A Peculiar Sociology of Punishment

In Peculiar Institution David Garland offers a sociological explanation for Americas retention of the death penalty in an age of abolition. But the book does much more than that. Peculiar Institution appeared exactly two decades after the publication of Garlands second major study Punishment and Modern Society. In that book he laid the foundations for a multidimensional sociology of punishment. However, Garlands manifesto for a new pluralist sociology of punishment fell to a large extent on deaf ears. It is against that background that I will argue that Peculiar Institution kills two birds with one stone: in addition to its declared intention to describe and explain Americas capital punishment complex, the book can also be read as a direct intervention in a much larger debate on how we should proceed when we aim to understand punishment in all its complexity.