had waited to have sexual intercourse until they were married, which she found difficult but worthwhile. Her husband was not a religious person and at first did not see the value of retaining virginity until marriage. Nonetheless, he complied, and she felt that it had brought them closer together. According to her, her husband was in the end very happy that they had waited. Since her husband had only a temporary contract with his employer, she was looking for a job, and they were renovating their house, she felt that the time was not yet right for a child. “Maybe in two years,” she said and added that her sister also had her first child when she was 29 years old. She had never tried the pill, although she had asked her friends about their experiences with it. These experiences were not always positive, and in preparing for marriage, she attended one of the courses for engaged couples at which “natural family planning” is explained: “I attended a course, a very detailed one and very to the point and very thoroughly led by people who really know what they’re talking about. They have a medical background and they explained it in a very concrete way to my husband and me. And I have to say, that I don’t have … let me put it like this: I observed with myself precisely what they taught at the course. I learned to recognize when the mucus is fertile and when it is not.” “Natural family planning” is indeed a skill that

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has to be acquired through consulting expert knowledge, and practice, as Anna described. For people who do not want to do the course, packages are available through the Internet consisting of a “starter’s kit” including information, a notebook for observing one’s own cycle, and exemplary cycles to practice one’s skills of interpretation. A quick browse of the Web reveals that even software is offered to draw the charts on a computer. Anna preferred this method to other methods of contraception and said it was convenient for her but less convenient for her husband, a point to which I will return later. The technique of the fertility chart concerns women’s bodies, but men were involved as well. “Natural family planning” was something to be undertaken by the couple together, and men too were supposed to be informed. Moreover they were essential to the whole enterprise. Mark was a twenty-year-old student when I met him and had been married less than a year. He and his wife Basia were both active members of Oasis. They were both great advocates of “natural family planning” and were even involved in setting up a group for the younger members of Oasis in their parish concerned with “life-issues” such as “natural family planning,” abortion, spiritual adoption of unborn children, and the relationship between men and women. He acknowledged that sex is a difficult subject and said in one of the meetings: “Once I told God that I didn’t want to give this to Him, that he is not allowed to see it, because I was ashamed.” In the interview I had with him later, he also told me about the problems he and his wife had with sex in the beginning. First, they did not really know how to go about it in a Christian way. It’s something very delicate, but I have to say that one’s family has a lot of influence on this. We had severe problems with this after one year of marriage because we didn’t know what it should look like. Well, I will tell you about myself, not about my wife: it was never presented to me as something beautiful, because when you see this in scars, that’s terrible, no? Or all these abuses, masturbating one’s body, these are terrible things, and that’s a problem. There was a time when we stood still, because you have to grow all the time, no? And we could not make this next step of personal growth, enter these beautiful higher spheres, this delicate sphere, which is love. Sex is only one of the signs of love. We couldn’t go further, and you know why? Because we didn’t know God’s opinion. We really had a problem, and we prayed a lot over it. And these were various problems: of touch, of kissing, of having sex.

Only after they had read a book called Sex the Christian Way did their sex life improve. Although they had heard about “natural family planning” before they married, it was only after they married that they learned the details about it and became comfortable with it. When I met them they even took courses to be able to teach the method. Not long after I had ended my fieldwork, Mark’s wife became pregnant, and apparently this was planned. The disciplinary force of the method of “natural family planning” and especially the technique of using the chart seems obvious. A woman needs

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to take her temperature every day, first thing in the morning, and also check her mucus. Thereby she forces herself and her husband into a rhythm of life that is, in the end, governed by religious conviction. The chart allows for an extent of control over the female body that was hitherto impossible because of the lack of medical knowledge about fertility. The fertility of the female body now comes to dictate the sexual life of spouses. The fertility chart technique is ultimately taken from the field of medicine, a field that has been recognized to have strong disciplinary dimensions. Medical knowledge about the female body is a necessary ingredient for the method of “natural family planning.” In the field of medicine the fertility chart is also used for different purposes: it is generally used to help couples with fertility problems to conceive. The chart in this case functions not as an argument for periodical abstinence but, on the contrary, constitutes an imperative to have sex. The same technique can have different implications in different fields. The fertility chart is an excellent example of cross-fertilization of disciplinary regimes. Instead of medicine taking over the control of the human body from religion, as some have argued (Turner 1984), medical knowledge actually may be enhancing religious disciplinary regimes. While Foucault has argued for the influence of religion on modern disciplinary regimes, it now seems that these modern disciplinary regimes themselves influence religion. A tool that is borrowed from the field of medicine functions to create what can be called religious subjectivities, to adhere to Foucault’s vocabulary. The medicalized approach to the body leads to concrete practices that are moral, as they are in accordance with the Christian family in which children are always welcome and husband and wife are primarily connected by a relationship of spiritual agape, rather then physical amor. The chart, emphasizing these values, is also the embodiment of the Church’s protest against what it sees as modern and immoral treatment of the human body.

Virtuous Christians The rehabilitation of the body by the Catholic Church does not constitute the end of discipline. Instead, it marks a new era of discipline and opens up endless possibilities to define and modify the Catholic body, and to explore the possibilities of couching old religious truths within new forms of religiosity. This transformation reminds us of Foucault’s description of the birth of the prison, through which older forms of corporeal punishment disappeared, to be replaced by no less powerful disciplinary regimes that exercised power through creating subjects (1977, 1982). The case of the method of “natural family planning” that is proposed to Polish teenagers and young adults in Oasis is a clear example of this development. The meticulous examination of the female body goes together with a detailed scrutiny of the morality of the conjugal relationship. As Mark

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had noted, the eternal question is whether sex is practiced in the right way, whether the relationship between husband and wife is given shape in the right way; in sum, if the marriage is a Christian marriage. Sex itself is subject to disciplinary forces in order to be chaste. Anal sex, for example, is forbidden, as is any sex that does not lead to penetration and the discharge of semen in the vagina. Moreover, sex was not to be based on lust, but had to be the consequence of love, as a place where two people become one. Not coincidentally, Mark preferred to call it an “act of unity” rather than sex or intercourse. The dimension of love involves the presence of God, who animates the relationship. Indeed, Christian sex is not something between two persons, but rather a threesome of husband, wife, and God. A couple quoted on the website of the magazine of Home Church claim they pray before every instance when they have intercourse. However not everybody is so eager to let God into their bedroom, as Mark admitted. What is more, the practice of keeping a fertility chart in itself supports moral practices, in particular a moral sexual life. “Natural family planning” and conjugal morality are intimately related; the one is implicated in the other. Practicing “natural family planning” enables, and even enforces, married couples to live a virtuous life. “Natural family planning” is in line with the values emphasized by the Church in at least three important ways. First, it excludes other forms of contraception that are not allowed. Second, it seems to be pro-life and pro-family, since despite the keeping of a chart there is always a small chance that a child may be conceived, and it is therefore perceived as a way to plan a child (with greater or lesser success), rather than evading conception. The name of this method of birth control is significant in itself: the method is not meant to prevent conception but to plan a family. Third, it seems to force people to accept abstinence as a part of their life since periodical abstinence is required when couples do not want to conceive. “Natural family planning” forces the married couple into a rhythm of periods with and without sex. In the period without sex, it is said that the husband is forced to express his love for his wife in a non-sexual manner. Ascetics has always been one of the core values of Catholicism, although throughout the centuries there have been different ways to achieve it. What is perhaps the greatest distinction between those earlier forms of asceticism and the conjugal asceticism enforced through “natural family planning” is the central importance of medicine as facilitator of it. Since the first dimension of morality is obvious, I will focus upon the second moral dimension of “natural family planning,” namely, the profamily attitude that it supposedly involves. The technique calls for parental responsibility. Whereas with other methods of contraception an unexpected pregnancy is a case of bad luck, ideally with “natural family planning” every child is the result of a conscious choice. Furthermore a child is usually chosen only when the couple has the means to provide for it. In Anna’s case, unfavorable conditions made her postpone this choice. Mark’s case,

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on the other hand, was an odd one since he had a child with his wife Basia when they were still students, which prompted Anna to criticize them severely. Nevertheless, in general, couples applying the technique subscribe to the idea of parental responsibility. The result—in the uncertain conditions of a society that knows a high unemployment level, in particular among young adults, and where incomes are low—is that these families have usually only a small number of children, although the average number of children seems to be higher (from my observations often two or three, in exceptional cases I have come across five) than in the average Polish family. The birth rate for Poland in general is well below two children per couple. Catholic families with more than six children, sometimes up to and over ten, are exceptions in Poland and are usually chuckled over. These are, however, hard to find among members of Home Church (and certainly in Oasis, since a couple with children would usually not belong to Oasis anymore). From preliminary observations it seems that such families can be found, for example, in the Catholic movement Neocathechumenate. Asceticism is another virtue that is presented as being inherent in applying “natural family planning.” Artificial contraception is seen to be, in principle, anti life. And what is more, artificial contraception means that people can have sex anytime, anywhere. As Anna says: “people want to be accessible for one another all the time.” Artificial contraception is said to contribute to a hedonistic lifestyle in which the body of another human being becomes an object made for pleasure, ready for consumption by somebody else. “Natural family planning” forces a couple to build in periods of abstinence in which love is expressed in different ways. Mark told me that he, for example, would write letters to his young spouse in this period. And Anna considered alternation between advances and withdrawals as strengthening her marriage. The religious body pursued through “natural family planning” is therefore also a political and politicized body, a protest against current developments as well as a blueprint for future society. The religious body in Oasis functions not so much as a symbol existing only in the minds of people, but rather as a vessel of embodied imaginaries of the ideal society. This society is literally inscribed on and enacted through the body. Before it actually exists it is already being performed, and through being performed is brought into existence. Practicing “natural family planning” leads to a virtuous marital life, as opposed to an immoral sexual life that is perceived to be characteristic of contemporary pleasure-oriented society.

