Bureaucracy, "domesticated" elites, and the abolition of capital punishment: processes of state-formation and the number of executions in England and Habsburg Austria between 1700 and 1914

The paper argues that the introduction of bureaucracy civilized death penalty and brutal punishment. The study bases on a quantitative analysis of the numbers of death sentences and executions in England and Habsburg Austria from 1700 to 1914 and on a qualitative analysis of historical literature about the death penalty in both countries. The paper shows that professional law enforcement specialists, bureaucrats, civil servants, and detached juridical stuff formed a new class of "domesticated middlemen elites". In strong states, this new class becomes the dominating group. In weak states, however, old elites that combine economic and political power preserve their privileged positions. For them capital punishment is the most proper mean to deter criminals because old elites fear the alternative: the introduction of strong-state institutions. Beside obvious power struggles between central and local elites—which effects penal policy pro and con capital punishment—there is a civilizing process going beneath the surface of rationality and political interests. In strong states, the formation of a "habitus" averse to brutal punishment is initiated amongst "domesticated middlemen elites" who are acting in peaceful living- and working conditions

Verstaatlichungs- und Entstaatlichungsprozesse von Polizei und Rechtssystem und ihre Auswirkungen auf die Todesstrafe

'In diesem Aufsatz wird analysiert, welche Auswirkungen Ver- und Entstaatlichungsprozesse von Polizei und Rechtssystem auf die Anwendung der Todesstrafe haben. Ich werde argumentieren, dass stark bürokratisierte Staaten unter bestimmten Umständen dazu neigen, weniger grausame Strafen zu verhängen als plutokratische Staaten mit einer dünnen Verwaltungsstruktur. Das ist deshalb so, weil bürokratisch betriebene Gerichtsbarkeit und Polizei ein stark distanziertes Verhältnis zu Tätern und Opfern von Verbrechen aufbauen. Deshalb herrscht in einer solchen Konstellation eine Form der Sozialkontrolle vor, die sich durch Zurückhaltung und Nüchternheit auszeichnet. In Staaten jedoch, in denen intermediäre Akteure (z.B. lokale Eliten) Macht und Einfluss besitzen, wird Strafen und Kontrolle in expressiv und affektiv eindringlicher Art ausgeübt. Die Strafen neigen dazu, grausam, exemplarisch und abschreckend zu sein. Am Beispiel Englands kann gezeigt werden, dass, als die intermediären Kräfte an Macht zulegten, die Todesstrafe eine höhere Bedeutung bekam. Sie wurde häufiger und für mehr Delikte eingesetzt. Als dann wiederum der bürokratische Zentralstaat gestärkt wurde, verlor die Todesstrafe sehr rasch ihre alte Rolle als zentrales Element des Strafsystems. Auch in Österreich, dessen Staatswendung untrennbar mit dem Organisationsaufbau der Bürokratie einhergeht, begann die Todesstrafe eine untergeordnete Rolle im Strafrecht zu spielen, bis sie schließlich kaum noch zum Einsatz kam.' (Autorenreferat)'This paper discusses the causes for establishing a state police forte and legal system and the impact of those processes on the use of capital punishment. The author argues that there is a strong link between the characteristics of state-building processes and formal and institutionalized control and punishment. These processes determine the role of capital punishment within a society. The main argument is that states with powerful bureaucracies send to maintain a less harsh penal law, though only under certain conditions. In states with strong bureaucracies the distance between the authorities and the defendants and those who seek redress is larger. The use of bureaucratic types of social control is characterized by non-emotional and a more subdued use of symbols and discourse. A state with strong local and non-governmental forces, on the other hand, tends to use highly expressive, exemplary and deterrent forms of social control. The case of eighteenth century England shows clearly, that the empowerment of local elites made death penalty more important as a medium of social control. After the renvewal of the power of the central bureaucracy capital punishment began to lose its importance. The same happened in Austria, were capital punishment however did not play the role it had in eighteenth century England.' (author's abstract)

