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The Policing of Families
In The Policing of Families, Jacques Donzelot, a student and colleague of Michel Foucault, offers an account of public intervention in the regulation of family affairs since the eighteenth century, showing how this intervention effected radical changes in the structure of what had traditionally been a private domain. Treating the family as a focal point of multiple social practices and discourses, Donzelot examines the role of philanthropy, social work, compulsory mass education, and psychiatry in the control of family life and describes the transformation of mothers into agents of the state. Donzelot also provides a critique of Marxist, psychoanalytic, and feminist conceptions of the family and shows how the policies of the state and the professions molded working-class and middle-class families in quite different ways. "An essential corrective both to the old overly optimistic interpretation and to the new pessimistic and apocalyptic vision of the recent history of the family and society in the West."--Lawrence Stone, New Republic
242 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 29, 2025
Honestly, this book is dense, but very important (at least for my life's history), but I'm still processing things, for example, figuring out how to say what I got simply.
But yes, 5 stars all the way.
//
It's been 3 years, let's go.
So basically Deleuze sucks but he was used for a forward to give a book review & promote the book. Basically skip Deleuze until you finish reading the book.
Also Donzelot explicitly says that this book is France centric & people outside of France need to do their own research. I tried reading this book without google back in 2003ish as an 8 year old. I was reading this book because I was noticing the security guards at the school circling around the walls when I was around, so I knew I was being watched, and because of the various competing levels of conversion torture being done against me, I was trying to make sense of it. Also my parents were baby boomers so they weren't used to the level of social services paid attention to disabled kids, so I was trying to figure out what that was about.
There is part of the book circa page 112 where it talks about a case in colonized Algeria, and that's the part that made my older sister who was a teenager with a high reading ability back in 2003ish connect the dots that what I was trying to read about was the school to prison/confinement pipeline since I was already in that pipeline as a special needs student.
The structure of the book is like before/during/after 2 periods: the french revolution & world war 2. The book has a lot of comments about various types of emancipation
Is this book outdated, yeah probably, it was written for a contemporary audience. Like the first page of the first chapter references a movie in the pop culture of the French audience. The topics covered involve how social work is part of the police force, and further, we should include colonialism and the development of the non-profit sector which was just starting to develop back when this book was written.
If I were to recommend a fictional movie that this book has the aesthetic of, partly because I was trying to see it when I wad a kid it'd be "cría cuervos" (1976). My criticism of that movie is that it has way too much nudity, but I think that fits with how Foucault was a creep. But again, for the topics it covers, I'd suggest looking up family abolition, the school to prison pipeline, pedagogy, if you read about 7 or 8 books from those topics then you'll probably have more information than this 1 book especially since it's like 40+ years ago. Add in books about the transatlantic slave trade because of the topic of empancipation, and how social work is carceral, and how the non-profit sector developed and you'll be on your way.
Also the book connects to the prison abolition project Foucault and his peers were involved in, so add that topic too.
But yes, 5 stars all the way.
//
It's been 3 years, let's go.
So basically Deleuze sucks but he was used for a forward to give a book review & promote the book. Basically skip Deleuze until you finish reading the book.
Also Donzelot explicitly says that this book is France centric & people outside of France need to do their own research. I tried reading this book without google back in 2003ish as an 8 year old. I was reading this book because I was noticing the security guards at the school circling around the walls when I was around, so I knew I was being watched, and because of the various competing levels of conversion torture being done against me, I was trying to make sense of it. Also my parents were baby boomers so they weren't used to the level of social services paid attention to disabled kids, so I was trying to figure out what that was about.
There is part of the book circa page 112 where it talks about a case in colonized Algeria, and that's the part that made my older sister who was a teenager with a high reading ability back in 2003ish connect the dots that what I was trying to read about was the school to prison/confinement pipeline since I was already in that pipeline as a special needs student.
The structure of the book is like before/during/after 2 periods: the french revolution & world war 2. The book has a lot of comments about various types of emancipation
Is this book outdated, yeah probably, it was written for a contemporary audience. Like the first page of the first chapter references a movie in the pop culture of the French audience. The topics covered involve how social work is part of the police force, and further, we should include colonialism and the development of the non-profit sector which was just starting to develop back when this book was written.
If I were to recommend a fictional movie that this book has the aesthetic of, partly because I was trying to see it when I wad a kid it'd be "cría cuervos" (1976). My criticism of that movie is that it has way too much nudity, but I think that fits with how Foucault was a creep. But again, for the topics it covers, I'd suggest looking up family abolition, the school to prison pipeline, pedagogy, if you read about 7 or 8 books from those topics then you'll probably have more information than this 1 book especially since it's like 40+ years ago. Add in books about the transatlantic slave trade because of the topic of empancipation, and how social work is carceral, and how the non-profit sector developed and you'll be on your way.
Also the book connects to the prison abolition project Foucault and his peers were involved in, so add that topic too.
March 10, 2014
read assigned chapters; another foucault-nian analysis; Deleuze's forward only makes this more enjoyable to read.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews