Bentham sorts convicts into labor classes ranked by transferable skill
Evidence
That he may get the better view of them, I throw them into four classes. In the first, I place those who already are possessed of business capable of being carried on with advantage in the prison: in the second, those trained up to businesses which, though not capable in themselves of being carried on within such limits, yet by the similarity of operation have a tendency to render it more or less easy for a man to learn some of those other businesses which are: in the third rank, I would place such as had been trained up indeed to industry, but to branches which have no such tendency as I have just mentioned; such, for instance, as porters, coal-heavers, gardeners, and husband-men. In the last I would place men regularly brought up to the profession of thieving, and others who have never been brought up to any kind of industry. Some names for these different classes I may as well endeavour to find as not; for names they must have when they get into their house; and if I perform not that business myself, somebody else must do it for me. I will call them the good hands, the capable hands, the promising hands, and the drones. — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 187
Categorization
- DEFINE: Establishes Bentham’s four-fold taxonomy — good, capable, promising hands, and drones — a utilitarian classification of labor value that classifies the subject body.
- XREF: Directly parallel to the reader’s panopticon-project interest in how the architecture classifies and sorts bodies; also resonates with the Party’s re-education categories in 1984. — connects to: Penal labour reshapes convicts mechanistically into docile, regularized workers — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 370; The prison disciplined convicts into an industrial labor force
Related
Broader Connections
- Penal labour reshapes convicts mechanistically into docile, regularized workers
#expands(0.82) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 370 - The prison disciplined convicts into an industrial labor force
#expands(0.80)