Showing 1 through 2 of 2 records.
| 1. Kennedy, Joseph. "The Punitive Society: The Social and Cultural Roots of American Over-incarceration in the 80's and 90's." Paper presented at the annual meeting of the AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CRIMINOLOGY, Atlanta Marriott Marquis, Atlanta, Georgia, Nov 13, 2007 <Not Available>. 2009-11-23 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p202212_index.html>Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Contemporary American punitivism is fundamentally a dysfunctional attempt to manage—yet not resolve--a contradiction in American social life. We simultaneously fear that rampant instrumentalism and rampant individualism are ruining our society: we fear that we care too much and too little about the individual. This antinomy expresses itself in numerous tensions that are familiar components of public concern. These include the sacred versus the purely instrumental, the secular versus the religious, the emotional versus the rational, expert knowledge versus the “common sense” of ordinary people, the individual versus the community, the minority group versus the majority; black and the poor versus the upper and middle classes.
At the heart of these contradictions and the popular punitivism they have spawned lies a peculiarly American way of thinking about society, one that is quasi-religious, moralistic, idealistic and ultimately grounded in emotion. There is a yearning for transcendent stories that knits together the disparate individuals and groups of American society and that enchants the collective endeavor to live together peacefully and productively with a meaning that goes beyond mundane concerns about social order or stability.
The key to managing these contradictions more functionally and ultimately more justly, lies in restoring a more aspirational meaning to our practices and policies of punishment, one that acknowledges directly the hard, inescapable and tragic choices of administering criminal justice in a large, complex and modern society and yet enframes those choices within a larger story that sanctifies our obligations to one another. |
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| 2. Dana, Karam. "Palestinian During 1920's and 80's: Mobilization Through Religious Rhetoric" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the MPSA Annual National Conference, Palmer House Hotel, Hilton, Chicago, IL, <Not Available>. 2009-11-23 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p268273_index.html>Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In the 1920's and 1930's, the interactions of members of the Palestinian elite with the public were faced with varying mobilization successes. Religious rhetoric was most effective in mobilizing the public against the perceived threat of Zionism. |
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