planners and building control officers (design-
ers and ‘the state’) for producing spaces that
effectively ‘lock out’ disabled people (Imrie,
1996). The longer-term historical perspective
reveals how moderncapitalismhas initiated
an ongoing process of spatially marginalizing
disabled people from meaningful economic
roles and the normal rounds ofsocial repro-
duction(Gleeson, 1999). Other geographical
enquiries now usequalitative methodssuch
as in-depth interviewing to excavate the experi-
ential dimensions of being ‘out of place’,
detecting how the axes of disability,class,eth-
nicity,genderandsexualitymeld together
in (the enduring of) exclusionary spaces.
Disability geography deals with both phys-
ical and mental impairments, where the latter
entail both people with mental health prob-
lems (the ‘mentally ill’ in a medicalized
vocabulary, including the ‘depressed’, ‘schizo-
phrenic’ etc.) and people with learning or
intellectual disabilities (the ‘mentally handi-
capped’ or ‘mentally retarded’ of now disfavo-
ured vocabularies). There is a vibrant tradition
of mental health geography (Smith and Giggs,
1988), exploring spatial–epidemiological
subjects as well as looking at both the emer-
gence of the ‘lunatic asylum’ and, more
recently, processes of ‘deinstitutionalization’,
‘community care’ and the sites of everyday
survival today for people with mental health
problems (see contributions to Philo, 2000c).
Less extensive is work on geographies of
intellectual disability, although historical and
contemporary studies can be identified (see
contributions to Metzel and Philo, 2005).
There is potential for building theoretical, sub-
stantive and ethico-political bridges between
the different strains of disability geography
tackling physical and mental difference, and
perhaps too with parts ofhealthgeography
exploring the circumstances of people with
long-term chronic illness (Moss and Dyck,
2002). cpp
Suggested reading
Butler and Parr (1999); Gleeson (1999); Imrie
(1996); Philo (2000c).
disciplinary power A form ofpowerana-
lysed in the work of Michel Foucault (1926–
84) that in his analysis follows from classical
sovereignty. Foucault claims that power is dis-
persed throughoutsocietyrather than com-
ing from a centralized source, and that is
therefore important to analyse it within insti-
tutional and social practices. Disciplinary
power emerged in Foucault’s published works
withDiscipline and Punish(1976), but was also
analysed in his earlier lectures at theColle`ge de
Francethat are now being published (see, e.g.,
Foucault, 2003 [1999], 2006 [2003]).
Whilesovereigntymay showcase its power
through individual events of spectacularvio-
lence, such as the fighting of battles or the
torture of attempted regicides – like the grue-
some description of the measures meted out
to Damiens at the beginning of Discipline
and punish– discipline works in an entirely
other way. Power is constantly exercised, over
the smallest transgression, with repetition,
certainty and consistency, key elements in
establishing control. Its model is the modern
army, with the training of individual bodies
into collective ones, a process that Foucault
describes as ‘dressage’. The mechanisms can
be found in schools, hospitals, factories and
prisons. The model of spatial organization in
a town affected by the plague is another of
Foucault’s recurrent examples, which he finds
taken to its ideal form in Jeremy Bentham’s
plan for thepanopticon.
A number of key themes emerge in
Foucault’s analyses: the control of thebody
and its ritualized training and conditioning;
the continuous nature of the exercise of discip-
linary power; the control and partitioning of
time– particularly illustrated by the modern
mechanized factory – and spatial organization
and distribution. Spatial control works both on
the level ofarchitectural orurban planning, and
on the ordering of individual bodies. Discipline
is a distribution of bodies, of their actions, of
their behaviour: a spatial strategy and analysis.
These spatial strategies can be understood as
enclosure or confinement; subdivision or parti-
tioning of thisspace; designation of a purpose
or coding to these sites; andclassificationor
ranking of them. These spaces of power have
their concomitant knowledges, which Foucault
designates by the power–knowledge relation in
a series of pairings: ‘tactics, the spatial ordering
of men; taxonomy, the disciplinary space of
natural beings; the economic table, the regu-
lated movement of wealth’ (1976a [1975],
pp. 148–9).
In Foucault’s early work onsexuality(1978
[1976], 2003 [1999]), he utilized and devel-
oped these ideas about disciplinary power, and
analysed how power over life itself could be
understood asbiopower. In his later writings
ongovernmentality, Foucault developed an
understanding of how liberal governments
tried to govern as little as possible and to open
up spaces for the circulation of goods, people
and wealth (seeliberalism). Although manyGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_D Final Proof page 165 1.4.2009 3:15pmDISCIPLINARY POWER