Michel Foucault was one of the most influential thinkers in the contemporary world. Social scientist and historian of ideas, Foucault was Professor of History of Systems of Thought at the College de France. He wrote frequently for French newspapers and reviews, and edited Critique. Among his many publications are Madness and Civilization (1961), The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972), The Birth of the Clinic (1973), Discipline and Punish (1975), and three volumes of the History of Sexuality: Volume One, the Will to Knowledge (1976); Volume Two, The Use of Pleasure (1984); and Volume Three: The Care for the Self (1984). Professor Foucault died in 1984.

In the middle ages there were gaols and dungeons, but punishment was for the most part a spectacle. The economic changes and growing popular dissent of the eighteenth century made necessary a more systematic control over the individual members of society, and this in effect meant a change from punishment, which chastised the body, to reform, which touched the soul.

Foucault shows in fascinating detail the development of the Western system of prisons, police organizations, administrative and legal hierarchies of social control --- and the growth of disciplinary society as a whole. He also reveals that the comparison between a school and a prison is not purely facetious --- prisons, schools, factories, barracks and hospitals all share a common organization, in which it is possible to control the use of an individual's time and space hour by hour.