Violence and Punishment Civilizing the Body

This innovative book tells the fascinating tale of the long histories of violence, punishment, and the human body, and how they are all connected. Taking the decline of violence and the transformation of punishment as its guiding themes, the book highlights key dynamics of historical and social change, and charts how a refinement and civilizing of manners, and new forms of celebration and festival, accompanied the decline of violence. Pieter Spierenburg, a leading figure in historical criminology, skillfully extends his view over three continents, back to the middle ages and even beyond to the Stone Age. Ranging along the way from murder to etiquette, from social control to popular culture, from religion to death, and from honor to prisons, every chapter creatively uses the theories of Norbert Elias, while also engaging with the work of Foucault and Durkheim. The scope and rigor of the analysis will strongly interest scholars of criminology, history, and sociology, while the accessible style and the intriguing stories on which the book builds will appeal to anyone interested in the history of violence and punishment in civilization.

PIETER SPIERENBURG is Professor of Historical Criminology at Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He is the author of A History of Murder: Personal Violence in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present (Polity, 2008).

Introduction: Violence and Punishment within Civilizing Processes

PART ONE: Violence
Chapter 1 Long-Term Trends in Homicide: Amsterdam, Fifteenth to Twentieth Centuries
Chapter 2 Homicide and the Law in the Dutch Republic: A Peaceful Country?
Chapter 3 Violence and Culture: Bloodshed in Two or Three Worlds

PART TWO: Punishment and Social Control
Chapter 4 Punishment, Power, and History: Foucault and Elias
Chapter 5 Monkey Butt's Mate: On Informal Social Control, Standards of Violence, and Notions of Privacy
Chapter 6 The Green, Green Grass of Home: Reflections on Capital Punishment and the Penal System in Europe and America from a Long-term Perspective

PART THREE: Civilizing the Body in Human History
Chapter 7 Elites and Etiquette: Changing Standards of Personal Conduct in the Netherlands until 1800
Chapter 8 Civilizing Celebrations: An Exploration of the Festive Universe
Chapter 9 The Body's End: Death and Paradise in Human History
Epilogue: A Personal Recollection of Norbert Elias and How I Became a Crime Historian

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Violence and Punishment Civilizing the Body Through Time

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials