Foucault’s Power and Society in the Context of
marriage arranged and most likely judgement and shamefulness would be experienced [8]. Some adolescents have subsequently experienced negative treatment from community such as social exclusion and isolation [9]. In addition, adolescents are less likely prepared to engage in married life, particularly when their marriage is due to premarital pregnancy [10]. Adolescents were also more likely to have an added burden such as financial instability as they were less likely to have completed education and established work, as well as lacking the capacity to be a parent [11].
Therefore, it is important to understand power, society and relationships in this article because this article aimed to discuss power and society in the context of adolescent pregnancy in Indonesia with Foucault’s theories as a lens. This theories of power will be used as a lens to explain and explore this topic.
Discussion
It is fundamental to understand the concept of power in society and human relationship. This is because in practical everyday life, power appears in people’s interactions, communication, and negotiations, showing perspectives and aspirations as well developing their life goals .
The theorist of choice is Foucault whose conceptual theory of power was shaped by knowledge and decentralized [12]. This is because he explains that power is everywhere and comes from everywhere. Therefore, it is plausibly appropriate to be used as a lens to describe power among Indonesian society relations.
“Power is everywhere; not because it embrace everything, but becomes it comes from everywhere”
This quote suggests that individuals can be powerful, power is practised in individual’s everyday life, it is created from social relations, it relates individuals to one another and not only top to down approach.
For example, in Indonesia, that the government includes multi-sectors departments, national NGO’s, community leaders, as well as adolescents to campaign Sexual Reproductive Health in order to improve public awareness [13]. It is evident that the government considers organisations, grass roots communities and individual to have the potential power to raise public awareness and guide social behaviour. It also reflects that in this particular case, power not always came from top i.e. government to down i.e. grass roots communities, but it can also come from community leaders, national NGOs as well as individual adolescents themselves.
Foucault’s broad and interactive theory is favoured because his thinking challenge previous authors who generally describe power as threating, oppressive and a top-down approach in politics and government, Foucault focuses on power relations in social system [14].
“We must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative terms: it ‘excludes’, it ‘represses’, it ‘censors’, it ‘abstracts’, it ‘masks’, it ‘conceals’. In fact power produces; it produces reality;
it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth. The individual and the knowledge that may be gained of him belong to this production”
The quote above presents Foucault’s concept of power as either positive or negative. In a positive way in some traditional community context where women become sub-ordinate, power can be used as sources of strength to empower women and to promote their involvement, raise critiques for development and struggle for justice, whilst in a negative way, power can be used to prevent women’s participations and or aspirations and the fulfilment of women’s rights [15]. For example in Indonesia, power was used in a positive way in a case when government developed a programme to empower women including young mothers through entrepreneur skills development in order to enhance their access to finance and jobs, and to raise awareness about contraception and family planning [16]. In contrast, an example when power was used in a negative way can be seen in Indonesia when pregnant adolescents were excluded from school due to policy practices in Indonesian schools [17].
Foucault also discusses “biopower” which refers to the ways in which power manifests itself in the form of daily practices and routines through which individuals engage in self-surveillance and self-discipline [18]. In the concept of “biopower”, individuals naturally have power that can be expressed as an instinct or desire. For example, where premarital sexual relationship is prohibited such as in Indonesia, there were many adolescents whom behaved self-surveillance and self-discipline to avoid such behaviour, whilst evidence also showed that other Indonesian adolescent also led their intention to engage in premarital sexual relationships [10]. Therefore, it is more likely that power can also be seen in each individual for controlling their intention whether to engage in premarital sexual relationship or not.
Foucault’s concept is important to understand how both the power of individual and society are implicated in mixing people’s behaviour. There are studies that used Foucault’s concept of power. For example, power can be used to raise awareness and improve the knowledge of people in
health and sexuality regulation and management by inviting individuals to address their own behaviours as a matter of their own desires [19]. It can also be seen in Indonesian health programme interventions that power is intended to be used positively, to reduce the number of adolescent pregnancies, the Indonesian government put effort into the establishment of friendly youth centres in order to attract adolescents for accessing SRH education and services in public health centres [13]. It was expected that by educating adolescents about SRH, there would be an improvement in adolescents’ awareness related to SRH and practices. Power also has been used positively by community and religious leaders in supporting SRH programme interventions i.e. providing information to the adolescents and their parents about how to get SRH services access and campaigning
‘no sex before marriage’.