State, Emotion, Authority, and National Habitus: State-Related Problems of Our Time and Methodological Discourses in Sociology and Historical Sociology

The central concerns of this HSR Special Issue – emotion, authority, and national character – are arguably among the most pressing issues facing social researchers in the current geo-political context. By contrast to the global political climate of the early 1990s – when the Eastern bloc was collapsing, when Europe was still in the euphoria of its expansion, and when a largely US-fuelled renewed wave of globalisation had not yet met with substantial nation-state resistance– the past few years have seen a growing number and range of counterreactions that are often characterised as undemocratic or even authoritarian. This article deals with two main topics. First, we like to stress the ongoing importance of the nation-state despite its analytical neglect by many social scientists since the 1990s. The paper discusses the weakness of concepts like “national identity” or of normative notions of “nationalism” that are commonly used in order to understand prevailing national we-feelings in the modern world. Instead the authors suggest focusing on historical long-term processes and on the various relationships between the formation of “survival units” like states and the make-up of the personality structure of its members in different nation-states. It will be argued that Norbert Elias’s concept of “national habitus” may be helpful in approaching these relationships. Thus, this approach will be helpful also for better understanding we-feelings in modern state-societies. Furthermore, methodological and theoretical problems that are related to the concept of “national habitus” will be discussed from the viewpoint of Historical Sociology. Second, this article summarises the arguments of the contributions that are assembled in this Special Issue. By doing so, these articles will be grouped in two different ways. The first type of grouping is related to the common characteristics of arguments found in all of the papers. They cover an area comprising Western, East Central, and Southeastern European countries, the Middle East, the US, and Japan. The second type of grouping is concerned with dissent in their approaches and arguments

Measurement of charged jet production cross sections and nuclear modification in p-Pb collisions at root s(NN)=5.02 TeV

Charged jet production cross sections in p-Pb collisions at root s(NN) = 5.02 TeV measured with the ALICE detector at the LHC are presented. Using the anti-k(T) algorithm, jets have been reconstructed in the central rapidity region from charged particles with resolution parameters R = 0.2 and R = 0.4. The reconstructed jets have been corrected for detector effects and the underlying event background. To calculate the nuclear modification factor, R-pPb, of charged jets in p-Pb collisions, a pp reference was constructed by scaling previously measured charged jet spectra at root s = 7 TeV. In the transverse momentum range 20Peer reviewe

The Historical Sociology of Japanese Martial Arts.

URL del artículo en la web de la Revista: https://www.upo.es/revistas/index.php/sociologiadeldeporte/article/view/6064Es reseña de: The Historical Sociology of Japanese Martial Arts. Raúl Sánchez García Londres, Nueva York : Routledge, 2019Universidad Pablo de Olavid

Historische und aktuelle Entwicklungen nationalstaatlicher Konkurrenz im Sport. Eine Diskussion mit Dieter Reicher und Tobias Werron

Werron T, Reicher D, Haut J. Historische und aktuelle Entwicklungen nationalstaatlicher Konkurrenz im Sport. Eine Diskussion mit Dieter Reicher und Tobias Werron. In: Haut J, ed. Leistungssport als Konkurrenz der Nationen. Sozioökonomische Bedingungen und Effekte. Saarbrücken: Universaar; 2014: 12-35

Where Brain, Body and World Collide

The production cross section of electrons from semileptonic decays of beauty hadrons was measured at mid-rapidity (|y| < 0.8) in the transverse momentum range 1 < pt < 8 Gev/c with the ALICE experiment at the CERN LHC in pp collisions at a center of mass energy sqrt{s} = 7 TeV using an integrated luminosity of 2.2 nb^{-1}. Electrons from beauty hadron decays were selected based on the displacement of the decay vertex from the collision vertex. A perturbative QCD calculation agrees with the measurement within uncertainties. The data were extrapolated to the full phase space to determine the total cross section for the production of beauty quark-antiquark pairs