the Great Confinement

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The Great Confinement is Michel Foucault’s term for the early modern European practice of mass institutionalization of the poor, mad, and socially deviant, which he interprets as a key moment in the historical construction of madness and social control.

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Great Confinement 0

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Predicate Object
instanceOf Foucauldian concept
concept in social theory
concept in the history of psychiatry
historical concept
associatedWith absolutist state formation
classical age of reason
moral discipline of populations
regulation of labor
urbanization in early modern Europe
carriedOutIn charitable hospitals
houses of correction
hôpitaux généraux
workhouses
coinedBy Michel Foucault NERFINISHED
contrastedWith medico-psychiatric model of mental illness
describedIn Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique NERFINISHED
Madness and Civilization NERFINISHED
focusesOn boundary between reason and unreason
exclusion of unreason
geographicScope England NERFINISHED
France NERFINISHED
Western Europe NERFINISHED
other European states
interpretedAs key moment in the historical construction of madness
mechanism of social control
response to idleness
response to poverty
response to social deviance
involves internment of beggars
internment of prostitutes
internment of socially deviant people
internment of the mad
internment of the poor
internment of unemployed people
internment of vagrants
mass institutionalization
precedes emergence of modern psychiatry
medicalization of madness
relatedTo bourgeois moral order
classical age rationality
history of madness
history of psychiatry
history of social control
rise of disciplinary institutions
startCentury 17th century
theoreticalFramework Foucauldian archaeology of knowledge
genealogical analysis
timePeriod early modern Europe

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Madness and Civilization centralConcept the Great Confinement