ABSTRACT
In depicting crime and social order in contemporary Western society, Garland (2001) utilized the ‘history of the present’ framework. He argued that his motivation in proposing the history was not a historical concern to understand the past but a critical concern to come to terms with the present. In other words, his genealogical account of ‘the culture of control’ is not to think historically about the past but rather to use that history to rethink the present (Garland 2001: 2). Likewise, Dutton (1992) was influenced by this method in his portrayal of policing and punishment in China. Similarly, in her genealogy of guanxi, Yang (1994) traced it to an ancient transition from a kinship order to a centralized state order, when conflict first occurred between the two discourses of Confucianism and legalism. She rationalized this strategy by drawing upon the guidelines provided by ‘history of the present’, in that ‘a genealogy looks for thematic and structural similitudes that bring to light certain aspects of the present, instead of predictable linear developments of cause and effect’ (1994: 220).