Power In the emancipatory movement, knowledge about the female body is regarded as being liberating. Sexual education, for example, is thought to encourage autonomous choices. Knowledge is essential in applying “natu-

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ral family planning.” The technique very clearly leads these Christians to have more knowledge about their bodies, sexuality, and fertility than the ordinary Pole. Indeed, when asking Mark about women’s experiences of pleasure deriving from sex, he set out to explain that there are two different kinds of female orgasms. The practice of determining one’s fertility requires of women that they talk about their bodies and have their bodies discussed by others. It was relatively easy to elicit responses about sexuality. Anna started the subject herself, and Mark elaborated on it after I had probed him with some questions. They were a lot less reserved when talking about sex. An older woman from Home Church explained to me in an interview: “every year at the retreat the theme is being talked about and you know more all the time, more and more … and it gets easier all the time to talk about it, and it gets less and less embarrassing.” Moreover, the preoccupation with rather technical details seems to be a key characteristic of “natural family planning” that sustains it rather than subverts it. Jargon is used that can only be understood by insiders. To give just an impression of the concepts women have to deal with: phase I, II, and III, luteal phase, DPO count, and abbreviations like M, S, C, W, E, and so on. With the fertility chart a whole new world opens up to the women. “Natural family planning” thus causes women to be more open about these matters, and more knowledgeable. However, it simultaneously subjects them to the disciplinary force of language. Instead of liberating them, speaking about their sexuality and fertility embeds these women in religious discourses on sexuality in a manner similar to the way confession did from the seventeenth century onward (Foucault 1978). Freedom is not outside power, as Foucault has argued convincingly. Rather, they imply one another. Not only is freedom not outside power, but the practice of “natural family planning” also offers the possibility of new conceptualizations of freedom. After a while, a woman is able to predict her next cycle and, when done properly, the extensive charting exercise, will allow women to go about it in a more relaxed way. This allows women to frame this practice in completely different terms than those of self-discipline. As Anna stated: “At this moment, I don’t have any problems. I don’t have to measure my temperature every day anymore, because I can tell it for myself. I know now how to deal with it.” Interestingly, she also made fun of the women who took contraception pills and had to organize their lives, as she saw it, around taking their pills. At parties she noticed how women ran to the bathroom at ten o’clock to take the pill, and she appreciated the freedom and autonomy she herself enjoyed compared to these women. Thus women themselves regard “natural family planning” as something liberating. The women who use artificial contraception, on the other hand, are seen as being oppressed. On websites about “natural family planning,” women who do not know their own bodies are clearly pitied. Of course, “liberation” and “repression” can never really be assessed. But Foucault’s observation that there is no freedom outside power should

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be kept in mind when considering both groups of women: those who use “natural family planning” and those who choose to use other means of contraception. The important point to notice is not whether women applying “natural family planning” are “free” or “oppressed,” but how power relations come to be redefined through this very practice. But what about men? If power relations are redefined through “natural family planning,” this means that the relationship between men and women, husbands and wives, is redefined, which implies a new vision on the role of men in marriage. This is exactly what happens in Polish discourse about “natural family planning.” It is argued that it involves the husband more than usual in the marriage. The characteristics of men that come to the fore in discussions about “natural family planning”—that men become, and are called upon to become, responsible and sensitive—are characteristics usually associated with women, at least in Poland. Women subject themselves to new regimes of power, but men do the same becoming in a sense more domesticated. Mark learned how to be such a man after having read Sex in a Christian Way. “An amazing book, amazing. It is all still very actual. A year ago we had such big problems, even in November, I think, and now my consciousness about my—our—unity has raised about 600 percent, about what my wife expects from me, what she needs, in a more or less conscious way.” What women—and men—need is central to a Christian marriage. Nonetheless, the way in which “natural family planning” is practiced simultaneously draws on very distinct understandings of masculinity and femininity. Mark told me that he and his wife would measure her temperature together, and he would draw the graphics. “Men like to do these kinds of technical things,” he added. “Natural family planning” is part of a new model of Christian marriage, and embodies a different relationship between the spouses. In a meeting that was organized at a retreat for fifteen year old members of Oasis, for many of whom the retreat was their first, a married couple explained the duty of men and women in marriage. They related that the man is supposed to be the head of the family, but added the commonly heard qualification that the woman is the neck that decides which side the head will turn to. In their marriage, the husband was the one to make decisions on important issues, his wife the one to decide about daily matters. “So far, there have been no important issues,” the husband added, evoking an occasional laugh from the boys and girls. They then set out to explain the theological basis of marriage and the young audience fell silent. The couple explained that a woman should be a type of church, who serves her husband, who is a type of Christ. She needs to do everything to honor her husband and care about the greatness of her husband (dba o wielkos´ci me˛z˙a). Man, on the other hand, as a type of Christ, is the head of the Church and of the household. Like Christ, however, he has to suffer for his Church-wife through serving them-her. Wife obeys husband, but husband serves the wife and suffers for her (ma˛z˙ słuz˙y a z˙ona chwali). As the

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husband put it: “I have to die daily for my wife.”4 This kind of leadership has also been called “servant-leadership” as opposed to “head-leadership” (Bartkowski 2000). Ultimately, such a relationship is characterized by mutual submission rather than by a hierarchy of power. In putting the emphasis this way, Oasis finds itself in the company of a larger Christian movement emphasizing, but simultaneously redefining, Christian family values (Bartkowski 2000; Gallagher 1999).5 “Natural family planning” is explicitly valued as a way to build an emotional tie between husband and wife, and as such is part of a particularly modern notion of marriage (Giddens 1992). As I argued in the introduction, “natural family planning” does not only enable the cultivation of Christian virtues, it also transforms the face of Catholicism. Together with “natural family planning,” a new model of marriage is proposed. But also for (the exercise of) religious authority, the technique has serious consequences, enhancing and subverting it simultaneously. The method of “natural family planning” answers to the ideal of Christian marriage as posed by the Church in the twentieth century, but it is important to note that the authority of the Church in the sphere of sexuality is to an important extent replaced by two other locations of authority. The first location is, as I have explained above, medicine. A second location comprises fellow couples who apply the technique of the fertility chart and have more experience than other couples with it. This makes them into expertauthorities. The “naturalness” of the technique seems to free women from the grasp of medical regimes over their bodies. It is felt that “natural family planning” secures women the freedom from chemical contraception and independence from doctors, although in fact it is only because of the medical profession that they are able to practice “natural” contraception. This paradox of simultaneous independence and (indirect) dependence is probably a paradox inherent in most contemporary disciplinary practices in which the mechanisms of control and surveillance have become more and more subtle. Although working with a fertility chart is a long way from artificial reproductive techniques such as in vitro fertilization, it nevertheless is an exponent of modern medical technology, and as such, the observation by Janet Carsten, that it results in two seemingly contradictory processes—the naturalization of technology and the technologization of nature—applies to this technique as well (2003). “Natural family planning” is presented as something that is natural, not involving “artificial,” chemical, or mechanical means such as the pill or condoms. Nevertheless, “natural family planning” is a technology in itself, and rather than being “natural,” it questions the assumption of a dichotomy between culture and nature, as well as the assumption of the possibility to escape, in this way, a medicalization of fertility. The kind of authority that “natural family planning” implies is distinctly different from older forms of religious authority in the person of the priest. Although the technique of the fertility chart serves to emphasize

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and create Christian virtues, it is not without consequences for Christianity and can even be called an important signifier of some major changes. The idea of a diagnosis of fertility and examination and interpretation of symptoms of fertility—to stay within the medical discourse—involved in this form of contraception has serious implications for questions of authority, a concept that has always been considered central to religion. Although for the correct interpretation of the symptoms of their fertility, women are dependent upon other people (as the penitent is upon the confessor for judging the state of his or her soul), they are not dependent upon the ex officio authority of the doctor, even less upon the authority of priests, but rather upon the authority of experience of other people like themselves.6 This shift in authority toward expert-authority is deemed characteristic of contemporary societies (Giddens 1991). It is certainly no coincidence that the best-known movement dealing with information about “natural family planning” is called The Couple to Couple League. The name refers to the fact that couples exchange information and advice between one another. Furthermore, forums on the Internet serve as a platform to exchange experiences and gain advice from other practitioners. The technique of the fertility chart lends itself to discussion—because extra help in interpreting the signs of one’s body is always welcome. An American website offers women the possibility of comparing their chart to the several thousand charts in the database, and advertises software that can be used to apply the Fertility Awareness Method, as it is called here.7

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Pleasure There is another aspect in the shift in authority that has repercussions for the Catholic sexual ethic. Through “natural family planning,” control over the human body is no longer achieved by imposing prohibitions, but by making the religious subject control him or, rather, herself. The chart constitutes a shift from external regulation practices to self-governance. This shift can be observed in both medical and religious practices. It is therefore no surprise that “natural family planning” and the fertility chart are not only spoken about in terms of self-discipline, but also, and perhaps even more often, in terms of self-actualization or self-realization. New forms of authority correspond to new self-definitions. It certainly cannot be denied that this practice constitutes a disciplinary regime, but, as Foucault has already pointed out, discipline is not opposed to freedom, or pleasure, for that matter. Indeed, it has been argued that “the idea of discipline replaces dichotomized understandings of corporeal repression and liberation … with a more complex notion of networks of control that are simultaneously constitutive of pleasure” (McNay 1999: 96). Whenever one inquires about “natural family planning,” one of the responses one hears is that it is a recipe for conjugal happiness. It is regarded

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as a constructive force, bringing the partners closer to one another. Mark called this kind of contraception a recipe for happiness, since abstinence (wstrzemiez˙liwos´c´) forces the husband to court his wife in ways other than through a sexual act. By this he did not refer to other forms of sex, such as oral sex, but rather to the letters he wrote to her. Any other form of sex other than traditional intercourse is inconceivable to begin with. On websites many ways are proposed to show one’s love for one’s wife, including caressing her. However, Jankowiak warns in Wieczernik warns that: “A caress can never replace sexual intercourse. The marital act is the place where the marital sacrament is enacted, something unique. Only within the marital act the fullness of experience can take place. To be more precise: only during sexual intercourse are spouses allowed to experience an orgasm. Arriving at an orgasm through caress without sexual intercourse violates the sacredness of the marital act and constitutes a cardinal sin.”8 The situation changes radically when the ultimate purpose is sexual intercourse; in that case all forms of caressing are allowed, including “oral” and “manual” stimulation. Thus although the chart tracks only the body of the woman, the man is seen as a central element in the method, since he has to abstain from intercourse during fertile days, which is generally thought to be more difficult for a man than for a woman. But difficulty or discipline and happiness are closely related. To quote Anna once again: “This distancing and advances, it seems to me that they are strengthening. That it is really nice when my husband asks ‘today?’ and I say, ‘you know what, not yet, in two days.’ And he again, ‘today?’ And I ‘no, still in two days.’ Again ‘today? Hurray, hurray!’ and that he is so happy and that is really nice.” The pleasure is implied in the discipline of the practice of “natural family planning,” and the emphasis may be put on either one of these aspects. The emphasis on conjugal happiness in association with the “natural family planning” method is so manifestly present and so often mentioned that it almost seems to have become a guarantee for happiness. That is to say, the message seems to be that when you practice “natural family planning” you cannot help but be happily married. Websites proudly claim that the divorce rates among couples practicing “natural family planning” are much lower than average, implying that these marriages are happier (conveniently choosing to forget that the technique is practiced by a very small and peculiar group of Christian couples who have conservative opinions on this issue in the first place). Although “natural family planning” serves as a form of protest against “modern,” “hedonist” society, it also employs some of the very same categories, such as “pleasure” and “happiness.” As such, the technique gives rise to new problems. On the Wieczernik website, an American woman was quoted, who desperately wrote: “What to do if the conjugal relations suffer from not being able to have sex when you want to? I experience a very strong desire to have sex in the second phase [the fertile phase—EP],

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but it disappears completely in the third phase.”9 Sex should be a pleasurable experience for both men and women. The Christian approach to sex almost constitutes an imperative to enjoy having sex.10 In the end, the practice of “natural family planning” carries within it the potential of subverting the ethical teachings of the Church. On the one hand, natural contraception suits the Church in that it leaves intact its teachings about sexuality being tied to procreation. With the “natural family planning” method, it is argued, the married couple shows their readiness to conceive a child. But whereas “natural family planning” certainly contributes to the creation of Christian subjects, the people who apply and promote it also proudly claim that the method is highly efficient, nearly infallible, thereby eroding the Church’s teachings on procreation being the primary goal of marriage, and the role of natural family planning as securing an “openness to life,” that is, a readiness on the part of the spouses to conceive. It does not really matter if the efficiency is really proven or if it is just part of good marketing, the reference to efficiency alone undermines Christian teachings that emphasize ethics. The infallibility of the method allows for bodily pleasures to reenter the relationship. The refinement of the technique through the growth of medical knowledge contributes in its own way to a greater emphasis on sexual pleasure. The periods of abstinence have become shorter over the years. Not surprisingly, men are generally considered to have a greater appetite for sex than women; the monthly periods of abstinence were supposed to allow women a break and force men to control their feelings of lust, concentrating instead on other ways of expressing their love (from the way this is discussed, one sometimes gets the impression that Christian couples have sex all the time outside their fertile period). This fits into a Christian ideology of chastity and asceticism. “Natural family planning” secures conjugal chastity in a way that chemical or mechanical contraception does not. However the availability of information also functions to shorten these periods of abstinence. Extra courses provide extra information. One couple described how they attended an additional course, even though they already practiced the method. “We had the feeling that we didn’t know everything yet, taking into regard the fact of the continuous development of scientific research on the physiologic cycle of women. Besides that, the symptomatic-thermic method we used until now allowed for a very careful interpretation only, which was uncomfortable from the perspective of the male element in our marriage.”11 The more a married couple knows about their fertility, the more they are able to establish the fertile period, and the more they are able to enjoy one another, subverting again the teachings of the Church about conjugal chastity. While constituting a form of protest against what are seen as modern hedonistic pleasures, the practice of the chart discursively puts them right into the heart of modernity, in which medical knowledge plays a key role.

