Economy and Punishment: a historical relationship in the perspective of Social Sciences

Abstract

The central theme of this article is the historical association among crime, market and punishment as assessed by Social Sciences. Modern and contemporary studies evoke such association, many times with completely different benchmarks. Rusche and Kirchheimer, Foucault and, more recently, Garland and Christie are just some examples of sociological analyzes that address punishment and recognize in its structures the influences of the economic form of social organization. The paper therefore aims at critically achieving an investigation of some of the studies that have addressed or are addressing social control and, more precisely, punishment, from a relational perspective with the current economy. This choice is justified, first, because the theoretical and methodological analysis of this relationship (punishment/economy) is still underdeveloped and, secondly, because the overlap between historical research and sociological studies on punishment, apart from being major themes in social sciences, are still scarce in Brazilian sociology.