Power and Legitimacy

Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), an Italian Marxist social theorist

Gramsci's Ideas

• Capitalism maintained control through ideology
• Bourgeoisie culture became "common sense"
• Hegemony: the dominance of one social group or class in a society that exercises control subtly using a mixture of consent and coercion
• Political society vs. Civil Society

Michel Foucault (1926-1984), a French philosopher, historian, and social theorist

Foucault's Ideas

• Discipline and Punish, 1975
• Transition in the modern world from ritual displays of power to disciplinary forms of power
• Discipline as a series of techniques by which the body's operations can be controlled
• Jeremy Betham's Panopticon