bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Influence of Neoliberal Economic Policy on the Emancipatory Mission of Social Work
Authors: Janebová Radka , Kappl Miroslav
Published: October 2024

Neoliberalization of society places severe limitations on the emancipatory mission of social work. Through economic policy, one of the four policies described by Loïc Wacquant through which neoliberalization is promoted, neoliberal states seek to promote market principles throughout the entire society, including in public services. This also applies to social work systems, which in this paradigm are subjected to market conditions to minimize costs and even to generate a profit. The aim of this chapter is to present connections among selected aspects of neoliberal economic policy along with the influence of these features on the fulfillment of the emancipatory mission of social work. The chapter will present three original qualitative research projects conducted in the Czech context which deal with the effects of underfunding and budget cuts, outsourcing services, as well as enforcing the principles of competition in the implementation of social work in the Czech Republic. In the conclusion, it will be discussed how the education system of social workers might respond to these trends.
Specifics of the Supervision of Social Workers in the Slovak Republic
Authors: Boriščáková Miriama , Balogová Beáta
Published: October 2024

This chapter analyzes and presents the specifics of the supervision of social workers in Slovakia. The chapter deals with the social and political situation in Slovakia and the legislation stipulating the performance of supervision in social work. After the revolutionary changes in the 1990s, supervision in social services facilities was carried out only on a voluntary basis. At present, supervision is mandatory for all social services facilities and all organizations and institutions providing social services. The application of several types of supervision may result in failures but also in encouragement and further education of social workers in dealing with clients. The chapter addresses the practical aspect of social work supervision in Slovakia, emphasizing its theoretical and conceptual groundwork prepared by supervisors. Selected results of qualitative research studies are presented, in which experts in social work supervision in Slovakia explore supervision approaches and their impact on the components of this work. In addition, the chapter focuses on theoretical concepts underpinning supervision in Slovakia, presents selected definitions of supervision, a taxonomy of supervision as understood by various experts which may eventually trigger comparison with performing supervision in other countries.
Collaborative Social Work Student Supervision
Authors: Beesley Paula , Agu Lorraine
Published: October 2024

This chapter on developing knowledge and skills within collaborative social work student supervision will first consider societal and institutional oppression, before turning to the individual power dynamic within social work student supervision, where French and Raven’s classifications of power will be presented and applied. Drawing on Beesley’s doctorate study on social work student supervision, research will be presented that identified the importance of practice educators having an awareness of the inherent power differential in the supervisory relationship. Furthermore, student research participants’ narratives identified a lack of student awareness of power within supervision unless an “authoritarian” supervision style was used. This enabled the identification of collaborative social work student supervision as a recommended supervisory style, as it reduced the power differential through working in partnership to develop students’ social work knowledge and skills.
On the Cultivation of the Practical Capability of the Master of Social Work Degree—Based on the MSW Program at The University
Authors: Chen Hui
Published: October 2024

This chapter focuses on empirical work conducted to explore the cultivation of the practical capability of the degree of Master of Social Work (MSW) at universities, applying qualitative research with an in-depth interview. The aim was twofold: first, to explore the phenomena of social work cultivations concentrating on the experience of MSW students who learned in class; second, to explore the experience of their internships. Findings from this research suggest that the professional status of social work is low compared with other disciplines and that there are disconnections between theoretical learning in class and practical capability in practice, internship, and supervision. Possible reasons to account for these are that MSW programs are at the beginning stage and lack experience. The implications of this research are that theoretical learning and practical capability do not get a consistent and reliable response in the practical context. Therefore, more emphasis should be put on the integration of social work education, social work agencies, MSW students, and social work policies involving the related parties to improve the cultivation of the MSW program.
“We Are Open, the Door Is Just Very Heavy”
Authors: Bald Caroline
Published: October 2024

The professionalization agenda in English social work seemed complete when registration came into being in 2000 under the oversight of the General Social Care Council. Since 2005, anyone using the title “social worker” must be registered, and failure to adhere to regulatory standards risks removal from the register. Two decades and two regulatory bodies later, the interrelationship between social work and politics remains as contested. Where one might have anticipated the professionalization agenda to have satisfied power, it has in effect achieved the opposite, with growing demands to further standardize, validate, and regulate the profession. This chapter considers social work education admissions decision-making as illusio praxis, a politically constructed site of power within social work education as a gateway to the profession. Using a political discourse analysis, this chapter posits that far from emancipation, the populist professionalization movement has colonized social work for politically presented commonsense ends. Through a logic of construction analysis, this chapter exposes a moralizing gray area when considering whose capital counts in meeting “suitability” to study social work. In conclusion, it will be possible to question the ethical presumption of professionalization as modernization or populist mission creep reasserting labor power and claiming new sites of capitalism.
Social Service Reform, Education, and the Professionalization of Social Work
Authors: Dhëmbo Elona , Diebold Alishau , Akesson Bree
Published: October 2024

Part IV of the handbook discusses issues related to social service reforms, social justice, poverty, professionalization of social work in Italy, and the challenges of bureaucratization and the role of communist heritage in shaping social work in Poland. It contains eight chapters, focusing on Hungary, India, the European Union, Ukraine, Italy, Poland, and the United States. The chapters set the background for social work education and practice based on the principles of social justice. Overall, the contributions demonstrate that by virtue of their training and education, social workers are capable of addressing the unjust practices that take place in a society. Social workers are expected to question injustice, unequal treatment, discriminatory practices and unhealthy environments in any society in which they practice.
A Comparative Analysis of Visits by the UN Special Rapporteur to the United States and to the European Union
Authors: Cummins Ian , Gómez-Ciriano Emilio José
Published: October 2024

This chapter uses Somers’s model of citizenship to present a comparative analysis of the reports issued by the UN Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights after his visits to the European Union and the United States. The two reports were based on visits by the UN Rapporteur that followed periods of welfare retrenchment and austerity in the European Union and the United States. The chapter examines the discourse of human rights that the reports use to outline the impact of welfare retrenchment in the United States and the European Union.
The Policy of Decentralization in Ukraine
Authors: Semigina Tetyana , Yeroshenko Kateryna
Published: October 2024

After proclaiming its independence in 1991, Ukraine inherited Soviet ideology, a centralized public governance system, the neglect of human rights, and paternalistic social services. Gradually, the national policies were shaped. Social work practice and education were introduced. This chapter explores political and ideological transformations in Ukraine in the 1990s–2020s. Special focus is on the decentralization policy and its intersection with social work. International organizations supported the launch of the bachelor’s and master’s training programs. But social work didn’t turn out to be a fully recognized profession in demand. It is still an “unfinished” professional project, with a lot of para–social workers engaged in service provision, and their informal training is sometimes more flexible than in formal educational settings. The chapter ends with a suggestion to revise the educational programs and to incorporate into them the concepts of social justice, human rights, and activism as core social work ideas to reflect European and professional values.
The Interplay of Social Work Education and the Heritage of Communism in Shaping the Engagement of Social Work Students as Social Change Agents
Authors: Przeperski Jaroslaw , Cuprjak Magdalena
Published: October 2024

The importance of the concept of political social work is rather absent in social work practice, education, and research in Poland. This may be the result of Polish history and particularly Soviet domination of Poland. Political engagement at the time was equal to collaboration with the communist regime, and the government was identified with the persecution of citizens. Poland still faces the heritage of communism although it collapsed over 30 years ago. This explains why social work practice is more focused on individual and family work rather than on changing local communities or shaping the country’s policies. Social work students of the present generation were born in a free Poland. This chapter examined their opinions and decisions on possible engagement as social change agents in our society. The first step was a review of social work curricula and identification of elements which can help in decisions on engagement in political movements. The second step was a survey in which a group of students from different universities in Poland were examined. The survey was based on the Civic Voluntarism Model, which identifies core factors that predict whether an individual will choose to participate in political activities. The model indicates three key factors influence individuals’ political participation: resources, psychological engagement, and political efficacy. The results of the curriculum review and student survey identify the level of preparedness to serve as change agents in society and lead to recommendations for social work education.
Prefiguration Theory in Political Social Work
Authors: Moxley David P.
Published: October 2024

Taking root in transformative social movements, but building on older grassroots efforts to bring about change from within societies by creating alternatives to established politics, particularly hierarchical and authoritarian ones, prefigurative practice in social work offers possibilities for influencing the future society through the present formation of alternative helping institutions at local levels. This chapter considers how prefiguration theory can influence social work practice, how alternative helping institutions can form in distressed communities, and how prefiguration practice in social work can anticipate a more equitable and equal society of the future. Within this chapter, the author offers a rationale for prefiguration as a focus of political social work. The author frames prefiguration theory and amplifies how this theory can serve as a potential strategy in social change. Value constellations and tensions influencing prefiguration in social work practice highlight the issues that politicize prefiguration that can then influence strategies social workers can use in advancing the well-being of marginalized groups and populations. Those strategies can stand as exemplars for future social workers seeking to respond effectively to social problems.
The Professional Status of Social Work in the Republic of Cyprus
Authors: Parlalis Stavros K.
Published: October 2024

The chapters in Part V of the handbook examine a range of issues related to the professional identity of social work in different parts of the world. These issues focus upon the challenges of gaining professional recognition, the challenges of implementing social policy, professional imperialism in social work, reshaping the curriculum and pedagogy, tracing the trajectories of social work education and practice, co-creation of social work knowledge, and the role of the state in the development and professionalization of social work. The professional identity of social work in several countries, especially developing countries and less developed countries, has been low and deteriorating in recent decades. There are several reasons, including socioeconomic, political, and cultural factors, that contribute to the low level of professional identity for social work.
The Influence of the Imagined Community of Social Workers on the Constructed “Correctness” of Social Work Performance in Education and Practice of Social Work with Families
Authors: Glumbíková Kateřina , Špiláčková Marie
Published: October 2024

Social work practice is uniquely shaped and influenced by social, political, and cultural aspects in each country. Social work students and social work professionals are continually exposed to various explicit and implicit meanings of the “correctness” of social work performance. An imagined community of social work professionals is formed from the sense of belonging or the existence of something in common, which determines the “correctness” of social work. The chapter aims to understand and describe the connection between the imagined community of social workers during two periods of performance of social work practice and the constructed correctness of social work performance. Thematic analysis of data obtained from a qualitative research design discovered two strategies for constructing “correctness,” namely, community generation of correctness and isolated generation of correctness in community-generated incorrectness.
Examining Racism and Settler-Colonialism in Canadian Social Work Education
Authors: Tyler Stephanie , Ladhani Sheliza
Published: October 2024

This chapter examines racism and settler-colonialism in Canadian social work education and the potential to (re)shape the contours of curriculum and pedagogy toward the aims of antiracism and decolonization through engaging decolonizing pedagogies and pedagogies of discomfort that work effectively with difficult knowledges. The chapter situates Canadian higher education within settler-colonialism and the recent global events that have compelled universities to issue statements of solidarity with equity-deserving groups. It then traces the complicity of Canadian social work education with colonial projects through a review of administration, accreditation, curriculum, and pedagogy, while attuning to the distinct realities and challenges of racialized and Indigenous educators and students. Finally, the chapter considers how difficult knowledges might be more ethically engaged in social work education through embodied pedagogies, while recognizing the impossibilities of teaching and learning and surrendering to the reality of teaching without guarantee.
From England to Canada with Care and Social Control
Authors: Taiwo Akin , Lee Jasmine
Published: October 2024

This chapter uses the critical framework to examine the development of social work as a profession in Canada as well as the sociopolitical and economic contexts of education and practice. Canada runs a parliamentary democracy as a (con)federation of 10 provinces and three territories, with the queen/king of England as the constitutional monarch. This political and power arrangement affects how social work is structured, with implications for the provision of social welfare services for citizens. Indeed, many social welfare programs are still organized around some of the principles of the British Poor Laws, and early social workers were agents of the state, exerting social control over Indigenous and racialized populations, thereby contributing to the historic practice failure of social work in Canada. Conversely, there were also progressive elements within the same history that were connected to the Settlement House Movement upon which many schools of social work were founded. As a profession mandated by law, social work has regulatory and accrediting bodies in different provinces as well as professional organizations that manage its affairs. It also has different areas of practice and job prospects for graduates. It is part of the accreditation standard that all social work students take courses on social justice/social change and social policy. However, there is limited discussion of political social work. This chapter proposes an intentional professional commitment to political education by calling for the training of social work students to understand their own political power in a neoliberal environment.
The Role of the State in the Development and Professionalization of Social Work
Authors: Fahrudin Adi , Witono Toton
Published: October 2024

This chapter discusses the state’s role in developing and professionalizing social work in Indonesia, a fragile democratic regime. The development of the social work profession from independence until now still faces many obstacles, and the professionalization process is full of politicking. The professionalization of social work is dealing with a regime that does not prioritize long-term welfare processes. The welfare regime is more concerned with its popularity, providing social assistance so that the government is seen as generous, especially during the economic crisis due to the global pandemic. Such a regime hampers social work professionals even though there is a social worker law. The birth of this law was full of intrigue and exciting political lobbying, yet each political interest wanted volunteer groups to be included in the law to be recognized as social workers. After the law was enacted, its implementation was very slow, and the people did not experience many significant changes.
“Strange Bedfellows”
Authors: Laredo Erika , Hill Darren , Penson Bill
Published: October 2024

This chapter takes a long view of the social work profession, examining the historical dislocations of attempting a professional accommodation to this seemingly contradictory position. The chapter is informed by critical theory and draws upon poststructural, Marxist, and radical social work theory. The history explored is not set out chronologically; it is thematic and uses discourse analysis and identified themes intersecting with power relationships and social class. Social work is an intrinsic part of a system that perpetuates systemic violence, and the professional practice contributes to a system of “benevolent violence,” which oversees a complex system of both care and control that has mitigated and supported the rupture of Indigenous people from the common land in both the United Kingdom and abroad.
Training the Social Work Students of the Next Generation
Authors: Sultana A. Shahin
Published: October 2024

The social work profession across the globe has had a constructive phase of development over the decades. People from all quarters have witnessed the significance of the social work profession as psychosocial problems have been on the rise. The growing incidents of violence, hatred, crime, social injustice, and apathy have also roused social work professionals to introspect on how the profession can be best capacitated to face the challenges in the coming generations. Social work academia can be no exception in this. Social work trainees aspire to be change agents in ensuring social justice, equality, and human dignity and also influence the state, but somehow, very few are able to do so and the reasons for their failures are not documented. This chapter focuses on social work students, both Indians and other nationals who have graduated from Indian universities and are currently working in India and many other countries. Their inputs toward capacitating the role of social work academia for future graduates are collated, deliberated, and presented in the form of a qualitative study to enhance human development and well-being.
Sociohistorical Evolution of the Chilean Juvenile Criminal Judicial System and Its Relationship with Public Policy
Authors: Reyes-Quilodrán Claudia , Muñoz-Chiguay Maida , Calderón-Canales Daniela
Published: October 2024

This chapter reviews the sociohistorical evolution of the Chilean child justice system and how the public and legal visions of childhood impact the Chilean justice system and national child services. Additionally, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is examined to determine its direct influence on adolescent offenders, particularly in regard to Chilean public policies. The origins of current questions about national child services and the juvenile penal system are presented, and a proposal for a new law on juvenile crime is discussed. The risk factors associated with juvenile delinquent behavior are strongly linked to the violation of rights that the vast majority of adolescents have experienced in their short lives, such as early exposure to violence and child abuse. In this context, social work not only advocates for the rights of children and adolescents but also challenges the juvenile justice system to address the psychosocial needs of young people, rather than criminalizing the social issues that underlie juvenile delinquent behavior.
Looking for Transformation in Social Work
Authors: Muñoz Arce Gianinna
Published: October 2024

According to its international definition, social transformation is a key aspect of social work’s political horizons. However, in the context of neoliberal capitalism, managerialist approaches pervading the provision of social services worldwide have set a complex scenario to accomplish such a purpose. The concept of professional resistance offers relevant insights to problematize the position that social workers occupy in frontline interventions, as it opens the possibility for developing more or less explicit actions and/or omissions aiming at challenging the symbolic and material implication of neoliberal agendas in service users’ lives. Drawing upon some contributions of critical theorists such as Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, and Gayatri Spivak, professional resistance is conceptually analyzed in this chapter. Counterpoints among these approaches on resistance are discussed in order to provide further insights for social workers’ critical practices on the front lines.
Dynamics of Power, Politics, and Social Work Education and Practice in South Korea
Authors: Choi Mi Sun , Lee Jungup
Published: October 2024

Part II discusses the key themes of the handbook—power, politics, and social work—in terms of education. Twelve well-written chapters examine power, politics, and social work education in different parts of the world. Included are contributions from different sociopolitical and administrative settings: South Korea, the United Kingdom, Sri Lanka, India, China, Hong Kong, Ireland, the Philippines, Germany, and Thailand. From an administrative perspective, all of these countries differ in their approach to social welfare. On political grounds, these countries are composed of an assortment of authoritative administrative settings, military administrations, and democracies.
Assembly as Political Practice
Authors: Abu El-Haj Tabatha
Published: October 2024

The right of peaceful assembly is often touted as preserving the promise of fundamental political or social change. It ensures the people’s power to secure the franchise or social inclusion and to overthrow oppressive regimes, whether colonial, apartheid, or dictatorial. But assemblies come in a range of other forms, including annual parades, smaller political protests, and weekly gatherings of social groups. All these forms of assembly sustain and reinforce the capacity for democratic politics, and their value does not turn on their expressive ends alone. Both the possibility of effective democratic politics and a proper construction of the right of peaceful assembly demand that we recognize the value of assembly, as assembly, and its latent and constitutive political functions. This chapter thus explores assembly as a form of social and political action, demonstrating that the act of assembly has independent, intrinsic value, apart from and often prior to, either its expressive or instrumental political functions.
The Technological Mediation of Emotions in World Politics
Authors: Møller Ølgaard Daniel
Published: October 2024

This chapter grapples theoretically and analytically with the significance of new digital media technologies in relation to the study of emotions and world politics. It begins with a review of existing international relations literature that identifies the need for scholarly engagement with the technological backdrop of emotions and their politics. Drawing on insights from postphenomenology, it then introduces “technological mediation” as a theoretical prism with which to make sense of the role of media technologies in relation to how emotions become collective and shape world politics. It ends by illustrating the value of this approach by exploring how the refugee crisis is mediated in the virtual reality (VR) experience Sense of Home. In doing so, the chapter unveils the politics of emotions inherent to this humanitarian VR experience, which appeals to and manages the emotions of spectators but also reproduces problematic ways of seeing distant suffering.
Empathy and the Politicization of Emotions
Authors: Head Naomi
Published: October 2024

Emotional governance reflects the intersection of emotions, power, and politics. Who gets to feel, in what ways, and for whom highlights how emotions are drawn on by political actors and are important components of narratives. Empathy, reflecting the extent to which people feel with and for others, is central to the politicization of emotions. Contestation around issues such as war, migration, climate, gender, Black Lives Matter, and global health demonstrates how empathy is political, shaping the legitimate political and affective boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. The chapter first considers three ways empathy is represented in international relations: as humanitarian, as strategic, and as a force for social justice. Drawing on feminist and post-colonial scholarship, the following section explores the politicization of emotions in two polarized contexts of political violence, namely Brexit and genocide. The chapter concludes by proposing that empathy makes an ontological, epistemological, and political claim that locates it within an affective politics of (in)justice.
Abolitionism
Authors: Wringe Bill
Published: October 2024

In this chapter I examine “political” and “philosophical” cases for the abolition of punishment. I argue that far from being complementary, they are in fact significantly at odds with one another. Philosophical abolitionists typically focus on the kinds of intention that they take to be essential to punishment. I argue that their case against punishment is compatible with systems of criminal justice which would replicate many, if not all, of the harms that motivate the political case for abolition. But political abolitionism is only plausible if we think that any politically feasible system of punishment would reproduce the harms perpetrated by one particular form of punishment: namely, incarceration.
Capital Punishment
Authors: Cholbi Michael
Published: October 2024

Both proponents and opponents of capital punishment largely agree that death is the most severe punishment that societies should consider imposing on offenders. This chapter considers how (if at all) this “Ultimate Thesis” can be vindicated. Appeals to the irrevocability of death, the badness of being executed, the badness of death, or the harsh condemnation societies express by sentencing offenders to death do not succeed in vindicating this Thesis, and in particular, fail to show that capital punishment is more severe than the most likely alternative punishment offenders would suffer, namely, lifelong incarceration. The most plausible vindication of the Ultimate Thesis instead resides in how being condemned to death alters a person’s psychological relation to death. Our ordinary tendencies toward “death denial” diminish the terror that our awareness of death can otherwise induce in us, thereby enabling us to pursue worthwhile lives despite knowing of death’s inevitability. But condemned individuals are continually compelled to confront both the reality and specific circumstances of their own deaths and so do not enjoy the protective psychic shield that death denial provides us. This “relational” rationale does not obviously succeed in proving the Ultimate Thesis, but if the Thesis is true, this rationale is essential to its justification.
Incarceration
Authors: Lippke Richard L.
Published: October 2024

An account of humane and least restrictive imprisonment is defended in relation to the punishment of serious criminal offenders. Such imprisonment is cast as the next parsimonious step up in penal severity compared with noncustodial sanctions that impose various burdens on offenders while leaving them at liberty to move about in civil society. Various objections and alternatives to imprisonment of this kind are addressed. Among the former are claims that serious offenders forfeit all or some of their basic moral rights, that an account of penal severity focused on the deprivation of liberty slights the subjective experience of imprisonment, and that decent and right-supportive forms of penal confinement will not be “less eligible” or will afford offenders better living conditions than some free members of society experience in their daily lives. Among the latter are proposals to substitute restitution requirements for penal hard treatment, address serious offending through restorative justice techniques, or devise and implement non-punitive forms of confinement.
Restorative Justice
Authors: Bennett Christopher
Published: October 2024

