Title: Subjugation of bodies: The historical sociology of total institutions in New Zealand
Abstract: At least since Tracey McIntosh's keynote address at the 2012 SAANZ conference (see also McIntosh, 2013), which was a highly evocative case study of her subject's trajectory through state 'care' institutions, I have looked for other material which might extend this theme. Swirls of media publicity, some around published books, have also raised relevant issues. I must say I am delighted2 to run two articles in this issue on an incredibly important sociological issue, and this editorial seeks to further contextualise these.From the early days of the colony a range of total institutions have been prominent in the social and architectural landscapes. To the south of Great North Road from where I live, across State Highway 16, lies the former psychiatric hospital (earlier the Whau Lunatic Asylum, Oakley Mental Hospital, and Carrington Hospital). This still-imposing brick Italianate/Romanesque structure was the largest building in the colony when it was built in 1865. After various changes it was decommissioned during the early 1990s and the buildings are now part of the campus of Unitec. Earlier structures for this purpose had been developed in Auckland since c1850 when gaols and public hospitals were the only available core organisations to cope with socially dislocated people. A string of similar institutions, together with prisons, schools and other buildings were prominent in cityscapes ever since. In the 1860s and 1870s there were small purpose-built asylums, usually on the edge of the main towns to encourage community involvement. However, the next generation of buildings in the 1880s were in more remote areas and were much larger. The clientele was split between short-term and longer-term patients.But their architectural prominence has been dwarfed by their social impactsNnternationally renowned New Zealand author Janet Frame was a psychiatric patient in the 1940s and 1950s, and vividly described the differences between front and back wards, and newer and older institutions.Total institutions were developed as social technologies developed to cope with a variety of human conditions which seemed no longer able to deal with the circumstances of conventional family and village social life. Professions and related occupations arose to deal with the people now designated needing their care and (as Foucault has famously pointed out) new professional knowledge and ideologies claimed expertise. Given the difficulties of 'people-processing' these institutions were subject to considerable variation in ideologies - and therefore treatment fashions - over time. Dalley (1999: 3-4) summarises some of these vagaries as applied to child welfare services:Early in the [twentieth] century residential care was regarded as the best option for young offenders, and for young people who were considered out of control. Alternative forms of care, such as foster care with non-family members, were reversed for the least difficult children committed to the care of the state. The pendulum swing away from credential care as a first option from the late 1910s as foster care, and the supervision of children in their own homes, assumed importance. By the late 1950s, young people ...might experience a range of family care situations. Thirty years later, social workers and family members worked together to keep young people within the family grouping. .The nature of residential care itself changed markedly. Large institutions, separated from community and family, and housing both young offenders and children in need of 'care and protection', gave way to smaller and more varied units catering for distinct groups of young people.Across the range of total institutions a major wave of de-institutionalisation took place from the late 1970s and many were closed down. These institutions had done much to rescue vulnerable people from adverse social conditions in which they had been placed but had also wrought considerable harm to many. …
Publication Year: 2016
Publication Date: 2016-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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