Flogging Others: Corporal Punishment and Cultural Identity from Antiquity to the Present

Abstract

Corporal punishment is often considered a relic of the Western past, a set of thinly veiled barbaric practices largely abandoned in the process of civilization. As G. Geltner argues, however, the infliction of bodily pain was not necessarily typical for earlier societies, nor has it vanished from modern penal theory, policy, and practice. To the contrary, corporal punishment still thrives today thanks to its capacity to define otherness efficiently and unambiguously. Challenging a number of common myths and misconceptions about physical punishment's importance over the centuries, Flogging Othe. Machine generated contents note: 1. Historical and Anthropological Approaches -- Problems of Definition -- Problems of Interpretation -- 2. Punishing Bodies -- Antiquity -- Later Antiquity: Greece, Rome, and the Sassanian Empire -- Religion and Corporal Punishment -- Judaism -- Islam -- Christianity -- Medieval and Early Modern Europe -- Modernity to the Present.