Doctoral Dissertation Research: Penal Transfer and Transformation

该项目调查文化在多大程度上与其他进程处于动态的紧张关系中，影响刑罚制度，并反过来影响刑罚制度。 特别是，它探讨了英国的刑罚制度是如何转变的，因为他们被转移到殖民地黄金海岸的殖民政府通过和改变这些系统，以满足自己的独特需求，并作为本地统治者改变了英国的刑罚制度，使其与土著信仰和做法，早在殖民统治。据推测，这些殖民地的转变后来被转移回欧洲，并进一步影响了那里的刑罚发展。这些转移所提出的问题是，刑罚制度所采取的形式是由殖民政权的文化、由它在执行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、统计和法律的分析，沿着档案民族志，以确定哪些思想和刑罚结构在整个大英帝国流传，以及它们如何被黄金海岸已经存在的思想和结构所改变。物质或权力关系，从底层文化中孤立地看待。本项目将审查文化在形成刑罚制度的其他过程中的作用，而不是孤立地侧重于单一因素。这项研究还将扩大惩罚社会学的领域，该领域主要集中在欧洲和美国，通过研究代表性不足的地区和国家，同时也关注塑造了世界各地刑罚制度历史的制度转移过程。

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.