IN this academic monograph the author argues that Foucault should be regarded as providing, not a facile theory of the state as power, but a complex discussion on a multitude of social networks working together to investigate the state as an institution. He shows that Foucault saw political domination as not the result of the monopolization of power, as in Max Weber’s theory of the state, but as the result of a layering and stratification of different discourses and networks of power within society.
Skornicki assesses how Foucault's approach to both sociology and genealogy differs from that of earlier sociologists and philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) or Max Weber (1864 – 1920) with Weber's interpretation leaning towards Marxism while Foucault is influenced by Nietzschean thinking (Skornicki, 2025 : 15).
He goes on to define Foucault's definition of 'state', taking the reader back in history to how earlier figures determined its meaning and concept (Skornicki, 2025 : 23):
The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588 –1679) regarded sovereignty as a social contract between a government and its people.
The French juror and political philosopher, Jean Bodin (1530 – 1596) stated that sovereignty must be 'absolute, perpetual, and indivisible', meaning that ultimate authority resides in a single ruler, a group, or the entire body of citizens.
Charles Loyseau (1564 - 1627), an eminent jurist under Louis XIII, allegedly identified sovereignty as being an authoritarian state which ruled its citizens by setting rigorous boundaries that allowed only limited social mobility. These he set out in his text of 1610, known as A Treatise on Orders.
Foucault's own view is that sovereignty is ‘an ideology' and that 'a country's laws are the deliberately mystifying language of state power employed to organise and control its population' (Skornicki, 2025 : 23).
There is a lot of repetition, most notably on the two topics which, arguably, were Foucault's most profound preoccupation: the concepts of knowledge and power in all their different guises. An additional subtext being the notion of sovereignty and the controlling powers government states exert over their citizens. These concerns take up the largest proportion of the book, with separate sections or chapters reiterating certain arguments and ideas time and again.
In terms of his theories about knowledge and power in their broadest definition, Foucault again, appears to submit to Nietzschean ideas. Thus, he sees power not as a substance or a thing one holds, but a relationship. According to Skornicki Foucault believes that power is not located in specific institutions, but comes from everywhere because it can be found everywhere, extending through all areas of society. The author writes (Skornicki, 2025 : 26):
Power unfolds in a differential force field. It is not specifically violence, constraint (like a force that breaks something or bends a body), nor consent: what distinguishes it from repression and ideology is that it does not bear within itself either threat or agreement (although it very often needs both), but manifests itself as cunning, incitement, facilitation, contrariety, calculation, anticipation or insinuation.
Skornicki appears to be unsure of Foucault's true position on Marxism, citing scholars holding opposing views. He also seems uncertain about whether or not Foucault supported Marx's capitalist, authoritarian ideology. Perhaps unwilling to bear the responsibility of committing himself to either side of the debate, the author, simply lays out the alternative viewpoints without further comment (Skornicki, 2025 : 64):
Étienne Balibar and Roberto Nigro believe that Foucault systematically sought to build an alternative approach to that of Marx, one which does not exclude crossovers, ‘points of heresy’ (Balibar) and parallels between their respective genealogies of capitalism: difference is far from being inevitably contradiction (Balibar, 1997: 281–319; 2004; Nigro, 2011). On the other hand, neo-Althusserian philosophers, such as Stéphane Legrand and G. Sibertin-Blanc, and even the German sociologist Thomas Lemke, argue for the compatibility of Marx and Foucault, and even for the existence of an authentic Marxism in Foucault and his enlistment into anti-capitalist struggle, against the liberal or boss-friendly ‘recuperations’ of which he was a victim.
In a further move to distance himself from the argument, Skornicki recommends that 'informed readers' of the works of Max Weber (1864 – 1920) and Norbert Elias (1897 – 1990) should make up their own minds, reasoning that the two sociologists each interpreted Marxism in their own way. Both men, Skornicki believes, viewed capital accumulation as being equal to the means by which political domination is achieved.