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The use of fertility charts within religious movements is therefore not only a sign of protest, but also a sign of the times.

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Conclusion In contemporary social science, the suggestion is often made that the religious body is opposed to a medical(ized) body that is considered to be secular. Indeed, Bryan Turner has defined the modern body as a secularized body. It is a body that has been set free to experience “the hedonistic pleasures of modern consumptionism” (1997: 39; see also Turner 1984) as opposed to the Christian constraints upon the body. While recognizing the new regulating role of modern medicine, Turner argues that there is a “transition to a new view of the body in which the external presentation of ourselves within the consumer market-place puts a special emphasis on the style and form of the external body. This change in emphasis may also be connected with a secularization of the body, since the old religious controls over passion have been replaced by scientific (specifically medical) controls over the family, and sexuality” (1997: 35–36, my emphasis; see also Turner 1984). However, this strand of thought completely ignores the changes that have taken place within Christian traditions themselves, notably the rehabilitation of the body by the Second Vatican Council and, by equating secularism with the supposed liberation of the body, paying lip service to what can be called an ideology of secularization. Indeed, although many social scientists today agree that secularization is a particularly unhappy and loaded term to describe the changes that have taken place in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the paradigm apparently is still very much alive in the study of modern bodies. However, “natural family planning” subverts this idea of the separation of the religious and the secular sphere. Religion has not been replaced by medicine, as Turner suggests. Rather, it has taken over to some extent the discourse of medicine, which makes religion all the more attractive. And also the other way around; medicine, in becoming the new authority of life, has acquired or retained religious dimensions. William LaFleur has even cautiously argued that “the supposedly ‘secularized’ treatment of the body in Western medicine is, in fact, itself an unconscious embodiment of a Western religious tradition” (1998: 37). He makes this argument on the basis of the western practice of conducting autopsies on bodies and states that “something referred to … as a process of secularization—namely, modern medicine’s success in getting the dismembering of corpses released from traditional religious taboos regarding such acts—is itself a subtle way in which a Western and primarily Christian view of the body is being perpetuated” (1998: 47–48). It follows that the religious and the supposedly secular can therefore not be easily separated, something Oasis explicitly emphasizes and aims at. The

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Christian body has to realize itself in every aspect of life. And the example of contraception shows that religion takes advantage of developments in modern medicine and growing knowledge of the body. Indeed, modern medicine provides the technological means to practice a virtuous life, although it does so with unintended effects, transforming the face of religion and religious authority.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6.

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7.

8. 9. 10.

11.

Takie jest z˙ycie” [Such is life]. Tygodnik Powszechny 25(2815), 22 June 2003. See All names of informants used in this chapter are pseudonyms. The example he gave of this however—serving his wife tea in bed—was disappointingly prosaic, I thought. A Pentecostal, quoted by Gallagher and Smith, stated that “some believe women should be submissive. Well, in a sense, everybody has to be submissive. We are submissive, my wife is submissive for me, but … I have to be just as submissive to her. I have to love her as Christ loved the Church, willing to die for her. Which is perhaps more difficult to do. You don’t hear that much” (1999: 222). Confession, while still involving the priest as distributor of grace, tends to acquire these characteristics, too. The confessor is more and more described by these teenagers as an expert-authority. See The question about the role of the Internet merits an essay of its own. Computer technologies can be seen as a third authoritative field that feeds into the existing fields of religion and medicine. See . See again . The reactions also speak of the obligation to develop an appetite for sex, if a natural desire is lacking. This is also in itself presented as a Christian virtue. They also suggest other ways to deal with it, such as prayer, or seeking diversion. See .

References Asad, Talal. 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Bartkowski, John. 2000. “Breaking Walls, Raising Fences: Masculinity, Intimacy, and Accountability.” Sociology of Religion 61: 33–53. Catechism of the Catholic Church. Art. 364. Note 223. . Accessed 31 August 2007. Carsten, Janet. 2003. After Kinship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. ———. 1978. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. New York: Vintage Books. ———. 1982. “The Subject and Power.” Critical Inquiry 8(4): 777–95. ———. 1988. Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. (Edited by Luther H. Martin et al.) London: Tavistock Publishers. Gallagher, Sally, & Christian Smith. 1999. “Symbolic Traditionalism and Practical Egalitarianism: Contemporary Evangelicals, Family, and Gender.” Gender & Society 13: 11–33. Gaudium et Spes. Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. 1965. . Accessed 31 August 2007 Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press. ———. 1992. The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love, and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gowin, Jarosłow. 1999. Kos´ciół w Czasach Wolnos´ci 1989–1999 [The Church in Times of Freedom 1989-1999]. Cracow: ZNAK Publishers. LaFleur, William R. 1998. “Body.” In Critical Terms for Religious Studies. Edited by Mark C. Taylor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 36–54. McNay, Lois. 1999. “Gender, Habitus, and the Field: Pierre Bourdieu and the Limits of Reflexivity.” Theory, Culture, and Society 16(1): 95–117. Shilling, Chris. 1993. The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage. Turner, Bryan S. 1984. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. ———. 1997. “The Body in Western Society: Social Theory and its Perspectives.” In Religion and the Body. Edited by Sarah Coakley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 15–41. Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society. Edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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8 The Practice of Discipline and the Discipline of Practice Peter Collins

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Etymologically, discipline, as pertaining to the disciple … is antithetical to doctrine, the property of the doctor or teacher; hence in the history of the words doctrine is more concerned with abstract theory, and discipline with practice or exercise. (Oxford English Dictionary 1997, OED Online)

Dictionary definitions are as likely to obscure and mystify as they are to clarify, and so it is with the term “discipline.” We learn from the OED that “discipline” (“as pertaining to the disciple”) refers primarily not to doctrine, but to practice, though this is not always the case. The central argument of this chapter is that discipline serves very well as a means of interrogating social ontology and can be shown to overlap substantially with “practice,” a concept increasingly ubiquitous across the social sciences. In order to develop this argument I take as my starting point Quaker discipline. This seems to me to be a perfect site in which to ground such an analysis in that here is a discipline that has an exceptionally broad bandwidth. However, Quaker discipline might be said to involve a dialectic involving practice and “doctrine” in that it holds in dynamic tension not only practice, which is necessarily embodied, but also the codification of that practice. Pierre Bourdieu, above all others, has flown the flag of practice theory in recent years. He developed a conceptual toolkit consisting of a number of key ideas including practice, habitus, doxa, capital, and field. Preeminent among these, however, are habitus and practice, and it is these that form the pillars on which Bourdieu has built a considerable epistemological, ontological, and methodological edifice.1 However, Anthony King (2000) has argued cogently that Bourdieu’s toolkit would be better were habitus removed. His argument centers on the implacable determinism of habitus, at least as it is characterized by Bourdieu. King argues that prac-

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tice (without reference to habitus) serves very well as the ground of social ontology. I will return to King’s argument later and will merely state at this point that I am in broad agreement with him. At one time, I thought that the habitus could be profitably repaired; now I am less certain (Collins 2002b). My intention is to show how discipline might usefully supplement practice in the delineation of social ontology. My argument, put simply, is that discipline can serve as an analytical device as well as a quotidian account that does the work of Bourdieu’s logic of practice, only better. But first I will describe a particular field, British Quakerism, upon which I build my argument. I focus on a single Quaker Meeting (Dibdenshaw),2 in which I carried out ethnographic fieldwork from 1992–1994.

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The Practice of Meeting Quakers meet together for various reasons, but I focus here on meeting for worship. In the first place many participants in Dibdenshaw Meeting take part in meeting for worship along with other family members. As well as being Friends, they are in many cases friends and gather socially as friends would. They meet to conduct church business and also for discussion groups, musical and similar events, parties and retreats. However, it is participation in meeting for worship that most explicitly defines one as a Quaker, and it is at this time and place that the Quaker network is at its densest and most densely meaningful—it is “core Quaker-time” (Dandelion 1996: xii). The central role of worship is manifest in many other religious groups, and in this regard it is fair to say that similarities between Quakers and these other groups outnumber differences. Not only in this regard, however, and it is equally true to say that the Religious Society of Friends is more or less typical of religious organizations, and to a lesser extent of voluntary associations in general. In particular, there are commonalities in relation to what might loosely be called “rules,” regulations, conventions or, even more loosely, doctrine—“canonic” discipline, which informs, to a greater or lesser extent, the action and interaction of members.3 There is, inevitably, considerable variation in the degree to which Quakers are familiar with canonic discipline. Furthermore it is hard to say, with certainty, the extent to which that familiarity is conscious or unconscious. The Quaker case is more complicated in this regard than say, the Anglican and Roman Catholic cases, in so far as the RSF is a creedless church. There is, however, a quasi-canonic text, the current edition of which is Quaker Faith and Practice (QFP). Some Friends will have read this all through and know passages by heart, while others will perhaps never have opened it. However, all Friends are aware of QFP, of its central position among Quaker texts and of the broad principles that are inscribed there: all act, voluntarily, in congruence with the discipline inscribed there. A summary of the grounds on which a Quaker faith and practice might be built is

