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Book Review: The Spectacle of Suffering, Executions and the Evolution of Repression: From a Pre-industrial Metropolis to the European Experience

Book Review: The Spectacle of Suffering, Executions and the Evolution of Repression: From a... BOOK REVIEWS (1987) 20 ANZJ Crim is to influence the policy of practitioners. Finally, the thesis has substance - it makes a valuable contribution to an important debate - and provides a fine example of how to do research into sentencing principles. AUSTIN LOVEGROVE The Spectacle of Suffering, Executions and the Evolution of Repression: From a Pre-industrial Metropolis to the European Experience, Peter Spierenburg, Cambridge University Press (1984) 274 pp, ISBN 0521261864. The Spectacle of Suffering seeks to provide an account of the "modes of repression" adopted by the systems of criminal justice in Western Europe over the past 300 years (although the analysis also extends back as far as the Dark Ages). Its specific concern is with the demise of public corporal and capital punishment and how this is to be explained. As such, it is proposed primarily as an attempt to construct an alternative theoretical account to that given by Foucault. Foucault's "paradigm", it is argued, fails in its task because "it conveys a picture of a sudden transition from one penal system to another", because "changes in the modes of repression are hardly explained at all" and because Foucault's historical evidence "was not based on archival http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology SAGE

Book Review: The Spectacle of Suffering, Executions and the Evolution of Repression: From a Pre-industrial Metropolis to the European Experience

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References (2)

Publisher
SAGE
Copyright
© The Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology and Authors, 1987
ISSN
0004-8658
eISSN
1837-9273
DOI
10.1177/000486588702000208
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS (1987) 20 ANZJ Crim is to influence the policy of practitioners. Finally, the thesis has substance - it makes a valuable contribution to an important debate - and provides a fine example of how to do research into sentencing principles. AUSTIN LOVEGROVE The Spectacle of Suffering, Executions and the Evolution of Repression: From a Pre-industrial Metropolis to the European Experience, Peter Spierenburg, Cambridge University Press (1984) 274 pp, ISBN 0521261864. The Spectacle of Suffering seeks to provide an account of the "modes of repression" adopted by the systems of criminal justice in Western Europe over the past 300 years (although the analysis also extends back as far as the Dark Ages). Its specific concern is with the demise of public corporal and capital punishment and how this is to be explained. As such, it is proposed primarily as an attempt to construct an alternative theoretical account to that given by Foucault. Foucault's "paradigm", it is argued, fails in its task because "it conveys a picture of a sudden transition from one penal system to another", because "changes in the modes of repression are hardly explained at all" and because Foucault's historical evidence "was not based on archival

Journal

Australian & New Zealand Journal of CriminologySAGE

Published: Jun 1, 1987

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