This chapter asks whether restorative justice is compatible with the rule of law. It outlines restorative justice, explaining that it is often thought of as a variety of informal justice. While there are attractions to its critique of existing justice systems, a range of criticisms are introduced that concentrate on problems with its character as a type of informal justice. It is suggested that these criticisms have to do with the value of the rule of law: informal justice risks losing the benefits of dealing with crime in characteristically legal ways. However, there are different variants of restorative justice, which demand different levels of reform of existing justice systems (or their abolition), and different levels of informality. There are also different conceptions of the rule of law. Furthermore, the chapter introduces the idea of a distinctive rule of criminal law. While the rule of law, construed a certain way, seems to preclude restorative justice, this does not rule out the possibility that the most adequate conception of both would be mutually compatible. One route to a possible reconciliation is sketched.
Retributivism and Severity
Authors: Duus-Otterstrom Goran
Published: October 2024

This chapter offers an overview of the debates that face retributivism when understood as a theory of sentencing. It focuses especially on the severity problem, which is the problem of establishing an absolute fit between crimes and punishments such that the punishment is noncomparatively deserved. The chapter argues that while this problem certainly remains to be solved in a practical sense, it has a theoretical solution, which is that punishments are noncomparatively deserved when they set back offenders’ interests to the same extent that their crimes set back legitimate interests of the victims. In other words, the suggestion is that retributivists can overcome the severity problem by accepting (a version of) the principle called lex talionis. The chapter also addresses how culpability should figure in this principle as well as how retributivists should proceed when it is unclear what offenders deserve.
Criminal Record
Authors: Frase Richard S.
Published: October 2024

Almost all modern sentencing systems impose substantially more severe punishment on repeat offenders, in proportion to the number and seriousness of their prior crimes. This chapter advocates limits on these enhancements, grounded in both retributive and consequentialist (crime control) punishment purposes. It applies a hybrid, asymmetric limiting retributivism model: retributive principles limit sentence enhancements even when more severe punishment would serve crime control purposes; conversely, consequentialist grounds for mitigation reduce permissible sentence severity even when additional punishment would be deserved. In accordance with both retributive and consequentialist principles, such enhancements must also maintain ordinal proportionality between penalty severity and crime seriousness. Under the proposed enhancement model, prior-record enhancements should be further limited by social equality ideals and resource-management considerations—criminal penalties should not add to and perpetuate entrenched racial socioeconomic disparities; prisons must not be overcrowded; and limited prison capacity should be reserved for violent offenders. To illustrate the application of these principles the chapter proposes several specific limits on prior record enhancements. On both retributive and consequentialist grounds, the most important record-based distinction is between offenders with no prior record and those with one prior offense; accordingly, most first offenders should receive a substantially mitigated sentence, e.g., 25% to 50% lower than the typical penalty for second offenders. Twelve limitations should then govern enhancements for third and subsequent offenses: certain prior offenses should not be counted; only modest enhancements should apply beyond the second conviction; and such enhancements should cease (i.e., be “capped”) at some point.
Mercy
Authors: Zaibert Leo
Published: October 2024

Seemingly resistant to rational systematization, mercy has always been difficult to theorize. This chapter problematizes the reasons for this often-exaggerated resistance. The chapter seeks to explain why these reasons have gained in prominence in the contemporary period, and why we should in fact largely reject those reasons. While admittedly a complex notion, mercy should be recognized as the true counterpart of punishment. The tension between mercy and punishment should be recognized as the point of departure in efforts to justify either punishment or its merciful remission. Real progress in efforts to justify either phenomenon involves taking seriously the conceptual and normative proximity between them.
Socially Deprived Offenders
Authors: Skolnik Terry
Published: October 2024

Scholars have explored the relationship between punishment and social deprivation—including poverty, unemployment, low-education levels, and family disruption—from different perspectives. Some contend that social deprivation should mitigate culpability, decrease sentence severity based on compassion, or excuse wrongdoing. Others posit that social deprivation undermines the state’s standing to call individuals to account for wrongdoing.