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found in the first chapter of QFP—also published separately as a booklet, Advices and Queries (A&Q). These texts are made available to everyone who chooses to participate in Meeting. Copies may be purchased or borrowed and during meeting for worship are distributed around the room, on chairs and on the central table. Informal discussion groups are organized by participants in order to consider sections of QFP; national courses are centrally organized and take place at various venues around the country. QFP is customarily given to Quakers when they are accepted into membership; A&Q is commonly handed out to newcomers. Briefly, A&Q consists of forty-two numbered paragraphs, each dealing with an aspect of faith and practice and together delineating a Quaker discipline. Paragraphs are pithy and tackle more or less discrete subjects. In the ethnography that follows I will insert relevant paragraphs from the current A&Q in order to draw attention to a disciplinary code, a form of doctrine, which, in various ways, saturates Quaker practice. First of all, the Quaker worldview is framed by the religious. A&Q draws attention to the place that God should occupy in Friends’ lives: “Take heed, dear Friends, to the promptings of love and truth in your hearts. Trust them as the leadings of God whose Light shows us our darkness and brings us to new life” (para. 1). Such advice is heeded by Friends but applied in quite different ways. My fieldnotes suggest that many factors bear on what we might call the theology of Quaker faith and practice. Dibdenshaw Meeting included participants who thought of themselves as Buddhists, Roman Catholics, Hindus, and Humanists. Those who considered themselves Christians varied in the tenor of their beliefs from high church Anglicanism to low church Unitarianism. Pink Dandelion (1996: 133) calls this a “liberal belief culture.” A major narrative theme within the RSF is the extent to which it remains and should remain a Christian organization: “Do you welcome the diversity of culture, language and expressions of faith in our yearly meeting?” (A&Q para. 16). This diversity suggests that the interpretive capacity of individuals is the axis about which Quaker discipline turns. Meeting for worship at Dibdenshaw, held between 11 AM and 12 PM on Sunday morning, remains the single, regular event at which most participants (around forty to fifty) in meeting come together. Friends are encouraged to “prepare” for worship, and paragraphs 8–16 in A&Q refer directly to how to go about doing worship: “In worship we enter with reverence into communion with God and respond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Come to meeting for worship with heart and mind prepared. Yield yourself and all your outward concerns to God’s guidance so that you may find ‘the evil weakening in you and the good raised up’” (para. 9). Given the “liberal belief culture” that characterizes Dibdenshaw Meeting, it will come as no surprise that participants’ interpretation of such advice was very broad indeed, making the meeting for worship a thoroughly polyvalent event (Collins 2005). Further advice is given concerning attendance:

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“Come regularly to meeting for worship even when you are angry, depressed, tired or spiritually cold” (para. 10). Participants are quick to explain and justify their absence from the previous week’s meeting for worship, often to the doorkeeper who stands just inside the entrance and greets people as they arrive, shaking hands with everyone—even babies. Participants talk together in the concourse until the time comes to enter meeting; apparent tardiness encourages one or two Friends to shepherd the rest along the concourse and into the meeting room, the swing doors marking the boundary between concourse and meeting room remaining open until everyone had found a seat. The form of meeting is always the same, the details necessarily different. Discipline is a means, among Quakers, of eradicating the unexpected. There follows an account of one particular meeting for worship. The meeting room is set out for meeting: two circles of chairs, one inside the other, and in the middle a rectangular table. Arranged around the table (and explicitly available to everyone) are copies of the Bible, the Book of Discipline, and pots for contributions—to the monthly “good cause” (usually a local branch of a national charity, or a Quaker department) and to Meeting funds. As for the latter, Friends are asked: “Do you give a right proportion of your money to support Quaker work?” (A&Q para. 20) I sit in my usual place. There are no longer formal rules regarding where one should sit, but those who come to meeting regularly know that this is my preferred place and I am equally aware that others prefer to sit in certain places—and also that some sit in a different place each week. Until recently one row of chairs comprising part of the inner circle was marked out as being different by having the table pushed rather closer to it. This was where elders and overseers (“Es and Os”) sat, those who have a particular authority and responsibility for the welfare of the meeting. Indeed one or two of the older elders and overseers still do sit along this row, maintaining the “old discipline,” but most do not. I have heard these older Friends explain that Es and Os need to sit together so that two of them are able to shake hands signaling the end of meeting—this was the customary way to close meeting, and had been, one Friend told me, “for as long as I can remember,” around 60 years. There has been a tendency during the last hundred years or so to reduce such distinctions within Meetings to the minimum. The Quaker meeting for worship is generally described as silent. However, the room is rarely silent for an hour. Apart from ambient noise, participants expect to hear “vocal ministry.” Vocal ministry may last a few seconds, or may continue for ten minutes or more and is generally spoken and very occasionally sung. A paragraph I heard read aloud several times during my fieldwork bears on the issue of vocal ministry: Do not assume that ministry is never to be your part. Faithfulness and sincerity in speaking, even very briefly, may open the way to fuller ministry from others.

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When prompted to speak, wait patiently to know that the leading and the time are right, but do not let a sense of your own unworthiness hold you back.… Try to speak audibly and distinctly, and with sensitivity to the needs of others. Beware of speaking predictably or too often, and of making additions towards the end of a meeting when it was well left before. (A&Q para. 13)

The counsel offered here is, as always, open to considerable interpretation. At Dibdenshaw, some participants of very long standing had never ministered, others did so virtually every week. Some clearly spoke off the cuff, others prepared mini-sermons. The Meeting expects indiscipline to be accounted for: one Friend ministered toward the end of meeting but promptly gave her reasons for doing so after meeting had finished. Spoken ministry varies in length—some lasting less than a minute, some continuing for longer than five minutes. It is advised that a person should not stand to minister more than once in any given meeting. The content of vocal ministry varies but there are some prominent features: it often draws on religious text, most often Scripture, and/or the personal experience of the speaker. Prayer is relatively unusual and song very rare. Some Friends voiced their concern that there were too few spoken ministries, others that there were sometimes too many. It was clear from participants’ comments during the course of my time in the field that three to five contributions would satisfy most people most of the time. Children would sit in meeting for worship for the first fifteen minutes or so and then leave to spend the rest of the hour in another room with adult volunteers. “The Children” was a major narrative thread in Dibdenshaw Meeting. A Children’s Committee (comprising only adults) met regularly to discuss and plan ways in which children might be better incorporated in Meeting. Children were also a common topic of conversation in other contexts. Friends varied in their understanding of the following: “Rejoice in the presence of children and young people in your meeting and recognize the gifts they bring. Remember that the meeting as a whole shares a responsibility for every child in its care” (A&Q para. 19). Sometimes children spent the final fifteen minutes in meeting for worship which enabled them to bring into the meeting room items they had made, poems they had written, or a play they had made up. During this particular meeting, three participants stood to minister. The children were led out after fifteen minutes and soon after a Friend stood to speak. Here are my notes: Ministry 1: [female, 60s]: talked about a T-shirt worn by a Friend sitting opposite her (it read “WALK FOR THE WORLD”). This reminded her that we are fortunate—we walk when we choose to walk. We should remember those who walk because they have to, refugees from Yugoslavia, Africans who we see on the news, starving, making their way to feeding camps. African women in Africa and elsewhere walking many miles every day to collect firewood and bring water “as far as from Uganda to Britain every year.” We should pray for them and hold them in our thoughts. (3 minutes)

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Ministry 2: [male, 80s]: speaks in general terms about the ills of the world, about greed and materialism. He believes that material goods will not disappear but that we should make more effort to share them out more fairly. He concludes by saying that the religion of Jesus is unique because it is based entirely on love. (8 minutes)

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Ministry 3: [male, 70s]: describes a recent trip to the Lake District (actually to Glenthorne—a Quaker retreat centre in Grasmere). He walked up Easdale and sat for a while at the top, appreciating the place. The Ambleside mountain rescue team hurried past on their way to help a woman who had fallen and broken her leg. On their way back a member of the team came over and sat with him, saying that this was one of his favorite spots too. He said that he was happy to be there in that place, and happier still that if someone hurt themselves there, others were willing to come and help them. (3 minutes)

The final ten minutes of worship were held in silence, apart from incidental sounds—someone rustling a paper bag, the occasional passing car, and birds singing in the trees. At 11:30 AM, two elders shake hands and there is a quiet exchange of pleasantries between neighbors before the clerk of the meeting stands to read out notices, on this occasion relating to the charity collection for the month, replies from local members of Parliament to whom the meeting had written regarding homelessness in the town, to pamphlets on various subjects (including one from the Quaker Association for Drugs and Alcohol) received from Friends’ House (Quaker headquarters in London), and notification about a meeting organized by a support group for a local family due to be deported to Somalia. A number of paragraphs in the A&Q relate to what are sometimes called “lifestyle choices”: “In view of the harm done by the use of alcohol, tobacco and other habit-forming drugs, consider whether you should limit your use of them or refrain from using them altogether” (para. 40). Very few participants smoked, some consumed alcohol, and others were abstainers. A relatively large proportion of participants were vegetarians. The final notice is always an invitation to all present to stay for tea and biscuits. Individuals and small knots of participants leave the meeting room and make their way along the concourse to the “children’s room,” where (non-alcoholic) drinks are served. People mill around, talking in small groups for half an hour or so. Friends talk about the organization of the meeting, about matters brought up in the various committees (which meet to discuss and plan children’s classes, the upkeep of the building, the management of finances, peace issues and so forth). “Do you take part as often as you can in meetings for church affairs? Are you familiar enough with our church government to contribute to its disciplined processes … If you cannot attend, uphold the meeting prayerfully” (A&Q para. 15). Family and friends are introduced into conversations, and such narratives run not only across the weeks but also across the years. Interests and pastimes are a frequent topic of conversation: singing, gardening, and sport regularly forming the basis of sometimes lengthy and involved discussion.

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Then there is the airing of views relating to social issues: war and violence, homelessness, the state of the environment. The same topics of conversation arise again and again. And although one might be forgiven, after two or three meetings, for thinking that Friends talk about all kinds of things, after two years, I was aware that certain narratives, including those outlined above, were preeminent. Furthermore, these same narratives, precipitated by a set of talking relationships (Rapport 1986, 1993), were sustained by Friends away from the meeting house: on retreats, at peace rallies, during parties, in chance meetings at the park, the street, the supermarket. These narratives were a significant part of the everyday practice of Friends and partially constituted the interaction of participants in meeting and on other occasions. Such narratives are, apart from anything else, a means by which one is evaluated and by which one may evaluate oneself and are an important means of sustaining Quaker discipline. Narratives are further informed by the Book of Discipline. A&Q provides a distillation of the chapters that follow in QFP and provide the nearest thing to canonic writing in the RSF. They are regularly cited during meeting for worship; elders and overseers are specifically charged with ensuring that paragraphs from A&Q are read aloud regularly in meeting. This directive represents a challenge to those who seek to maintain and sustain a liturgy founded on “openness to the spirit,” on non-programmed spontaneity. However, I heard one Friend explain that even an apparently preplanned reading is spontaneous to a degree (Which reading? When to read? Whether to simply read a paragraph or enfold it within a more elaborate ministry? And so on). I am not about to argue that it is simple to map practice against text (broadly defined and including speech, writing, and other semiotic systems such as dress and architecture). But there seems little doubt that there exists here a relatively clear hermeneutic: the explication of the one helps us better understand the other. Indeed it is hard to make any sense of the one without recourse to some understanding of the other, and I hope to have shown that “the practice of meeting” and “the discipline of meeting” refer to one and the same thing; that is, the construction of an ongoing Quaker identity through the participation of individuals in the social and symbolic construction of community, a process of construction in which Quaker texts—and QFP in particular—are heavily implicated. In presenting this account of Quaker practice I seek to indicate, albeit in broad terms, the extent to which it is informed by Quaker discipline. Indeed one might talk of a Quaker social aesthetic here, in that participants have in mind “a good meeting,” which they do their best to bring off. The organizational and other variations on Quaker meeting are extremely narrowly defined. “Indiscipline” is characterized by a person arriving late into meeting, by making too much unwanted noise; it is a ministry which is overlong or too obtuse; discipline is considered wanting in a meeting where there are too many ministries, or where their tone is “unquakerly”—perhaps too argumentative, or where the same person ministers more than

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once. Too much movement is distracting, unaesthetic, and therefore undisciplined. The policing of this aesthetic is both internal and external; for some it is undoubtedly second nature or habitual, for others it is not—a conscious effort is made to restrain desires and actions that fall outside Quaker discipline. When discipline is “broken” a reaction from the meeting can be expected. This might come in the form of a private word from an elder or overseer (for example, “Don’t you think you spoke for a little too long this morning?”)—or the matter might be referred to a committee where a decision will eventually be made and then made public (for example, new instructions to the door keeper to ensure that no one enters meeting after a certain time, or during that time when vocal ministry is in progress). In the following section I will indicate the extent to which this text is itself a distillation of many other texts, each of which have contributed to the codification of Quaker discipline.

