John Francis Campbell (1821–1885)

Thompson, Francis

doi:10.1080/0015587x.1990.9715781

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“…Moreover, small numbers can sometimes be surprisingly significant in political culture (Appadurai, 2006). As EP Thompson (1979: 10) argued, the “symbolic importance” of punishment “may have no direct correlation with quantity”, and in fact “a small quantum of terror can produce an even greater effect” (1979: 11); in some contexts the execution of one or two individuals can have “extraordinary impact upon a whole nation” (1979: 11). 17 In Israel, for example, capital laws relating to treason, terrorism and the Holocaust, have made profound effects on political culture, the state's authority and the status of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, with (as yet) only the single execution of Adolph Eichmann in 1962 (Dudai, 2023a).…”

Section: Functional Fallacy: “Only a Symbolic Role”mentioning

confidence: 99%

Dead or alive? Reassessing the health of the death penalty and the prospects of global abolition

Dudai

2023

Theoretical Criminology

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There is a growing position among human rights advocates, academics and UN officials, predicting “the death of the death penalty”, and forecasting that it will completely disappear soon. This article questions and problematizes this prediction, exploring the assumptions, premises and gaps that underpin the optimistic outlook. Based on analysis of abolitionist discourse, three fallacies are identified and analyzed: a progressive fallacy, assuming the death penalty is a barbaric anachronism in the “civilized” modern world and displaying a teleological belief in its demise; a classificatory fallacy, entailing defining-down the prevalence of the death penalty through the category of “de-facto abolition”; and a functional fallacy, assuming that repudiating the death penalty as a crime-fighting tool will cause its demise, overlooking its transformation into an institution serving political-symbolic functions. In concluding, I suggest viewing the global death penalty as bifurcated: dying as an ordinary law-enforcement tool, but relatively healthy as an extraordinary political symbol.

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Section: Functional Fallacy: “Only a Symbolic Role”mentioning

confidence: 99%

Dead or alive? Reassessing the health of the death penalty and the prospects of global abolition

Dudai

2023

Theoretical Criminology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

John Francis Campbell (1821–1885)

Cited by 1 publication

References 0 publications

Dead or alive? Reassessing the health of the death penalty and the prospects of global abolition

Dead or alive? Reassessing the health of the death penalty and the prospects of global abolition

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