This chapter advances a different argument. Building on Kantian theories of legal authority, republicanism, and fiduciary theory, this chapter contends that the state has a moral duty to alleviate social disadvantage to legitimize coercion and punishment. It demonstrates why the state must create a system of criminalization and punishment to prevent certain forms of domination. Yet the state fails to accommodate the reality of social deprivation within this system, which undermines its legitimacy and subjects socially deprived persons to domination. The concluding part of this chapter shows why the state has a corrective fiduciary duty to address social deprivation. The fulfillment of this duty helps legitimize coercion and punishment, and counteracts domination associated with the criminal justice system.
Multiple Offenders
Authors: Lee Youngjae
Published: October 2024

This chapter advances the proposition that while multiple offenders are more culpable than single-crime offenders and should thus be treated differently, multiple offenders should not be punished to such an extent that the state ends up treating an offender who has committed multiple offenses more harshly or in the same way as those who have committed more serious offenses, given the message each punishment communicates about the character defects of the recipient of the punishment. Following this principle would likely result in a presumption in favor of concurrent sentencing or at least a sentencing practice where even if an offender is guilty of committing multiple offenses, the punishment for each additional offense is smaller than that for the first offense. This chapter further argues that this punishment practice is consistent with the practice of imposing the recidivist premium on those who, after having been convicted and punished, continue to reoffend.
Neurointerventions and Punishment
Authors: Ryberg Jesper
Published: October 2024

An increasing number of theorists have become preoccupied with the idea of using neurointerventions as a means of preventing offenders from reoffending. However, a traditional criticism against the rehabilitationist ideal of treating offenders in order to avoid recidivism has been that such an approach violates considerations of justice. The purpose of this chapter is to examine whether this traditional justice-based criticism is warranted if neurointerventions are administered as a crime prevention tool. It is suggested that this need not be the case. More specifically, it is argued that: 1) neurointerventions can be imposed as a type of punishment; 2) if this is the case, then properly imposed neurointerventions do not involve a breach of retributivist proportionality considerations; and 3) such interventions cannot be excluded as a type of punishment that should be banned in principle. Therefore, even though there may be other objections to the use of neurointerventions in the criminal justice system, the traditional justice-based objection against rehabilitationism does not seem sufficient to rule out the possibility of treating offenders by the use of neurointerventions.
Restitutionism
Authors: Hershenov David
Published: October 2024

Punishment has traditionally been distinguished from restitution. It is better if punishment is construed as restitution. The main advantage is that it prioritizes the victims but it can even benefit the criminal who wants to repay a debt in order to reconcile with those people he has wronged and be restored to society as an equal citizen. Restitution has other advantages over its main rivals—retribution, reform, and deterrence. It can better explain why failed attempts are punished less severely than successful crimes. Restitutionist principles are not compromised by shows of mercy. Restitution does better than its rivals in avoiding punishments that are excessive or too lenient. It can accommodate the satisfaction of vindictive feelings as a form of debt payment and “getting even” can even play a role in the restoration of the criminal and the victim to their pre-crime status. Restitution also better coheres with classical Christian views of posthumous punishment.
Gender and Genre in the Turkish Tales (1813–16)
Authors: Camilleri Anna
Published: October 2024

This essay examines Byron’s presentation of gender in his Turkish Tales (1813–16). From the dark and brooding Giaour who thunders into the contemporary reader’s imagination in 1813 to the numerous dead women who haunt the later Tales, the extreme polarization of gender discernible in these poems appears to offer little in the way of critical interest. This essay does not dispute that Byron followed the polarized gender roles through which the fashionable ‘Eastern’ tale frequently finds its dramatic impetus. Yet the essay argues that in later Tales, rather than slavishly replicating the popular dynamic of the genre, Byron can be seen to resist and even defy the conventional character roles established by his predecessors through an unexpectedly experimental treatment of gender.
Byron Biographies, 1824 to the Present The Shaping of Byron’s Legacy
Authors: Gross Jonathan
Published: October 2024

This chapter demonstrates that Byron’s biographies often reflect the time in which they were written and the preoccupations of the biographer. It explores the score-settling of Lady Caroline Lamb, Leigh Hunt, Lady Blessington, and Thomas Medwin, and defences by Mary Shelley, Teresa Guiccioli, Edward Trelawny, and James Kennedy. It proposes that of the early biographies, it was Thomas Moore’s that presented Byron dispassionately and most effectively rescued him from denigrators. The chapter then assesses the significance of Leslie Marchand’s biography in returning Byron to serious literary consideration in 1957, and the later preoccupation with Byron’s sexuality in the biographies by Phyllis Grosskurth, Benita Eisler, and Fiona MacCarthy amongst others. It suggests that recent biographers have tended to fan the flames of the perceived controversies of Byron’s life to sell their books.
The Landscapes ofChilde Harold’s PilgrimageI and II
Authors: Minta Stephen
Published: October 2024

