Thomas Mathiesen


Thomas Mathiesen is a Norwegian sociologist.

Background

Mathiesen grew up in the Norwegian county of Akershus, as the only child of Einar Mathiesen and Birgit Mathiesen. He is the grandson of surgeon Johan Berger Mathiesen.

Career

Mathiesen studied sociology at the University of Wisconsin. He then returned to Norway, and graduated as M.A. in 1958 from the University of Oslo, where he did his doctorate in 1965. In 1972 he was appointed Professor of sociology of law at the Faculty of Law, University of Oslo,.
He was a visiting professor at the University of California in Santa Barbara and Berkeley, the University of Tromsø, also the University of Warsaw and the University of Bremen.
Together with Nils Christie and Louk Hulsman he is a distinguished representative of the prison abolition movement. He writes in Norwegian and English, several of his books have been translated into other languages, including Swedish, Danish, German, Italian and Spanish. Some of Mathiesen's books in English include The Politics of Abolition, Silently Silenced and Towards a Surveillant Society. His 1965 work The Defences of the Weak was selected for the Norwegian Sociology Canon by the Norwegian newspaper Morgenbladet in 2011.
In The Viewer Society: Michel Foucault's 'Panopticon' revisited, Mathiesen presented the concept of the Synopticon or "surveillance of the few by the many", as the sociological reciprocal of Panopticism, which Foucault described in Discipline and Punish.
Mathiesen was one of the inspirers of the British prisoners movement, Preservation of the Rights of Prisoners and even spoke at their foundation meeting. He also presented a paper at the eleventh symposium of the National Deviancy Conference in September 1972 entitled 'Strategies of Resistance within a Total Institution.'
Mathiesen's autobiography, entitled Cadenza: A Professional Autobiography, was published by the British publisher European Group Press in fall 2017.

Publications & Articles (Selections)