The Actors
Society is constituted by human beings. Although sociologists seldom endow agency to individuals, they still describes some of the actions of the actors in their works. The two theorists here are French theorists, who have tendency toward bestowing less agency to the actors as most French theorists do. However, their discussion cannot lose the part of actors if they want a whole picture instead of a partial one. In my view, albeit Durkheim and Foucault are similar at putting less emphasis on the actors and giving them less power, they are different in identifying and investigating the actors. While Durkheim is more collective-oriented, Foucault is more power-oriented and considers the other actors besides human beings. Durkheim merely implies that the classification was built by the members of the moiety. In some paragraphs, he simply mentions that individuals are themselves a little universe, where the organs correspond to all the things in the world, and the celestial bodies in the …show more content…
First, he singles out the role of the Hopital General, claiming that it was the symbol of the power of the King. This hospital was the third coercive order other than the police and the court. It had nothing to do with medication, but it linked closely to the control and the power of the royals and the capitalists. The Hopital General, therefore, was not only a confinement to the madness, but act as the coercive and regulative power the monarch and the bourgeois (fm38). For example, according to Foucault, the Hopital General was a shelter for the elders and the disabled, and a labor camp, and also a moral institution in charge of punishing the moral “abeyance” (fm53; e72 (59)). Here, the hospital played a role of generating the fears in people and shaping the viewpoints of madness as unreason and
Society is constituted by human beings. Although sociologists seldom endow agency to individuals, they still describes some of the actions of the actors in their works. The two theorists here are French theorists, who have tendency toward bestowing less agency to the actors as most French theorists do. However, their discussion cannot lose the part of actors if they want a whole picture instead of a partial one. In my view, albeit Durkheim and Foucault are similar at putting less emphasis on the actors and giving them less power, they are different in identifying and investigating the actors. While Durkheim is more collective-oriented, Foucault is more power-oriented and considers the other actors besides human beings. Durkheim merely implies that the classification was built by the members of the moiety. In some paragraphs, he simply mentions that individuals are themselves a little universe, where the organs correspond to all the things in the world, and the celestial bodies in the …show more content…
First, he singles out the role of the Hopital General, claiming that it was the symbol of the power of the King. This hospital was the third coercive order other than the police and the court. It had nothing to do with medication, but it linked closely to the control and the power of the royals and the capitalists. The Hopital General, therefore, was not only a confinement to the madness, but act as the coercive and regulative power the monarch and the bourgeois (fm38). For example, according to Foucault, the Hopital General was a shelter for the elders and the disabled, and a labor camp, and also a moral institution in charge of punishing the moral “abeyance” (fm53; e72 (59)). Here, the hospital played a role of generating the fears in people and shaping the viewpoints of madness as unreason and