scholarly journals Punishment and the Body

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Christopher Belshaw
Keyword(s):  
Corporal Punishment ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
The Body ◽  
Practical Solution

Suppose we accept that punishment can be legitimate. What form should it take? Many of us believe that it can be acceptable to fine or imprison someone, but that capital punishment, along with corporal punishment in its various manifestations, is wholly unacceptable. I suggest that it is hard to account for or justify this distinction. But granting that resistance to these latter forms is unlikely to be dislodged, and granting too that imprisonment in particular is hardly problem-free, it is worth considering whether there might be alternatives. And I argue here that we should consider enforced coma as a procedure having many advantages over the more familiar methods of delivering a penalty. Of course, there are disadvantages also. The aim isn’t to offer a detailed and practical solution to the problem of crime, but to explore some of the presumptions and principles involved in our thinking about punishment.

Punishment, Stigma and Social Identities in Classical Athens

2021 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-46
Author(s):  
Janek Kucharski
Keyword(s):  
Corporal Punishment ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
The Body ◽  
Expressive Function

Abstract Taking its cue from modern debates on the expressive function of punishment, this paper discusses the stigmatizing effect of penalties in classical Athens. It focuses on corporal punishment, which was discursively associated in the Athenian public discourse (chiefly comedy and oratory) with slaves and other fringe groups of the citizen community, despite the fact that in reality, with only certain restrictions (e.g. whipping), it was meted out to all social tiers making up the polis-community. Unlike other penalties, those affecting the body were not only public, but not infrequently spectacular. This turned them into versatile devices of stigmatization whereby the punishment itself was no longer considered a one-off event, but a permanent mark branding the person who suffered it as a social outcast.

Embodied Rhythm and Musical Impact of Corporal Punishment in Twentieth-Century Opera

2018 ◽  
pp. 220-240
Author(s):  
Shersten Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Corporal Punishment ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
The Body ◽  
Emotional Impact ◽  
Focus Attention ◽  
Bodily Experience ◽  
Physical Suffering ◽  
Billy Budd ◽  
Jesus Christ Superstar

Operatic dramas often set to music the extremes of human bodily experience—disease, death, and violence—all duly tinged with hues of eroticism. Not surprisingly then, the genre includes a number of works that stage scenes of corporal punishment. These moments of physical suffering can focus attention on the body in a way that even Mimi’s consumption or Carmen’s stabbing cannot. This chapter examines three such scenes in operas by Britten (Billy Budd), Adams (Nixon in China), and Lloyd Webber (Jesus Christ Superstar) to see how music, action, and text multimodally represent not only the cruel impact of blows, but also the emotional impact for victim, punisher, onstage onlookers, and audience. Close readings of the three scenes draw on theories of embodied rhythm and mimetic listening to engage the question of how this music “gets into our bodies” and helps us to experience the dramas.

Punishment and the body in the ‘old’ and ‘new’ South Africa: A story of punitivist humanism

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 427-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gail Super
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
New South ◽  
The Body ◽  
Party Government ◽  
Complex Entity ◽  
Nationalist Party ◽  
Official Discourse ◽  
Anglo American

This paper analyses official discourse about punishment in South Africa, from 1976 to 2004. It frames punishment as a form of governance which is both connected to, and separate from, the Anglo/American/European examples that are generally referred to in the literature. The shift from corporal and capital punishment to the use of long-term imprisonment is discussed within a framework that emphasizes how both the apartheid and post-apartheid state explained and attempted to justify punishment policies during times of great upheaval and change. Penality under apartheid was a complex entity, and the punishment regime under the Nationalist Party government was starting to reform during the period analyzed. This liberalization was accompanied by a lengthening of terms of imprisonment, a trend that has continued in the ‘new’ South Africa. The prison in post-apartheid South Africa speaks to both humanism and punitivism. This duality has contributed to its enduring nature and endless capacity to reform.

The Undercurrents of Penal Culture: Punishment of the Body in Mid-Twentieth-Century Canada

2001 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 343-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Strange
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Family Courts ◽  
History Of

In the wake of Foucault's provocative philosophical contributions to the study of discipline and punishment, social and legal historians no longer narrate penal history as a straightforward tale of moral and political progress. In its place is a schematic picture of a large-scale retreat from the body to the prison as the prime site of punishment. Historiographical proclivities perpetuate that image: early modernists tend to concentrate on the Bloody Code and similar régimes of terror, whereas historians of the twentieth century specialize in studies of regulatory modes of punishment and “normalization.” These latter works include histories of reformatories, family courts, social workers, psychiatric experts—in short the institutions and agents that best instantiate the reorientation toward disciplining the soul and governing the self. Scholars who study corporal and capital punishment in the twentieth century would seem to have nothing to add, other than to remark that there were exceptions in the wider history of penal change.