Skornicki moves on to discuss the interpretation and practical implementation of man-made time that accompanied the start of the Industrial Revolution (as opposed to time dictated by nature and the rhythm of the seasons). He explores how the clock controls workers' tasks on factory production lines. he suggests that Foucault's theory, expressed in his Manifesto Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975), seeks what he calls a 'middle ground' between the perspectives of Marx and the Irish philosopher and social reformer, William Thompson (1775 – 1833) who centered their ideas and practices only on how the world of work could be regulated to ensure employers had the means of controlling employees and to exert punishments if tasks were not performed to a manager's satisfaction. The practices he recommends are based on how penal reform and punishment was enforced in French prisons at the time. Foucault, Skornicki opines, wanted time-management to apply universally to 'most institutions through which individuals pass: schools, hospitals, families, barracks, prisons, and so on' (Skornicki, 2025 : 71). In one of his lectures delivered to students at the Collège de France in Paris, between 1972 and 1973, collated and published in an English translation by Graham Burchell, under the title, The Punitive Society, in 2015, Foucault expounded his ideas thus (Foucault, 2015 : 71):
Disciplinary society is distinguished by the control over time that we find in prisons as well as in factories: ‘the prison-form and the wage-form are historically twin forms, without us being able to say yet what their exact relationships are.
Instead of addressing one of Foucault's preoccupations at a time in its entirety, Skornicki employs a somewhat scattergun approach to writing, frequently returning to topics previously discussed without anything obvious linking them to the new issue he is examining. One topic he goes back to several times is that of sovereignty and statehood. It is unclear why Skornicki chooses to leave Foucault’s analyses of the so-called 'Westphalian System’ — the principle held in international law that each state has exclusive sovereignty over its territory — and his discourse on the balance of powers within the European political context of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to near the the end of the book. The narrative would surely have been better served by fully developing Foucault's argument that power is part of state control earlier in the text when the author first puts the matter of sovereignty under the microscope.
Skornicki outlines somewhat more briefly the theories behind the concept of Territorialization in relation to both geographical environments and populations, showing how its control at once limits and liberates individuals, allowing them to move about freely, trade with one another within certain criteria and, returning once again to the construct of control and sovereignty, he explores the concept of biopolitics, that is how governmental power operates through the management and regulation of a population's lives and institutions.
One of the longest sections of the book is the exploration of historic shifts in religious attitudes and practices. Skornicki takes the reader back to the Middle Ages and the notion that Man is a sheep under the care of pastoral powers which, in their various guises, act as shepherds. He then moves forward to the theologian John Wesley (1703 - 1791), founder of the Methodist Movement, and the use of Calvinist influences to discipline citizens. Of Wesley, the author writes (Skornicki, 2025 : 112):
His charitable actions for the benefit of the poor were combined with an exhortation to moral rigour, an extreme religious rigour among his followers, an aversion to disorder and revolutions and a respect for the established authorities, and a continual effort to moralize the working classes, which involved the fight against alcoholism, debauchery, and the vain entertainments of the cabaret and the theatre.
While the Methodist Movement grew, the Quaker Movement, established around a century earlier under the English religious dissenter, George Fox (1624 - 1691) became considerably weaker after it expanded across the Atlantic to the Americas. Explaining Foucault's own stance on the purpose of religion, the author notes (Skornicki, 2025 : 112):
Foucault long considered the Christian religion as a governmentality that was to an extreme degree a matter of ‘pure obedience’: a type of conduct valued for its own sake, characterized by the renunciation of one’s own will, surrendering oneself wholly to the will of God, that is, of his pastors.
In his lectures and the articles he wrote, Foucault repeatedly extolled the opinion that 'the specificity of power in the West is due to the influence of the Christian Church'.
The slightly discombobulating structure of the book in which Skornicki skips back and forth between the topics he covers notwithstanding, this study of Michel Foucault's position on the politics of power exertion on states and the societies they control, is nevertheless an erudite yet accessible discourse which both practising Foucault scholars and those merely curious about his theories will find valuable reading. Andrew Brown's translation is extremely competent on the whole, but does, at times, come across as rather galumphing and awkward in a way that has nothing to do with it being an academic text and everything to do with the difficulties of articulating linguistic nuances when translating from a Romance to a Germanic language.
BOOK
Michel Foucault, the State and
the Social Sciences, by Arnault Skornicki (Author), Andrew Brown
(tr.)
Hardcover: 232 pages
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (02 Sept. 2025)
ISBN
Nos.: Hardcover: 978-3-031-87392-8
Softcover:
978-3-031-87395-9
eBook:
978-3-031-87393-5
16/10/2025
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REFERENCES
Foucault, Michel (2015) The Punitive Society: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1972–1973 (translated by Graham Burchell). Basingstoke, Hants and NY: Palgrave Macmillan
Skornicki, Arnault (Author), Andrew Brown (tr.) 2025) Michel Foucault, the State and the Social Sciences https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-87393-5
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