Obedience and reform: Tocqueville’s writings on prison as theoretical works

Tocqueville’s writings on prison discipline have often been underestimated by specialists. Nevertheless, they have a significant theoretical value and are tightly linked to their author’s more renowned works. While comparing the two U.S. “penitentiary systems” of Auburn and Philadelphia-a comparison critics have long eluded due to a subtle interpretative oversight-Tocqueville poses a theoretical question: How can inmates’ attitudes be durably modified by prison organization? In struggling to answer it—as this paper argues-Tocqueville investigates the relationship between habit, mutual communication, abdicative tendencies and individuals’ “taste” for freedom, thus developing a set of anthropological insights that would later play a crucial role in his social and political thought.