David Garland

PENALITY AND THE PENAL STATE

The sociology of punishment has developed a rich understanding of the social and historical forces that have transformed American penality during the last 40 years. But whereas these social forces are not unique to the United States, their penal impact there has been disproportionately large, relative to comparable nations. To address this issue, I suggest that future research should attend more closely to the structure and operation of the penal state. I begin by distinguishing penality (the penal field) from the penal state (the governing institutions that direct and control the penal field). I then present a preliminary conceptualization of “the penal state” and discuss the relationship between the penal state and the American state more generally.

Concepts of culture in the sociology of punishment

The author analyses the different ways in which the concept of ‘culture’ is currently deployed in the sociology of punishment. Using a distinction first developed by W.H. Sewell Jr, he distinguishes two usages of the concept—culture as an analytical dimension of social relations (‘the cultural’) and culture as a collective entity (‘a culture’). The theoretical issues and problems entailed in these two usages are discussed and several pragmatic solutions proposed. The author argues that analytical accounts of ‘the cultural’ should be regarded as artificial (though necessary) abstractions. Descriptive ethnography, discourse analysis and textual explication ought to be viewed as components of historical or sociological explanation, not as substitutes for explanatory analysis. The author argues for the integration of cultural analysis into the explanatory project of a multi-dimensional sociology of punishment.

Capital punishment and American culture

INTRODUCTION This is an essay about capital punishment and American culture. Its point of departure is the recent publication of several books and articles suggesting that the USA’s retention of the death penalty is an expression of an underlying cultural tradition that creates an elective affinity between American society and the execution of criminal offenders. The implicit – and sometimes explicit – claim of this new literature is that today’s capital punishment system is an instance of ‘American exceptionalism’, an expression of a deep and abiding condition that has shaped the American nation from its formative years to the present. I want to take issue with this idea. I want to reject this culturalist version of American exceptionalism and to resist the notion that there is something deep and abiding about American culture that propels its judicial system towards capital punishment. In taking issue with these specific propositions and the books in which they are developed, I suggest an alternative way of understanding the continuation of capital punishment in the USA after 1972. In the course of this discussion, I also raise some more general issues about concepts of ‘culture’ and their use in the sociology of punishment.

What is a “history of the present”? On Foucault’s genealogies and their critical preconditions:

In this article Michel Foucault’s method of writing a “history of the present” is explained, together with its critical objectives and its difference from conventional historiography. Foucault’s shift from a style of historical research and analysis conceived as “archaeology” to one understood as “genealogy” is also discussed, showing how the history of the present deploys genealogical inquiry and the uncovering of hidden conflicts and contexts as a means of re-valuing the value of contemporary phenomena. The article highlights the critical observations of present-day phenomena from which a history of the present begins, paying particular attention to Foucault’s concept of “dispositif” and his method of problematization. Foucault’s analyses of Bentham’s Panopticon, of the disciplinary sources of the modern prison, and of the technology of confession are discussed by way of illustration.

Beyond the culture of control

This essay seeks to move on from the critical debates that have followed the publication of The Culture of Control by taking up constructive suggestions, refining or extending the book’s claims, and sketching out new lines for future research. After a preliminary discussion of the proper role of theory in historical and sociological research it seeks to clarify and develop the following ideas: the concept of the field and its role in the study of crime control and criminal justice; the field as a contested balance of forces; situated rationality and conflicted action; gender relations and the culture of control; national characteristics and responses to late modernity; American exceptionalism; analysis and critique in the study of social control.

The Securitization of Society: Crime, Risk, and Social Order

Contents Introduction 1 David Garland 1. The Problem 9 Part I. A Politics of Fragmentation 27 2. Nodal Governance 29 Part II. From Panopticon to Patchwork Quilt 55 3. Securitization 60 4. Assemblages 97 5. Molar and Molecular 131 Part III. Among People 163 6. Combating Marijuana Cultivation 167 7. Tackling Road Transport Crime 186 8. Urban Intervention Teams 206 9. The Collective Shop Ban 226 Part IV. The Era of Invisible Fissures 245 10. City and Citizenship 249 11. A Dynamic Perspective 286 Acknowledgments 303 Notes 305 References 315 Index 335 About the Author 345