Accelerometer-Based Decision Algorithm for Detecting Strenuous Exercises on Smartphone

2013 ◽  
Vol 765-767 ◽  
pp. 440-443
Author(s):  
Nan Zhang ◽  
Yong Gang Li ◽  
Yveline Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Model ◽  
Emergency Situation ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Area Network ◽  
Area Network ◽  
Body Area ◽  
Decision Algorithm ◽  
Practical Solution ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Acceleration Data

A mathematical model is established in this paper with acceleration data collected by the smartphone-based three-axis gyroscope during standing, walking, falling over and running. The activity of smartphone carriers can be detected according to the data measured by the internal accelerometer within a given time period, which is capable of deciding whether the smartphone carrier is in strenuous exercises or emergency situation. It is also a reliable and practical solution to the identification of activities in the body area network (BAN). Experimental results demonstrate that the model is effective and reliable.

Felicia Hemans, “Casabianca”

Heart Beats ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Robson
Keyword(s):  
Elementary Schools ◽  
Corporal Punishment ◽  
The Body ◽  
Mass Education ◽  
Felicia Hemans ◽  
Short Term ◽  
History Of

This chapter focuses on the poem, “Casabianca,” by Felicia Hemans, which presents the spectacle of a child sailor who is blown to pieces because his sense of duty keeps him standing on deck during the bombardment of his ship. This poem is used as a lens to examine the processes whereby the performance of poetry in Britain's elementary schools forged short-term and long-term bodily relationships between individuals and measured language. Looking, among other things, at the history of corporal punishment within mass education, the chapter considers not only what happened to children, but also to poems with regular rhythms, during the process of enforced recitation. The fragmented survival of “Casabianca” in popular consciousness today, this chapter argues, is the last remaining trace of its pedagogical past, of a time when poetry was experienced in and through the body.

Governing the Dead: Discipline and Biopolitics

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 82-103
Keyword(s):  
Corporal Punishment ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Prisoner ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Disciplinary Power ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Labor Camp ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The One

The analysis of practices applied to the body of dominated subjects - their spatial disposition, military drills, corporal punishment and execution - occupies an important place among Michel Foucault’s theories. This article provides an analysis of practices that are not governed by any ritual but by the dominant political mechanisms as those practices are applied to dead bodies. In other words, the logic of Foucault’s analysis is extended to the dead body, in particular to that of a political prisoner. The dead body, as well as the living one, is arguably located at the intersection of two types of power described by Foucault: disciplinary power and biopolitics. On the one hand, the corpse is the focus of disciplinary mechanisms that seek to identify and individualize it, and also to prevent it from dissolving into the mass of other anonymous corpses that have completely exhausted their potential for use. On the other hand, the inmate’s body can be subjected to more radical, massifying, and anonymizing practices that treat it as part of a population to be exterminated. The paper analyzes two ways of treating the corpse: cremation and burial. In the 20th century, the ritual significance of cremation and burial has been replaced by a political one, especially when they are used as repressive measures applied to the corpse of an inmate that died in a concentration or labor camp. In terms of their political meaning, these two practices are not at all equivalent.

scholarly journals It’s (probably) not about sex baby, but it is about you and me: A quasi-ethnographic exploration of consensual corporal punishment

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-26
Author(s):  
Stuart Pinson
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Corporal Punishment ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
The Body ◽  
Psychological Benefits ◽  
Negative Aspect ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
New Finding ◽  
Potential Benefits

Corporal punishment (CP) is one aspect of BDSM play. While enjoyed by many at a low level, some players indulge in heavier play, with the potential for skin and tissue damage. This paper presents the results of an exploratory quasi-ethnographic study into CP, examining the motivations and potential benefits and risks of playing in this way, with the aim of increasing understanding of why individuals engage in heavy CP. Data were gathered from scene observations and semi-structured interviews with participants, including three professional Dominatrices with a reputation internationally for CP. Thematic Analysis was used to assess the data. While sexual arousal was a motivator for some participants, it was not the motivator for the majority. The importance of the marks left on the body was a common theme, as was challenging oneself to increase the amount of CP received or given. This was either to demonstrate a progression along a journey of increasing severity, or to enhance the experience either sexually, bruises / marks wise, or psychologically. Despite allusions by participants to addiction, psychological benefits in mood and mental health were reported by all participants. The main negative aspect of participation was fear of stigma and the perceived inability to be open with others about their interests. Participation in CP is a positive experience for those involved. The importance of bodily marks is a new finding, as is the positive impact on mental health.

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