The chapter examines the significance of the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage in relation to Byron’s evolving attitude to landscape and the treatment of landscape in poetry. In Cantos I and II of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Byron began to find a way of transforming the inherited conventions of the eighteenth-century topographical poem. He moved towards a greater personalization in the depiction of landscape, negotiating between what is already given to the artist in terms of past associations of place and scene and what an ‘authentic’ reading in the present might allow, one guaranteed by the poetic dramatization of ‘being there’. This process, in Canto II, leads to an engagement with the Greek landscape that is unlike anything else in English poetry of the period. It opens onto both past and present, drawing inspiration from the stimulus of history and from the awakening of a protective and passionate love.
Byron and Regency Print Culture
Authors: O’Connell Mary
Published: October 2024

This chapter explores Byron’s troubled relationship to print culture in the Regency era. Through an examination of his London journal it argues that his poetry is often most profitably read with this relationship in mind. The chapter highlights the significance of Byron’s dealings with his major publishers and points to instances in his poetry which illuminate the extent to which one of the bestselling poets of the age contemplated his own involvement in a thriving print culture and mass literary marketplace. It concludes with an examination of the significance of the multiple images of wastepaper and burnt paper that occur throughout Byron’s letters and poetry.
Byron’s Reviewers
Authors: Schoina Maria
Published: October 2024

This chapter focuses on those influential reviewers and reviews that crafted many versions of Byron’s poetic and personal identity, often creating a conflicted and polemical image of the poet. It argues that reviews in periodicals offer important insights into the period’s literary tastes and political, social, and religious biases, as well as the shifting alliances of its authors, publishers, and reading audiences. Byron’s reputation was influenced by some of the best-known reviewers of the Romantic period. At the same time the reviewers’ attitudes strengthened his poetic sensibility and significantly conditioned the course of his career and reading of his works. Byron responded vigorously to his reviewers, and also impacted literary reviewing by creating the need for a new critical language. Byron’s case therefore exemplifies the embattled spaces created between authors and reviewers by the nineteenth-century explosion of periodical culture, literary professionalization, and the emerging forces of the literary market.
Reading Byron’s Body and Mind
Authors: Shears Jonathon
Published: October 2024

This chapter explores the intersections between body and mind in Byron’s work and self-presentation. These can be viewed through five main lenses: the Galenic language of the four humours; discourses of passions and affections; new understanding of the nervous system; the comic deflation typical of the eighteenth-century novel; the Godwinian idealistic belief that the mind could be independent of the body. In each case, the essay argues that Byron worked with these inherited ideas to explore questions of agency, free will, and the deep-lying reasons for human action. It further suggests that, even as Byron is often viewed as the most embodied of Romantic poets, the actions of his characters are usually set in the context of mental activity. The chapter reads three decisive scenes in Byron’s work as examples where a mediating cognitive context operates and directs what might otherwise be viewed as primarily bodily reactions to an environment.
Byron and Travel
Authors: Thompson Carl
Published: October 2024

This chapter addresses the centrality of travel to Lord Byron’s career and poetic creativity. The first section focuses on the travel poem that made Byron famous, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage: it discusses Byron’s Mediterranean tour of 1809–11, the poet’s cosmopolitan persona in Childe Harold, and the poem’s influence on later touristic practices. The second section explores the complex political implications of Byron’s self-fashioning as a transgressive, alienated traveller allegedly at odds with his homeland. The final section then considers the period after 1816 when Byron became a permanent exile from Britain. Here travel arguably gave way to transculturation, as Byron found himself increasingly ‘Italianized’ by his extended residence in that country. This makes Byron’s post-1816 writings a revealing case study of what it means not just to be performatively cosmopolitan but to actually cross cultural borders and so acquire a more genuinely hybrid, ‘hyphenated’ cultural identity.
Byron’s Early Poetical Practices
Authors: Bhattacharji Shobhana
Published: October 2024

In the more than 170 poems Byron wrote between 1798 and March 1812, when Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage was published, he developed and honed the poetical practices he would use to the end of his career. This chapter examines his very first poem, the first and last volumes of the Southwell poems, and his early sonnets, which show him discovering and developing quickness of composition, variations on ab rhymes, voice and tone, enjambment, digression, single sentence poems and stanzas that became the long cadences of Childe Harold. It looks at examples of Byron trying out conversational styles by loosening the insistent rhythm of the earliest lyrics, and experimenting with changing perspectives, voice and metre, direct addresses to the reader or subject of a poem, skilful alliteration, and imitations of his poetic predecessors. It argues that Byron created poetic spaces for himself within inherited forms, particularly the sonnet, and it explores Byron’s habit of embedding sonnets within his longer poems, foreshadowing his later use of shorter poetic forms within long poems.