23 May, 2013

In the spring of 1972 the staff of Esprit sedorganised another round table with Michel Foucault. This one was about the role of social workers in France’s then new urban public housing. These were the multi-family apartment buildings that the government was building for the dangerous classes. France was creating neighbourhoods similar to the neighbourhoods that in the USA are called “the projects” (Foucault, 1972a). Another member of the panel, the urbanist and cultural historian Paul Virilio, remarked: One could say that one passes through three stages: the self-regulation of primitive societies, the regulation of our societies, and now we are