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Archaeology of Quaker Discipline QFP, as one Friend remarked, “has behind it the weight of history.” Quakerism emerged, along with many other sects, during the 1640s amid the social, political, and religious turmoil of the English Civil War. These first Quakers stood against what remained an extremely powerful established church. They railed against its liturgy and theology and particularly its Statesanctioned social and economic privileges, especially the right to tithe payment (Braithewaite 1912, 1919; Davies 2000; Ingle 1994; Lloyd 1950; Vann 1969). Quakers began codifying their discipline from the early days of the movement and have subsequently published a number of revisions, the most recent in 1994. They have maintained an extraordinarily careful record of the development and implementation of their discipline—indeed the record itself is a critically important part of that disciplinary procedure. A written record as detailed and sustained as this one naturally provides an excellent source of data with which to compare the organization of discipline as it has developed over more than 350 years, during the pre-modern, modern and (if I may) post-modern periods.4 Given that Quakerism was established as a non-credal religion, there is tension between the immediacy of faith and practice and its inscription. As early as 1656 the following postscript was appended to an epistle from a meeting of Quaker elders, “the brethren in the north”: “Dearly beloved Friends, these things we do not lay upon you as a rule or form to walk by, but that all, with the measure of light which is pure and holy, may be guided; and so in the light walking and abiding, these may be fulfilled in the spirit, not from the letter, for the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.” As well as beautifully illustrating claims made by Derrida concerning logocentrism, the quotation serves to flag, in summary fashion, the less than straightforward character of Quaker discipline.

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Until 1738 guidance on how to be a Quaker was provided both orally and in written forms. During the first decades leading Quakers traveled from place to place, addressing local groups as they went. At the same time, they published hundreds of pamphlets and circulated, in piecemeal fashion, many epistles and innumerable minutes relating to faith and practice. An alphabetical compilation of these disparate texts, entitled the “Book of Rules” was distributed in hand-written form to all Meetings in 1738. This was the first corporate attempt to formally specify Quaker discipline. Later called the Book of Discipline, it has now reached its eighth revision (1995). These texts provide, both for Quakers and anthropologists, a handy précis of the codification of Quaker discipline from the genesis of the movement right up to the present. Here I have space to draw on just three of these texts in order to establish the approximate development of discipline in this case. Each revision comprises several hundred short passages, written either by an individual Quaker or issued by one of many committees. From the 1650s, leaders of the movement established congregations throughout Britain and quickly developed a rational system of business meetings—the hub being the monthly meeting (comprising several local meetings and held every month). This nation-wide organization facilitated the rapid circulation of texts, and Quakers at the local level were inundated from the start with detailed instructions, issued during meetings, on how to live their lives (Braithwaite 1912: chapter 13). For instance, there were very specific, often repeated, almost obsessively detailed injunctions on dress—relating to the minutiae of material, design, and color—and also on greeting (the elaborate bowing and scraping of the period was severely proscribed). Walking disorderly—violating one or other of the many rules—would eventually result in an individual’s expulsion from the group (Davies 2000: 103–4; Lloyd 1950: chapter 5). Expulsion has become an increasingly rare occurrence. This is a discipline that soon became codified—written down. This setting down in writing was a major element in the shift from charisma to routine. The apparent contradiction of a charismatic, non-credal religious group publishing a formal code of discipline was neatly sidestepped by the fact that the code focused almost entirely on practice and not on theology or belief. This was the development of orthopraxy, not orthodoxy (Collins 2002a). Secondly, although not exhaustive, the code does comprise an extraordinarily wide range of dos and don’ts, relating to, for example, appeals, arbitration, covetousness, love and unity, marriage, meetings for worship, parents and education, the poor, the slave trade and slavery, tithes and sufferings, trade, war, and youth. Although all help to define Quaker identity and enable adepts to develop a sense of belonging, some have a bearing primarily on external relations (relations with “the world”), while others bear more obviously on internal relations (concerning meeting for worship—liturgy—for instance). Others are critically important because they bear equally and simultaneously on both internal and external rela-

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tions: marriage is a case in point—twenty-two separate entries pointing up its undoubted prominence, most stressing the importance of intra-group marriage. During the first two hundred years of the movement, Quakers maintained their strict adherence to endogamy. The result was an unusually tight-knit group. Those who “married out” were disowned (they ceased to be counted as Quakers), though the minute recording of this fact generally cites the breach of discipline as “married by a priest.” The point was that Quakers remained extremely antipathetic toward the established church: one of the advantages of intra-group marriage was that the parish priest, and therefore the Anglican Church, were entirely excluded from the process. The discipline of endogamous marriage shored up the boundaries around the group and ensured that Quakerism maintained its symbolic boundary through this playing the vis-à-vis with Anglicanism. Quaker discipline further strengthened group cohesiveness in that it meant the exclusion of members from important institutions such as the church, the military and the universities. The 1883 Revision is divided into three “books”: Christian Doctrine, Christian Practice, and Church Government, the headings pointing to Quakerism’s continued institutional growth along with a lurch (typical of all Victorian religion and pointing to influences outside specific denominations) in the direction of evangelicalism. Since the development of Methodism in the mid eighteenth century, Quakerism no longer stood as the obvious opponent of the Anglican Church. There was ground to be made up—certainly in the overt setting out of doctrine. Methodism was an open denomination, and the endogamous practice of Quakers caused a rapid hemorrhaging of members (down to around thirteen thousand in 1850). A movement emerged which prompted the abandonment of endogamy in 1859. At about the same time discipline relating to speech and dress was relaxed—these had long been obvious and public markers of Quaker identity. From 1860 on it has been increasingly difficult to identify a Quaker in the street. The 1883 Revision includes a chapter gently entitled “Counsel on Marriage” which includes nine separate “advices.” Brief mention is made of the problem of “mixed marriages”: “Marriage implies union and concurrence, as well in spiritual as in temporal concerns. Whilst the parties differ in religious views, they stand disunited in the main point.” However, there is a definite shift in emphasis away from extolling the virtues of endogamy and toward the duties and responsibilities of spouses, one to the other. For instance, from the first paragraph: “[Marriage] was designed for the mutual assistance and comfort of both sexes, that they might be meet-helps to each other, both in spirituals and temporals, and that their endeavors might be united for the pious and proper education of their children, in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and for suitably qualifying them to discharge their duty in their various allotments in the world.” There is

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a strong bias toward love and affection and a consequent shift in emphasis from the “good of the Society” to the good of the married couple. The eighth and latest revision was published in 1995, is 667 pages long and is divided into 29 chapters. The presentation and explication of rules plays little part here, the text drawing far more on a genre of writing which might be called uplifting or inspirational. While Quaker marriage procedure is hived off to a separate chapter, the material relating to the experience of marriage is in chapter 22 (comprising 94 paragraphs), the sections of which are, in order, friendship, sexuality, sharing a home or living alone, marriage and steadfast commitment, parents and children, and finally, ending of relationships. Marriage now takes its (less than preeminent) place among a series of themes that emphasize the rights and responsibilities of the individual. The subsection “celebration of commitment” has a less than sharp focus and includes writing on not only marriage but a variety of interpersonal relationships, flagging the individuality of Quakers and the choices increasingly available to them. In this revision the writing is suggestive but certainly not proscriptive or prescriptive. The implicit aim of the current Book of Discipline is to celebrate the heterogeneity of Quakers, to encourage them to reflect on their own lives, their own identity and not to instruct them on the ways and means of maintaining group solidarity. The trajectory of Quaker discipline has three important and marked characteristics that further illuminate the analysis presented in the following section. First, Foucault argues convincingly in Discipline and Punish (1977) that the soul replaces the body as the target of discipline (in Western Europe at least) after c. 1700. In the case of Quakerism, there has indeed been a steady development in the form and content of Quaker discipline toward an ever-increasing focus on the individual soul (or self?). Second, whereas at one time (before c. 1850) surveillance of a Quaker’s behavior was rather diffusely (though very seriously) undertaken by the group, it now falls almost entirely on the individual to undertake surveillance of themselves. In this, Quakerism reflects the ambient reflexivity of high/ post modernity, but supplements this with a strongly moral gloss. Third, the development of Quaker discipline has come at a price. The Books of Discipline have allowed for a much greater inclusivity and an increasing measure of individual interpretation regarding faith and practice—to the point where some members are lamenting the “inevitable dilution” of Quaker identity that they believe is the inevitable result.

Discipline: From Description to Analysis Although its precise delineation varies, it is generally accepted that practical action carried out by individuals in consort with others is the starting point for anthropological endeavor. Pierre Bourdieu has in recent decades

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been preeminent among contemporary scholars writing on this subject, and although his work is hardly pioneering it does contain considerable insight and multiple case studies in which the concept is put to use.5 Perhaps his most influential text (at least among anthropologists)—Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977)—is primarily concerned precisely with this principle.6 He begins OTP by carefully and convincingly distinguishing between rules and strategies, thereby placing temporality at the center of his theory of practice. To the extent that anthropologists remain unreflexively outside the social interaction they describe, they will merely collect from their informants a set of rules that are presented to them as accounting for social life. Participants do not, however, act with regard to a set of explicit rules. They act as they have learned to act, they play by a feel for the game rather than by constant reference to the rules of the game. Participants (unlike rules) are temporally oriented—the pace of the game can be critically important. For instance, in Kabyle, when a gift is given the timing of the first gift is significant, as is its value and the way in which it is presented. The response of the recipient is similarly significant: does he (in Kabyle it would seem that men give gifts) reciprocate immediately, or wait a while? Does he present an exactly equivalent gift, or one whose value is greater or lesser than the one received? Among the Kabyle, it is essential that the gift is “deferred and different,” because the immediate return of an exactly identical object amounts to a flouting of the rules, a refusal properly to sustain the relationship. “To abolish the interval,” Bourdieu argues, “is also to abolish strategy” (1977: 6)—an important error characteristic of structuralist analysis. Bourdieu convincingly establishes both the centrality of temporality to practice and the requirement that ethnography should take account of this (4–8). In order to facilitate his explanation of practice, Bourdieu took the concept habitus (from Mauss among others) and developed it in order that it might carry the burden of accounting for the reproduction of social life. Habitus is defined most carefully (and most famously?) in OTP as: Systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles of the generation and structuring of practices and representations which can be objectively “regulated” and “regular” without in any way being the product of obedience to rules, objectively adapted to their goals without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary to attain them and, being all this, collectively orchestrated without being the product of the orchestrating action of a conductor. (1977: 72)

