ABSTRACT
0000-0001-8721-7066
This chapter focuses on the master narrative and substantive theorization of ‘modernity’, ‘civilization’ and ‘organized violence’ in historical- and process-sociological scholarship. In doing so the present chapter addresses again the core question raised throughout this book, namely, why contemporary criminological practice has much to gain from being ‘reconnected’ with the classical sociological imagination and its core sensitizing concepts. The chapter is organized as follows. Part one examines the claims for the global importance of the West’s status as the ‘leading edge of social power’ (Mann, 2012a) in the recent centuries, and delineates the core institutional features and lasting consequences of modernity and of its ‘Enlightenment project’ for contemporary criminological debate. Particular emphasis is placed on the dynamic tendencies, both constructive and destructive, of Western modernity and hence its ‘Janus-faced’ nature. Part two develops further the debate on modernity and violence by examining both Elias’ original thesis of the longue durée Western European civilizing process and more recent process-sociological work on the interplay and fusion of civilizing and decivilizing processes in modern state-systems. Part three examines firstly why so much modern social theory has been ‘guilty’ of underestimating the importance of violence generally and of lethal military power specifically in social ordering and change in human societies. Secondly the discussion makes the argument for the importance of centring physical violence and its control (over non-violent harms) in criminological practice. In the light of the discussion in the previous three parts of the chapter, part four explores the criminological salience of the historical-sociological thesis of social pacification and of the bureaucratic concentration and containment of violence in modern state-formation, and the latter’s crucial relationship to processes of criminalization and the rule of law in modern state-societies. Finally, in part five, the current debate in sociological criminology on crime and control ‘beyond’ modernity is examined in the light of the ongoing engagement with classical sociological scholarship developed in this chapter.
