Document Type
Working Paper
Publication Date
2013
Abstract
In his 1979 lectures at the Collège de France, The Birth of Biopolitics, Michel Foucault discussed and analyzed Gary Becker’s economic theory of crime and punishment, originally published in The Journal of Political Economy in 1968 under the title “Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach.” In this historic, second encounter at the University of Chicago, Gary Becker responds to Foucault’s lectures and possible critical readings of his writings on crime and punishment, in conversation with Professors François Ewald (who was, at the time in 1979, Foucault’s assistant at the Collège and one of Foucault’s closest interlocutors) and Bernard Harcourt (a punishment theorist and an editor of Foucault’s lectures). The rich encounter explores potential overlaps, complementarities, and conflicts between Foucault’s theoretical work on punishment (both in Birth of Biopolitics and Discipline and Punish) and Becker’s economic theory of crime, builds on the previous confrontation over American neoliberalism, and provides a bridge between contemporary French philosophy and American economic theory.
Disciplines
Criminal Law | Law | Law and Economics | Law and Philosophy | Law and Society
Recommended Citation
Gary S. Becker, Francois Ewald & Bernard E. Harcourt,
Becker and Foucault on Crime and Punishment – A Conversation with Gary Becker, François Ewald, and Bernard Harcourt: The Second Session,
University of Chicago Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper No. 654; University of Chicago Public Law & Legal Theory Working Paper No. 440; Columbia Law & Economics Working Paper No. 456
(2013).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/1823
Included in
Criminal Law Commons, Law and Economics Commons, Law and Philosophy Commons, Law and Society Commons