The habitus exists in, through and because of the practices of actors and their interaction with one another and their environment. More simply, it is a tendency, resulting from socialization, to behave in certain predictable

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ways. It is class based and reproduced in successive generations. It is an interesting and useful, though somewhat problematic, analytical tool. In his own work, Bourdieu certainly does not operationalize the term along lines generated by careful definitions, and indeed it is this semantic “flexibility” that enables Bourdieu to use it often to such brilliant effect.7 Unfortunately, however, and partly because of this ready acceptance of multiple connotations (some apparently contradictory), neither Bourdieu nor those who have come to use the concept have contributed very much to its development. In her sympathetic reading of Bourdieu, Deborah Reed-Danahay (2005: 29) brings to our attention Bourdieu’s recent use of the term to describe his own personal trajectory. But the late introduction of this term begs some very important questions. First, how common is the habitus clivé? Does it describe an individual who occupies two habituses simultaneously, or a person who moves somehow from one to another. Although it seems that Bourdieu is suggesting that only two habituses are involved, could there be more? In a nutshell, the introduction of this new ontology truly puts the cat among the pigeons in that it transforms Bourdieu’s prior use of the term habitus from a condition that seems predetermined and subsequently unchanging, to something that is considerably more flexible. Unfortunately, Bourdieu spent little effort on developing this, his central “conceptual tool,” and now it rather appears to be rusting in the box. His late introduction of the term habitus clivé is extraordinary in that it represents a major volte-face, and the fact that he never discussed the idea in any depth is frustrating. Although there are advantages to be gained in retaining the habitus as an analytical tool, for instance, its capacity for exploring the embodiment of practice, the question is whether its disadvantages can easily be ignored. Bluntly, there is an overwhelming sense whenever Bourdieu uses the term that here is the puppeteer, holding the strings of many individuals, all of whom are predisposed to jump around in a more or less identical manner, and for all eternity. Of Bourdieu’s many critics, Richard Jenkins (1982, 1992) is among the most articulate. He has roundly criticized Bourdieu for reneging on his promise to replace the dualism of objectivism/subjectivism with the habitus that encapsulates the dialectic that transcends that dualism. Ultimately, the habitus cannot bridge the divide between methodological individualism on the one hand and rank structural determinism on the other—it veers sharply toward the latter.8 Jenkins argues that Bourdieu contradicts himself in his use of the term “dispositions,” which he takes to be unconscious. It is indeed difficult to understand dispositions as conscious. When we talk, for example, complex mental and intellectual operations come into play, some necessarily conscious, some unconscious. As Jenkins says, “it is difficult to know where to place conscious deliberation and awareness in Bourdieu’s scheme of things” (1992: 77). Secondly, in relation to the transposable quality of dispositions, Jen-

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kins suggests that it is not clear how practices issue from dispositions. Finally, dispositions are characterized by Bourdieu as “durable.” He seldom elaborates this claim, and so one is left wondering how, in Bourdieu’s scheme of things, social change comes about—how might individuals embark on practices which do not merely contribute to their assimilating and reproducing the habitus. Anthony King (2000: 427) also doubts whether the habitus can account for social change. Given that the habitus comprises unconsciously internalized dispositions and categories determined by social conditions ensuring that appropriate action for the social position in which any individual was situated, then social change would appear to be unattainable. We are given to assume that individuals act according to the objective structural conditions in which they find themselves and would therefore simply reproduce those objective conditions by repeating the same practices. Individuals assimilate the raft of dispositions that constitute their habitus at an early age and are unable to generate new strategies when confronted with novel situations because they remain unaware of their habituses and so cannot begin to interpret them. In any case, argues King, such “novel situations” can never arise because the ubiquity of the habitus ensures that everyone must simply go on repeating their social practices, reproducing their social relations.9 Neither can social change be stimulated by external influence since those in other cultures, similarly constrained by their own habitus, have no reason to establish relations with other groups (427). Moreover, in relation to the reductiveness of the habitus, King (2000: 429) argues strongly that the habitus, although conceived primarily to explain social reproduction, is “inadequate even to this task for it only explains social reproduction by casting a shroud of deadening objectivism over living interactions between virtuosic individuals.” The portrayal of social reproduction by the habitus is a ludicrous simplification of the processes through which social relations are sustained. In place of the complex renegotiation of relations between individuals, which always leaves room for transformation, as illustrated in my ethnography of Quaker discipline, the habitus “reduces social reproduction to the mechanical imposition of prior social structure onto the practices of individuals” (429). A more believable interpretation is that individuals continually renegotiate and therefore subtly (and sometimes grossly) alter their social relations. When a measure of social stability is achieved, where social conditions remain reasonably similar for significant periods, this is the result of the interactions of mostly competent individuals (430).10 For Jenkins, Bourdieu’s project fails ultimately because of his inability to prevent the habitus from lapsing into the old objectivism. He is clear that the logic of practice and the habitus are incompatible and clearly sees the usefulness of Bourdieu’s logic of practice but fails to progress to the obvious solution—to flush away the habitus in order to save the logic of practice. This is exactly the point of King’s endeavors. King agrees en-

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tirely with Jenkins regarding the damaging determinism of the habitus but goes on to argue that Bourdieu’s social ontology is serviceable so long as we focus on his delineation of practice.11 King believes that Bourdieu’s theory of practice is important to the extent that it questions the subject/object dichotomy as it has developed in the social sciences. King argues that Bourdieu, at his most interactionist, clearly demonstrates that “social reality consists of the negotiation of social relations between individuals and can never be reduced to a static and timeless model.… Social relations can never be static for their mere maintenance requires further agency, which necessarily involves a transformation of the relationship” (2000: 428). And as Bourdieu himself avers, practice implies discipline: “The driving of the whole mechanism is not some abstract principle, still less the set of rules which can be derived from it but the sense of honor, a disposition inculcated in earlier years of life and constantly reinforced by calls to order from the group” (1977: 14–15). As we have seen, the major general criticism of Bourdieu’s analysis relates to its implicit determinism, a determinism inherent in habitus. Discipline avoids this pitfall in that agency is bound up with it—discipline is the result of work done by either the individual and/or group and not an artifact of ill-defined structural processes. And although discipline eludes simple definition, its etymology supports its potential as a useful analytical expression. Drawing once more on the OED, the term discipline has a variety of meanings, but what is noticeable is the extent to which these meanings relate directly to practice. Furthermore, each of these meanings applies equally to the Quaker case I have sketched. First, the concept is grounded in “conduct and action,” that is, in practice. Second, discipline is primarily a matter of instruction, unlike the habitus allowing that it can be taught as well as caught. Third, since the term refers to both “mental” and “moral” training, it implies an attempt to do “the right thing,” clearly important in relation to religious associations such as the RSF. Fourth, it refers to a means of control—which may be explicit (as in the early years of Quakerism), or implicit (as in contemporary Quakerism). Fifth, discipline and punishment are inextricably linked—the one announces the other; at some point the disciplined individual is expected to be completely responsible for his or her actions—to act other than taught is to act immorally and therefore to invite punishment. Quakers who married out were expelled from the group. Habitus seriously underplays this issue. Finally, discipline implies an order maintained and observed … under control or command.” That is, discipline requires for its survival continual work on the part of members, along with the surveillance of that work either by the individuals themselves and/or by others. It is difficult to know how to judge the degree of primacy here. Although Foucault (1977) argues that discipline becomes increasingly self-centered in modernity, the omnipotence of the audit culture that is currently so much in the news is hard to deny—or avoid (Strathern 2000).

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Increasingly, we are required (or choose) to assimilate several disciplinary regimes that may be more or less overtly codified: employment, family and kinship, education, and the voluntary associations whose number continue to multiply. Quakerism is one such voluntary association, aikido (see Kohn, this volume) another. Such ways of life are increasingly optional; individuals are more and more likely to move between them or to inhabit several simultaneously. In each, what confirms membership is the public acceptance (by the individual) of “house discipline.” Finally, whereas habitus is a term imposed from above, as it were, by an apparently omnipotent social scientist with little reference to vernacular understandings, discipline has the advantage of being a members’ term. It has a groundedness obviously absent from Bourdieu’s more formal, scholastic expression. From this brief survey of Quaker discipline and its theoretical repercussions, it would appear that discipline, practice, and habitus are overlapping terms and that the latter term has become superfluous. It is possible that with a little conceptual clarification, discipline may eventually turn out to be the more useful of these three concepts in understanding the generation of social life.

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Summary and Conclusion In order to interrogate the terms “discipline,” “practice,” “habitus,” I have drawn substantially not only on the practice of Meeting but also on the Books of Discipline generated by Quakers in Britain. These documents might be said to represent the “ought” over and above the “is” of Quaker discipline. But that is rather too simple a conclusion. Historical and ethnographic research strongly suggest that since the 1650s there has been a close relationship—a dialectical relationship, indeed—between the Books of Discipline and the practice of adepts. If the story I present here appears to blur the distinction between the code of discipline and the practice of discipline, then I am happy with that outcome, in that such ambiguity achieves a certain verisimilitude. To a large extent, the very process of revising the book of discipline at regular intervals is characteristic of that dialectic. The first paragraph of the Introduction of QFP has this to say about the process: “This book of faith and practice constitutes the Christian discipline of the Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain. Discipline is not now a popular word. It has overtones of enforcement and correction but its roots lie in ideas of learning and discipleship. Discipline in our yearly meeting consists for the most part of advice and counsel, the encouragement of self-questioning, of hearing each other in humility and love.” The book comprises 667 pages of elucidation, in terms that range from the explicitly formal (for example, instructions on marriage procedure) to the entirely informal (for example, accounts of exemplary practice that reflect Quaker discipline but which

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also sustain its perpetual reconstruction). In sum, it is an extraordinarily detailed representation, by practitioners, of the potentiality of Quakerism. And although it would appear to be limited to the extent that it is fixed in print, it is crucial to the maintenance of Quaker discipline in that it is partially constitutive of that discipline, simultaneously a memorial to the past, a guide to present practice and an indication of the future development of that discipline. The organization of the Book ensures that it elides the is/ought dichotomy; it is a resource, but also a blueprint for doing Quakerism. It remains, however, only one part of the discourse that partially constitutes Quaker discipline. Ultimately, the practice of Quakerism is identical to the interaction of individuals who have each chosen to participate in a certain discipline. I hope to have shown that the Quaker case is useful as a vehicle for exploring the complex negotiation of self and social control, particularly within voluntary associations, for the clues it provides in helping us comprehend an important means of constructing identity and also for the analytical purchase it provides in helping us grasp the historical trajectory of discipline per se. In previous work I have drawn on concepts developed by Pierre Bourdieu in order to better understand the transmission and continuity of Quakerism. In preparing this chapter it occurred to me that discipline, as well as being an important descriptive term, might also serve, more significantly, as a useful analytical tool. With this interesting possibility in mind I presented a critique of habitus and developed an argument in which I concluded that whilst it is worth preserving Bourdieu’s theory of practice, habitus becomes largely irrelevant, except perhaps as a reminder that practice is also embodied. Furthermore, I hope to have shown that discipline is likely to be central to any theory of practice. In any case, I would suggest that the conceptual development and wider promotion of discipline as an analytical device is long overdue. Discipline is a social imaginary—perhaps the social imaginary (Taylor 2004). Discipline is doing “the right thing”; “the right thing” is a never-ending process of negotiation informed by an apparent and contested, though always and already available, moral-aesthetic code.12

Notes 1. I draw on Bourdieu primarily because of the extent to which he is “good to think with,” and also because of the extraordinary influence he has in contemporary social science. Dreyfus and Rabinow (1993) begin an essay on Bourdieu thus: “Pierre Bourdieu has developed one of the most analytically powerful and heuristically promising approaches to human reality on the current scene.” 2. Dibdenshaw is a pseudonym. The word “Meeting” in the Context of Quakerism has several meanings. First, as a noun, it refers to a local group of Quakers,

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3. 4.

