Durkheim's Sociology of Punishment and Punishment Today
Files
Description
Durkheim focuses upon punishment because, for him, it is a tangible example of the conscience collective at work—expressing and regenerating society's values, reinforcing the moral bonds without which social cohesion cannot exist. Punishment is one of society's solidarity-producing mechanisms, and as such a central topic for sociological research. As a topic for Durkheimian inquiry, it is particularly apposite because it reveals how, even in modem society, rituals of moral communion still take place, providing occasions for mutual agreement and moral solidarity in a world which sometimes seems to lack universal categories. Moreover, the social and moral dimensions of punishment are characteristically modern insofar as they are, for the most part, latent rather than manifest, hidden beneath the mundane instrumental business of controlling crime. For Durkheim, much of modem social morality has this unspoken, latent, taken-for-granted quality. The moral bonds which tie individuals to each other and to society are embedded within acts such as contracts and exchanges which appear, on their surface, to be purely matters of rational self-interest. By showing that punishment is a process which has a high moral seriousness and a functional importance for social life, Durkheim seeks to remind us of the moral content of instrumental action, and to make us more self-conscious of it. (Durkheim regarded this as especially important at the turn of the 20th century when the new science of criminology and the movement for a rational, rehabilitative penality were beginning to challenge the moral role of punishment.) What is it that makes the punishment of offenders an especially moral matter of importance to social solidarity? Isn't it a rather specialised, narrow undertaking, important only to those immediately involved in the business of crime control?
Source Publication
Durkheim and Foucault: Perspectives on Education and Punishment
Source Editors/Authors
Mark S. Cladis
Publication Date
1999
Recommended Citation
Garland, David W., "Durkheim's Sociology of Punishment and Punishment Today" (1999). Faculty Chapters. 688.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/688