Power has also been extended by the Indonesian government by using government authority for instance pregnant adolescents and their boyfriend have to marry in order to be legally accepted as certified couple. If couples reject marriage, they will not be able to have legal birth certification for their children. In regards to the social exclusion, Foucault also uses the history of punishment in order to illustrate the larger social movement of power and examine how changing power relations affected punishment from the aristocracy to the middle classes. For example in monarchical law, corporal punishments were key punishments and torture was part of most criminal investigations. Punishment was ceremonial and directed at the prisoner's body. It was a ritual in which the audience was important. On the other hand, in the postmodern era, punishment is a procedure for reforming individuals as subjects; it does not use marks, but signs.
Modern power to punish is theoretically based on the supervision and organisation of bodies in time and space [18]. The description given by Foucault explains how power has been used to construct people’s behaviour by using supervision and organisation of bodies. Similarly, in Indonesia there is evidence that culture and religion also strongly influences how people behave [20]. Some people believe that God is their end of life goal therefore has empowered them to have individual commitment and self-regulation without any supervision from others [21]. For example in everyday life, some people in Indonesia practically have individual commitment to do prayer in their daily life without anybody asking them to do so. In the context of adolescent pregnancy, previous study also stated informed that when premarital pregnancy occurred adolescents had no choice other than to accept marriage which was initiated by their parents [22]. Hence, it seems that adolescents behave passively as children of what
society expected, that is accepting what their parents asked of them. In Islamic values which is the religion of majority of Indonesian people, there is a recognition of and a request for every Muslim to respect their parents in the Qur’an verse that
‘Your Lord had decreed, that you worship none save Him, and (that you show) kindness to parents. If one of them or both of them attain old age with you, say not "Fie" unto them nor repulse them, but speak unto them a gracious word. And lower unto them the wing of submission through mercy, and say: My Lord! Have mercy on them both, as they did care for me when I was young [Surah Al-Isra’ (17:23-24)].
This seems therefore to be one of the reason why adolescents were complying with engaging in marriage. Whilst, parents were trying to fulfil society expectations, parents also seemed to feel pressure from society to behave as the society expects. Consequently, they also diffused their power to show their role as parents which aims to be responsible. Although such parents’ practice more likely resulted in less autonomy for their children to decide what they actually want.
Other concept in regards to power which also explained by Foucault that when power is also related to resistance, he said:
“Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power.”
Thic concept can be seen from the context of Indonesian adolescents when they knew that premarital sexual activities are prohibited but they engaged in premarital sexual relationship. It can be seen that adolescents were conducting rebellious behaviour. Rebellion is defined as the action or process of resisting authority, control, or convention [23]. Rebellion in some cases is shown in the age of adolescence, as in this period some of the young people proudly assert individuality from what parents or societies like or independence from what parents or societies want and ineach case succeed in provoking their disapproval [24]. The findings in this study indicate that Indonesian society seems to control and surveillance people’s behaviour by using cultural norms, whilst adolescents were trying to resist the cultural power and society control. Foucault concept also suggests that the society is more likely to be a panoptical tool towards adolescents to ensure they behave in certain way. Whilst, adolescents’ rebellious behaviour seems to be a resistant to the power of culture and religion which are strongly diffused within Indonesian society.
Conclusion
In a social relationship power is not always being used to oppress others, rather, power is more likely to be used to influence people to behave like a power holder expects. Having an understanding of a theoretically explanation of power relations in society, it is evident that in society relations sources of power come from each individual within context of SRH and premarital pregnancy in Indonesia. It can become either a positive or negative influence on peoples’live and behaviour as response of the SRH and premarital pregnancy in Indonesia. It does not always come from the top to the down and it may also come with resistance.
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