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5.

6. 7. 8.

9.

a congregation, as in “Dibdenshaw Meeting.” Second, as a verb, it is often used as a short form for “meeting for worship,” as in “I was at meeting last Sunday.” I will capitalize the term when used in the first sense in order to help the reader distinguish between the two, as above. The institution of Quakerism is formally known as “The Religious Society of Friends” (abbreviated to RSF here); however, because the term “Quaker” is assumed to be more widely understood, this is often amended to “The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)” on notice boards, letter heads, and so forth—that is, in circumstances where non-Quakers are being addressed. The terms “Friend” and “Quaker” are used synonymously here. I occasionally use the term “participant” in order to flag the elision of subtle distinctions of membership. For instance, there is a relatively formal distinction made between “members” and “attenders,” sometimes the epithet “Quaker” is used to describe only the first, sometimes it refers to both categories of participant. “Members” have been accepted into membership of the RSF. The use and misuse of these terms are implicated in the construction of Quaker discipline. For instance, there is a Quaker narrative which concerns itself explicitly with the “attender/member” dichotomy, addressing both the principle of membership and the effect of the dichotomy in practical terms— for instance, debating which offices in Meeting an attender might be allowed to hold. Helen Cameron (2004) has carried out useful research in this area. R. E. Stagg (1961) provides a useful guide to the codification of Quaker discipline from 1682–1860. Charles Taylor (1993: 49) points out that Bourdieu is in good company: “A number of philosophical currents in the last two centuries have tried to get out of the cul-de-sac of monological consciousness. Prominent in this century are the works of Heidegger (1927), Merleau-Ponty (1945), and of course Wittgenstein (1953) himself. What all these have in common is that they see the agent not primarily as the locus of representations, but as engaged in practices, as a being that acts in and on a world.” We may also count sociologists (Blumer 1969; Garfinkel 1967; Goffman 1959), psychologists (Bruner 1990), and anthropologists (see Ortner 1984: 144-60) along with many others—including Bakhtin (see Holquist 1990). Bourdieu discusses both habitus and practice in various other texts, including Bourdieu 1984, 1985, 1990, 1992, 1998, and 2000. Several scholars comment favorably on this conceptual ambiguity; see, for example, Brubaker 1993: 217. If I understand his argument correctly, J. F. Myles (2004) similarly criticizes Bourdieu’s determinism this time implicit in his concept, “doxa”—an effect of his misreading of Edmund Husserl. Rogers Brubaker, on the other hand, argues that Bourdieu’s theory as a whole is rather “too systematic” (1993: 228–29). T. J. Berard (2005: 201) characterizes Bourdieu’s work as structuralist constructivism “because it suggests both Bourdieu’s concern to overcome dualisms and Bourdieu’s privileging of objective structure over his constructivist insights about social experience and practices.” Jeremy Lane (2000) defends Bourdieu against this criticism, but seems to be arguing that conducting research during a period of social change is the same as conducting research on social change.

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10. Michel De Certeau (1984) is equally convincing in his argument that in the contemporary world people establish their identity from the bricolage provided through advertising and the mass media and from whatever other resources come to hand. Arjun Appadurai (1997), Ulf Hannerz (1996), and others make a similar argument in relation to the increasingly influential processes of globalization, and the accelerating creation of diasporic populations. 11. Craig Calhoun further establishes that Bourdieu’s theory of practice grounds power in the agent: in Bourdieu, “power is always used, if sometimes unconsciously; it is not simply and impersonally systemic” (1993: 64). Brenda Farnell (2000), equally sympathetic toward Bourdieu’s theory of practice, presents a rather different kind of critique of the habitus, based on a new realist, post-positivist philosophy of science. 12. Due to lack of space I have largely omitted discussion of Foucault’s work on discipline. Were I to embark on such a task I would begin with the excellent essay by Christoph Menke (2003) that draws out the relation between the aesthetic-existential and disciplinary practices and in doing so emphasizes the potential for agency and autonomy in Foucault’s corpus. I am also aware that in this context attention paid to Foucault’s work on ethics would be profitable.

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References Appadurai, Arjun. 1997. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Berard, Timothy J. 2005. “Rethinking Practices and Structures.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 35(2): 196–230. Blumer, Herbert. 1969. Symbolic Interactionism Perspective and Method. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1985. “The Genesis of the Concepts of ‘Habitus’ and ‘Field.” Sociocriticism 2: 11–24. ———. 1989. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge. ———. 1990. In other Words: Essays towards a Reflexive Sociology. Cambridge: Polity. ———. 1998. Practical Reason. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ———. 2000. Pascalian Meditations. Cambridge: Polity. Bourdieu, P., and L. J. D. Wacquant. 1996. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Cambridge: Polity. Braithwaite, William C. 1912. The Beginnings of Quakerism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1919. The Second Period of Quakerism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brubaker, Rogers. 1993. “Social Theory as Habitus.” In Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives. Edited by C. Calhoun et al. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 212–34. Bruner, Jerome. 1990. Acts of Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Calhoun, Craig. 1993. “Habitus, Field, and Capital: The Question of Historical Specificity.” In Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives. Edited by C. Calhoun et al. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 61–88. Cameron, Helen. 2004. “Are Congregations Associations? The Contribution of Organizational Studies to Congregational Studies.” In Congregational Studies in the UK. Edited by M. Guest et al. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 139–51. Christian and Brotherly Advices Given Forth From Time to Time By the Yearly Meetings London, Alphabetically Digested Under Proper Heads (Manuscript). 1738. London: Religious Society of Friends. Christian Discipline of the Religious Society of Friends 1881. 1881. London: Samuel Harris. Collins, Peter. 2002a. “Discipline: The Codification of Quakerism as Orthopraxy, 1650–1738.” History and Anthropology 13(2): 79–92. ———. 2002b. “Habitus and the Storied Self: Religious Faith and Practice as a Means of Consolidating Identities. Culture and Religion 3(2): 147–62. ———. 2005. “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Ritual.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 20(3): 323–42. Dandelion, Pink.1996. A Sociological Analysis of the Theology of Quakers. Lampeter, UK: Edwin Mellen Press. Davies, Adrian. 2000. The Quakers in English Society 1655–1725. Oxford: Oxford University Press. de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dreyfus, Hubert, and Paul Rabinow. 1993. “Can there be a Science of Existential Structure and Meaning?” In Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives. Edited by C. Calhoun et al. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 35–44. Extracts from the Minutes and Advices of the Yearly Meeting of Friends Held in London From Its First Institution (more generally known as The Book of Extracts). 1783. London: James Phillips. Farnell, Brenda. 2000. “Getting Out of the Habitus: An Alternative Model of Dynamically Embodied Social Action.” JRAI (N.S.) 6: 397–418. Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity. Goffman, Erving. 1990. Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. Hannerz, Ulf. 1996. Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places. London: Routledge. Holquist, Michael. 1990. Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World. London: Routledge. Ingle, Harry L. 1994. First Among Friends: George Fox and the Creation of Quakerism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jenkins, Richard. 1982. “Pierre Bourdieu and the Reproduction of Determinism.” Sociology 16(2): 270–81. ———. 1992. Pierre Bourdieu. London: Routledge. King, Anthony. 2000. “Thinking with Bourdieu: A Practical Critique of the Habitus.” Sociological Theory 18(3): 417–33. Lane, Jeremy. 2000. Pierre Bourdieu: A Critical Introduction. London: Pluto Press. Lloyd, Arnold. 1950. Quaker Social History. London: Longman’s Green & Co.

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Menke, Christoph. 2003. “Two Kinds of Practice: On the Relation Between Social Discipline and the Aesthetics of Existence.” Translated by James Ingram. Constellations 10(2): 199–210. Myles, John F. 2004. “From Doxa to Experience: Issues in Bourdieu’s Adoption of Husserlian Phenomenology.” Theory, Culture and Society 21(2): 91–107. Ortner, Sherry. 1984. Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 26: 126–66. Oxford English Dictionary Additions Series. 1997. OED Online. Oxford University Press. . Accessed 10 January 2006. Quaker Faith and Practice: The Book of Discipline of the Yearly Meeting of the religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain. 1995. London: The Yearly Meeting of the religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain. Rabinow, Paul. ed. 1984. The Foucault Reader. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. ———. ed. 1997. Ethics: Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Rapport, Nigel. 1986. Talking Violence. St. Johns, Newfoundland: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University. ———. 1993. Diverse Worldviews in an English Village. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Reed-Danahay, Deborah E. 2005. Locating Bourdieu. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Stagg, Richard E. 1961. “Friends Queries and General Advices: A Survey of their Development in London Yearly Meeting, 1682–1860 (Part One).” Journal of the Friends Historical Society 49: 209–48. Strathern, Marilyn. 2000. Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics and the Academy. London: Routledge. Taylor, Charles. 1993. “To Follow a Rule…. In Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives. Edited by C. Calhoun et al. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 45–60. ———. 2004. Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham: Duke University press. Vann, Richard. 1969. The Social Development of English Quakerism, 1655–1755. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Notes on Contributors

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Susanne Ådahl is a PhD candidate in social anthropology at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her doctoral research in medical anthropology focuses upon Finnish farmers’ engagement with uncertainty in quotidian life as expressed through their perceptions of illness. This forms part of a broader research project investigating contemporary forms of illness and suffering in Finland. She has previously conducted fieldwork on prostitutes and their clients in Nicaragua. Her research interests include contingency, experiences of illness, anthropology at home, phenomenology, and practical knowledge. Helle Bundgaard is an assistant professor at the Institute of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, and holds a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She has conducted fieldwork in Orissa and Chennai, India, and studied material culture ranging from craft to waste matters. Her publications include Indian Art Worlds in Contention: Local, Regional and National Discourses on Orissan Patta Paintings (1999). She is currently engaged in a research project on bilingual childrens’ experience of daycare institutions in Denmark. Peter Collins is a senior lecturer in anthropology at the University of Durham. His interests are in the anthropology of religion, space and place, and qualitative methodologies. He has coedited Locating the Field: Space, Place and Context in Anthropology (2006, with Simon Coleman); Reading Religion in Text and Context: Reflections of Faith and Practice in Religious Materials (2006, with Elisabeth Arweck); and Religion, Identity and Change: Perspectives on Global Transformations (2004, with Simon Coleman). His book Continuity and Change: Bolton Quakers 1650–1990 is forthcoming. Noel Dyck is Professor of Social Anthropology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. The author of several books on relations between Aboriginal peoples and governments, he has subsequently conducted field

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Contributors ◆ 157

research on sport, childhood, and youth mobility in Canada. His recent books include Sport, Dance and Embodied Identities (2003, with Eduardo P. Archetti) and Games, Sports and Cultures (2000). He is currently completing studies of the social construction of children’s sports. Eva Gulløv is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Anthropology at the Danish University of Education in Copenhagen. She is the coeditor of Children’s Places: Cross-cultural Perspectives (2003, with Karen Fog Olwig). Her research interests include the anthropology of education, institutional ethnography, and processes of upbringing and socialization.

