Description:
This volume brings together a range of work by leading writers in the field and engages with the comparative dimensions of shame, blame, and culpability and their fundamentally important impact upon modern multicultural states. Tracing use, abuse, and negotiation between the 17th and 20th centuries in a number of different geographical locations, this book forms a part of the movement within criminal and legal history to turn the focus away from capital and serious crime to look at the impact of lesser (and more common) criminality which has a daily impact on people's lives. In studying the interaction of how people understand the boundaries of acceptable behaviour, the volume illustrates perceptions of crime and morality at work in previously unstudied societies at different historical junctures.
Review Quotes:
'...the volume breaks new ground in incorporating eastern and southern Europe (regions rarely considered in English language crime historiography) into a comprehensive European perspective. The editors also deserve praise for emphasising long-term continuities and embedding 'crime' within broader phenomena such as forms of community self-policing, religious belief and state development. 'Shame', 'blame', and 'culpability' are unquestionably vital issues, and new light is cast on them in many of these essays.'
John Carter Wood, Law, Crime and History 2013 2: 185.
'...the contributors to Blame, Shame and Culpability have clearly put their finger on something important: that shame and the need to apportion blame play important roles in defining and defending forms of social order in very divergent national and chronological contexts, whether in the revenge cultures of local communities, the legalistic mechanisms of state justice systems or the often lurid sensationalism of modern forms of media. The collection raises fascinating and worthwhile questions about the past, and several of its essays suggest valuable ways forward in answering them.'
John Carter Wood, Law, Crime and History 2013 2: 186.