Doctoral Dissertation Research: Penal Transfer and Transformation

这个项目调查了文化在多大程度上与其他进程处于动态紧张状态，塑造了刑罚制度，并反过来又塑造了它。特别是，它考察了英国的刑罚制度是如何转变的，因为它们被转移到殖民地的黄金海岸，因为殖民地政府为了满足自己的独特需求而采纳和改变了这些制度，以及当地的尺子改造了英国的刑罚制度，使其与殖民统治之前的土著信仰和做法相一致。据推测，这些殖民转变后来被转移回欧洲，并进一步影响了那里的刑罚发展。这些转移提出的问题是，刑罚制度采取的形式是由殖民政权的文化决定的，是由其在实施过程中遇到的土著人民决定的，还是由殖民经济正在发生的变化等其他因素决定的。数据分析方法包括话语、统计和法律分析，以及档案民族志，以确定哪些观念和刑罚结构在大英帝国各地流传，以及它们如何被黄金海岸现有的观念和结构所改变。这项跨学科的研究将有助于惩罚社会学，它通常试图通过指出社会结构、物质或权力关系的影响来解释刑罚制度，并与潜在文化隔绝地看待。该项目不是孤立地关注单一因素，而是审查文化在形成刑罚制度的其他过程中的作用。这项研究还将通过研究代表性不足的区域和国家，同时侧重于影响世界各地刑罚制度历史的机构转移过程，拓宽惩罚社会学的领域，该领域一直主要侧重于欧洲和美国。

This project investigates the extent to which culture, working in dynamic tension with other processes, shapes and is in turn shaped by penal systems. In particular, it examines how British penal regimes were transformed as they were transferred to the colonial Gold Coast both as the colonial government adopted and altered those systems to meet its own unique needs and as native rulers transformed the British penal system to align it with indigenous beliefs and practices that predated colonial rule. It is hypothesized that these colonial transformations were subsequently transferred back to Europe and further influenced penal developments there. The question raised by these transfers is whether the form the penal systems took was determined by the culture of the colonizing power, by the indigenous peoples it encountered in its implementation, or by other factors such as changes that were being wrought in the colonial economy. Data analysis methods include discourse, statistical, and legal analysis along with archival ethnography to determine which ideas and penal structures were circulating throughout the British Empire and how they were transformed by the ideas and structures already in place in the Gold Coast.This interdisciplinary study will contribute to the sociology of punishment, which often seeks to explain penal systems by pointing to the effects of social structure, material or power relations, viewed in isolation from the underlying culture. Rather than focusing on a single factor in isolation, this project will examine the role of culture in relation to other processes in shaping penal systems. The research will also broaden the field of the sociology of punishment, which has been primarily focused on Europe and the United States, by studying an underrepresented region and country while also focusing on processes of institutional transfer that have shaped the histories of penal systems throughout the world.