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Tamara Kohn is a senior lecturer in anthropology at the University of Melbourne. She has conducted extensive research with incomers in a small island in the Scottish Hebrides, villagers in a remote village in East Nepal, and with aikido practitioners in the US and Europe. Her interests have focused primarily on the formation and change of identities through action, consciousness of self, and embodied practice. A relevant forthcoming publication is The Discipline of Leisure: Embodying Cultures of “Recreation” (coedited with Simon Coleman). Esther Peperkamp is a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, Germany. She defended her dissertation (“Being a Christian—“Being the Same Everywhere”: Teenagers on Religion, Self, and Society in Post-Socialist Poland) at the University of Amsterdam in 2006. Her research interests include religion and the self, religion and morality, postsocialism, the anthropology of consumption and media. She has published articles in Ethnologia Polona and Postscripts. Nigel Rapport holds the Chair of Anthropological and Philosophical Studies, University of St. Andrews, Scotland. He is also a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim. His research interests include social theory, phenomenology, identity, individuality, literature, humanism, and cosmopolitanism. His recent publications include I am Dynamite: An Alternative Anthropology of Power (2003) and (as editor) Democracy, Science and The Open Society: A European Legacy? (2005). Susan Wright is Professor of Educational Anthropology at the Danish University of Education, Copenhagen. Previously the director of the UK Higher Education Academy’s Subject Centre for Sociology, Anthropology and Politics, she is the coauthor of Anthropology of Policy (1997, with Cris Shore). She has written about universities as sites of political transformation in western societies and on changing forms of governance in Britain. She is currently examining university reform in Denmark from the perspectives of university managers, lecturers, and students.

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Index

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aerobics, 110 agency, 5, 9, 10, 12, 14, 35, 37, 43, 46, 49, 53, 55n. 5, 70–72, 84, 91, 99–100, 105, 108, 110, 149, 153n. 12 animals, relations with humans, 25, 28–35 Arendt, Hannah, 106 Asad, Talal, 113, 119 asceticism, 124–25, 131 asylums, 43 authority, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 34, 48–49, 51, 53, 65–66, 79–80, 84–85, 107–08, 128–29, 132, 138, Ben-Ari, Eyal, 8 Bernal, Victoria, 11, 15 Bevin, Ernest, 88 Blair, Tony, 75, 78, 80–81, 90, 94n. 11, 95n. 19 bodies, 100–06, 113–14, 145 docile, 2–3, 11, 31, 34–36, 101–02, 114, reading of, 30, 37, 100, 108–10 regulation of, 24, 30, 35 Bourdieu, Pierre, 7–10, 15, 19, 35, 37, 46, 70–71, 135–36, 145–51 Bruner, Edward, 31 bureaucracy, 27, 44, 84, 87 Carsten, Janet, 128 Cassidy, Rebecca, 28, 33 childcare, 8, 43, 86 children, 2, 7–8, 10–11, 14, 16–17, 27, 32, 42–47, 49–54, 139–40, 144–45

choice, 7, 14, 17, 19, 46, 49, 81–83, 99–100, 108, 124–25, 140, 145 Collins, Peter, 8, 14, 19, 10, 104, 136 colonialism, 11, 15 Common Agricultural Policy, European Union, 17, 24–27, 37 Constable, Nicole, 10–11 coercion, 1, 2, 7, 9, 14–16, 18, 35, 69–70, 102 cooperation, 17, 23–26, 34–35, 37, 47, 88, 118 creativity, 9, 15, 17, 18–19, 34, 36–37, 72–72, 76, 83, 89–92, 99, 102–05, 109–10, 117, 123, 129 crime, 11–12, 76, 78, 86, 104, Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 103 Dandelion, Pink, 137 de Certeau, Michel, 9–10, 153n. 10 Derrida, Jacques, 142 desire, 10–11, 14, 19, 26, 100, 110, 115, 121, 130, 142 discipline definitions of, 2, 25, 100, 135 legitimation of, 16 of market competition, 75–76, 82–85 negotiation of, 7, 10, 15, 16, 20, 151 rationales for, 17, 30, 34 rhetorics of, 11, 16 self-discipline, 1, 7, 10, 12 technologies of, 1–2, 9, 14, 114, 126, 129

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Index ◆ 159

discourse, 5, 7, 9, 12–13, 18, 19, 26, 35–37, 60, 70–71, 75, 81, 84–85, 91, 102, 105–06, 110, 113, 126–27, 129, 132, 151 discrimination, 50 Douglas, Mary, 33, 47 doxa, 135 education, 143–4, 150 higher education, 116–17 preschools, 8, 17, 31, 42–45 schooling, 1, 2, 10, 75–76, 79–82, 87, 90–91, 100, 108, 115–16, sex education, 115, 125 Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan, 28

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Farnell, Brenda, 8–9, 15, 35, 153n. 11 Feldman, Allen, 6, 15 Finlayson, Alan, 89–90 Fong, Vanessa, 10 Foucault, 1–10, 16, 25, 34–37,42, 50, 70–71, 89, 106–07, 113–14, 123, 126, 129, 145, 149, 153n. 12 Frazer, J.G., 103 Freeman, Carla, 4–5, 14 Gandhi, Mahatma, 6 Garro, Linda, 33. See also Cheryl Mattingly Geertz, Clifford, 29, 32 Giddens, Anthony, 70,83, 128–29 governance, 18, 43, 75–77, 79, 81, 83–89, 91–91, 129 Gramsci, Antonio, 6, 70 Grasseni, Cristina, 31 habitus, 7–10, 13–15, 19–20, 26, 35, 37, 70, 109, 135–36, 146–51, 152n. 6, 153n. 11 Hall, Stuart, 89 happiness, 59, 104, 108, 113–14, 129–30, 140 harmony, 101, 109 hierarchy, 3, 18, 25, 31, 57, 59–69, 107, 128 home, 24–25, 27–33, 36–37, 51, 58, 66, 95n. 22, 145 hospitals, 2, 18, 20, 28, 57, 75–76, 81–84, 88–90, 94n. 12

humor, 73, 76, 127 joking relations, 18, 64–65, 69 immigration, 42–46 International Monetary Fund, 86 Jackson, Michael, 35, 70–71, 104, 106 Jenkins, Richard, 147–49 Killworth, Paul, 5, 13, 15 King, Anthony, 135m 138 knowledge, 2, 5–6, 13, 16–17, 24–25, 27, 32–37, 42, 45, 58, 60–61, 66–67, 80, 86, 90, 95n. 20, 100, 131, 133 ignorance, 5, 8, 18, 24, 42, 52–54, 60–62, 64–69, 147, LaFleur, William, 132 language, 31, 35, 61, 71–73, 89, 93, 107, 126 regulation of, 44–54 Levinson, Bradley, 52 love, 19, 23, 29, 64, 105, 109, 119, 122, 124–25, 130–31, 137, 140, 142–45, 150 Mahmood, Saba, 8 Mandela, Nelson, 6 marriage, 115–19, 121–22, 124–25, 127–28, 130–31, 143–45, 150 Mattingly, Cheryl, 33. See also Linda Garro Mauss, Marcel, 146 Menke, Christoph, 106, 153n. 12 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 103, 152n. 5 military, 1, 5–6, 11, 15, 28, 34, 100, 144 mimesis, 100, 102–03 Modell, Judith, 6–7, 10, 15 moralities, 7, 11–13, 15, 17, 24–25, 27, 32, 34, 36–37, 46–48, 54, 91, 104, 117, 123–25, 145, 149, 151 nationhood, 27, 44, 50 obedience, 3, 29, 31, 8 3, 114, 146 orthodoxy, 8, 143 orthopraxy, 8, 143

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160 ◆ Index

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panopticism, 4–5 parents, 12, 14, 18, 32, 35, 42–54, 80–82, 90–91, 94n. 10, 124–25, 132, 143, 145 performance, 13, 16–19, 24, 26, 30, 32–34, 36–37, 53–54, 72, 81, 84, 86–89, 91–92, 103–04, 125 play, 8, 19, 30–31, 64, 73, 99, 146 pleasure, 5, 19, 125–26, 129–32 policy, 2, 10, 18, 42–48, 58, 78, 80–81, 83, 86–88, 90–92 power, 2–6, 9, 11, 12, 14–16, 18, 25, 34, 36, 46, 48, 50, 54, 55n. 9, 60–61, 63–64, 67, 70–73, 75–77, 83–84, 86–87, 90–92, 99–108, 114–15, 123, 125–28, 153n. 11 empowerment, 18–19 practice, experience-based, 27, 30, 34 theory of, 7–11, 14, 16–17, 19–20, 34–37, 52, 135–36 prisons, 1, 2, 6, 15, 76, 82, 90, 92, 123, 125, 130–32 protest, 6–7, 50, 53, 76–78, 82, 90, 92, 123, 125, 130–32 punishment, 1–5, 7, 12, 19, 25, 34, 57, 70, 87, 99, 107–08, 123, 149 Reed-Danahay, Deborah, 15, 147 regulation, 15, 17, 42–43, 58, 129, 136 Religious Society of Friends, 136, 150, 152n. 2 resistance, 3, 4, 6, 9, 13–14, 16, 18, 43, 45, 49, 51–54, 61, 73, 76, 78, 80, 83, 91–92 Rhodes, R.A.W., 88–89, 95n. 18, 10, 21 risk, 17, 33, 37, 82–83 Roman Catholicism, 19–20, 113–18, 121 Salzinger, Leslie, 10 Saward, M., 87–88

Schutz, Alfred, 70 science, 2–3, 70, 113–14 self, selves, 7, 12, 14, 19, 20, 27, 35–36, 39n. 11, 46, 50, 89–90, 99–100, 102, 104–08, 110, 113–14, 145, 150–51 sexuality, 7, 10–11, 19, 29, 65, 67, 113–19, 121–32, 145 Shore, Cris, 52 Simmel, Georg, 71–72 socialization, 8, 9, 30–31, 52, 61, 146 Spielvogel, Laura, 110 sport, 12, 24, 27, 29, 33–34, 64–66, 79, 100–101, 110, 140 states, 5–7, 16, 18, 26, 42–44, 52, 55n. 6, 57, 79–81, 83–88, 108 status, 32, 45, 52, 58, 60, 64–68, 118 Steiner, George, 72 surveillance, 3–5, 13, 25–26, 30, 34, 36, 44–45, 48, 50–51, 60, 114, 119, 121–23, 128, 145, 149 Sutton, Margaret, 52 Taussig, Michael, 103 Thomas, W.I., 107 training, 5, 8, 12, 17, 23–25, 28, 30–37, 44, 48, 69, 99–110, 149 Turner, Bryan, 114, 123, 132 Turner, Victor, 74n 3 Vincent, Robin, 11–12 Wacquant, Loic, 29 wars, 26–28, 38n 5–7, 39n 13 Winslow, Donna, 11, 15 Worby, Eric, 11,16 World Bank, 85–86, 95n 17 World Trade Organization, 86 Wright, Sue, 52 youth, 11, 20, 26, 113, 116–17, 143

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