Flexible punishment. A new lexicon for the history of punishment

This introduction presents the special issue as an invitation to reconceptualize the historiography of punishment. It starts with the perception of a double shortcoming in the field. On the one hand, I observe the growing mismatch between the theoretical frameworks that we have received from the 1970s and the findings of the burgeoning literature that has been published on the topic during the last decades. On the other hand, I acknowledge that the new scholarship has most often confined itself to the empirical realm and has fallen short of providing comprehensive alternative conceptualizations. In this context, this special issue proposes some concepts as a starting point for a new analytical lexicon for our field: punitive sources, targets, legitimations, settings, institutions, regimes, circuits, circulations and configurations. The final section presents the six essays included in this special issue, highlights their contribution to the larger theoretical debate, and considers the relevance of a focus on “Italy” in this endeavour.