AS CONTRADIÇÕES DA “SOCIEDADE PUNITIVA”: O CASO BRITÂNICO

O autor procura mostrar, examinando o caso britânico, como as politicas penais atuais sao dilaceradas por duas tendencias contraditorias: de um lado, a percepcao da necessidade de enfrentar a criminalidade como um aspecto constitutivo e inexpurgavel da vida social contemporânea, o que resulta numa “criminologia do eu”, do criminoso como agente racional a nossa imagem e semelhanca, e aponta para uma “administracao” desse fato social normal; e, de outro, a negacao histerica dessa realidade, o que resulta numa “criminologia do outro”, do criminoso como monstro, e que aponta para um recuo a estrategias de combate ao crime mais primitivas e de eficacia meramente simbolica.

A culturalist theory of punishment? Punishment and culture, Philip Smith. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008. 183 pp.

Times have changed. Twenty-five years ago, sociologists of punishment neglected culture in their efforts to identify the social causes and consequences of penal institutions. In a field revolutionized by neo-Marxist histories and Foucauldian genealogies the focus was on class control and techniques of discipline rather than cultural meanings and sensibilities. In those days, if ‘culture’ was studied at all, it was in the guise of normalizing discourses embedded in techniques of penal power, or else systems of ideology that reproduced ruling class hegemony. And the point of studying these narrowly conceived cultural forms – for that is what they are – was not to trace their multiple meanings and dialogic possibilities but more narrowly to gauge their instrumental effects in furthering penal control. Today, following a remarkable expansion and refinement in penal history and sociology, the question of culture has become much more pertinent to the study of punishment. It is no longer novel or controversial to observe that penal institutions are grounded in cultural values and perceptions (Downes, 1988; Garland, 1990, 2005; Wiener, 1990; Melossi, 2001; Simon, 2001; Vaughan, 2002; Whitman, 2003; Savelsberg, 2004; Sarat and Boulanger, 2005); that they draw upon specific sensibilities and express particular emotions (Spierenburg, 1984; Garland, 1990; Duncan, 1996; Miller, 2000; Smith et al., 2000; Vaughan, 2000; Tonry, 2001; Crawley, 2004); that they are the sites of ritual performance and cultural production (Arasse, 1989; Gerould, 1992; Garland, 2002; Smith, 2003; Savelsberg and King, 2005) or that they give rise to diffuse cultural consequences quite above and beyond any crime control effects they may produce (Bender, 1987; Garland, 1991; Sarat, 2001). Against this background, it was merely a matter of time before someone bent the stick all the way back and proposed a fully culturalist theory of punishment. Which is precisely what Philip Smith has now done. Philip Smith’s Punishment and culture is a brief, combative work of social theory that uses a series of historical case studies – each re-interpreting a notable penal institution or its transformation – to make the case for a ‘culturalist’ approach to the analysis of punishment. Major theoretical interventions are still rare in this field, and Smith’s book,

19.00 (pbk). ISBN 9780226766102

What, in fact, is the Welfare State? This article traces the emergence of the welfare state as a specific mode of government, describing its distinctive rationality as well as its characteristic forms, functions and effects. It identifies five sectors of welfare governance, the relations between them, and the various forms these take in different times and places. It discusses the contradictory commitments that shape welfare state practices and the problems associated with these practices and contradictions. It situates welfare state government within a long-term account of the changing relations between the social and the economic spheres. And it argues that the welfare state ought to be understood as a “normal social fact”—an essential (though constantly contested) part of the social and economic organization of modern capitalist societies.

The Welfare State: A Fundamental Dimension of Modern Government

The last twenty years have seen a remarkable increase in the extent and range of “punishment and society” scholarship. Together with this quantitative expansion, there have also been important qualitative developments in research, analysis and explanation – many of which can be counted as scientific advances. This article specifies a number of dimensions along which theory, method and data in this field have been improved and also identifies some continuing challenges and problems. Examples from the literature on the emergence of “mass incarceration” and the nature of the “war on drugs” are used to indicate the range of theoretical resources that scholars in this field have developed and to point to empirical and theoretical questions that remain to be resolved.