Narrative analyses in the neo-Durkheimian tradition have tended to focus mostly on event-specific narratives in civil society in order to study meanings, strategies, and codes surrounding those events. Analysis of comparisons between the 9/11 attacks and those at Pearl Harbor can build on this tradition by expanding the discursive locations from which to understand the construction of meanings in civil society. Through examining specific analogies, narratives, and metanarratives, I show how the comparison of 9/11 to the attacks on Pearl Harbor has led to varying meanings of 9/11 based on the employment of various genre based narratives and metanarratives of the events and the nation.
In a seminal statement, Emile Durkheim argued that punishment of crime has a salutary effect on society by reaffirming the collective consciousness. With few exceptions, Durkheim assumed that criminal punishment is done on behalf of society. With the rise of prison privatization, this assumption is increasingly called into question. For-profit firms carrying out punishment, though legally agents of the state, are motivated by private gain. This article asks: How might privatization modify the functional effects of punishment? It develops answers to this question by using insights from Durkheimian and neo-Durkheimian scholarship and the empirical case of modern privatized punishment in the United States. The article proposes three trajectories through which privatized punishment may (or may not) affect solidarity: Parity in Punishment, in which private and public punishers are seen as interchangeable; Public Interest, in which perceptions of greed and self-interest mar privatized punishment and sap it of its functional effects; and Sacred Transgressions, in which the private sector encroaches on sacred rites of punishment to the detriment of solidarity.
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