Rethinking the Penal State

Name: Rethinking the Penal State
Brand: Polity Press
SKU: 9781509573042
Price: 1263.0 INR
Availability: InStock

by Loïc Wacquant

Save 35%

₹1,263.00

₹1,944.00

(-35%)

₹1,263.00

Imported Edition - Ships in 18-21 Days

Free Shipping in India on orders above Rs. 500

Request Bulk Quantity Quote

Name

Quantity

+91

Company Name

Message

Quantity

More Information

ISBN13: 9781509573042
Binding: Paperback
Subject: N/A
Publisher: Polity Press
Publisher Imprint: Polity Press
Publication Date: June 11, 2026
Pages: 528
Original Price: USD 19.99
Language: English
Edition: N/A
Item Weight: 756 grams
BISAC Subject(s): Criminology

About The Book

In this book based on his 2024 Adorno Lectures, Lo�c Wacquant combines social theory, comparative history and structural ethnography to probe criminal punishment as a core function of the state. Extending Pierre Bourdieu's signal concepts of bureaucratic field and symbolic power, he resolves the opposition between rationalist theories of penality running from Jeremy Bentham to Karl Marx and emotionalist theories descending from Immanuel Kant to �mile Durkheim to capture the constitutive duality of punishment at once material and symbolic, an instrument of class control and a means of communicating values, endlessly oscillating between rehabilitation and retribution.

By rolling out the police, court, prison and their bureaucratic tentacles, the penal state curates crime, contains moral disorders, manages urban marginality and draws the boundary of citizenship. Its day-to-day deployment also signals sovereignty and serves to manufacture political legitimacy in the eyes of the general population. But the penal Leviathan is a bifurcated state which captures nearly exclusively dispossessed and dishonored categories by targeting their neighborhoods: it is everywhere a class-splitting and a race-making institution based on the stubborn differentiation of 'paper penalty' and 'street penality' The structural osmosis between districts of urban dereliction and the carceral institution on both sides of the Atlantic is such that we cannot understand the penal state without understanding the dual city and vice versa.

To flesh out penal power as strategic action, Wacquant takes us deep inside a criminal court in California where we discover that the prosecutor who negotiates guilty pleas is the human spear of the state. In his daily tussles with defense attorneys and the sentencing judge, he calibrates and drives the concrete infliction of physical and psychic force upon bodies deemed out of order.

Getting inside the machinery of criminal justice shows that punishment must be placed at the epicenter of the political sociology of statecraft, group-making and place-making in the metropolis as well as brought to the forefront of civic debate, rather than abandoned to the periodic panic-peddling of electoral politics. Instead of chasing the chimera of abolition, we should muster the intellectual resources needed to reclaim the vexed duality of 'law and order' for a progressive politics. This requires articulating a radical penal minimalism suited to reconciling punishment and democratic citizenship.

Elegantly formulated and crisply argued, this book will be of interest to social scientists, criminologists and jurists as well as to scholars across the disciplines looking for novel ways to envisage the state, the law, punishment and inequality.

About The Author

Loïc Wacquant is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Researcher at the Centre Européen de Sociologie et de Science Politique.

Trusted for over 49 years

Family Owned Company

Secure Payment

All Major Credit Cards/Debit Cards/UPI & More Accepted

New & Authentic Products

India's Largest Distributor

Need Support?

Whatsapp Us

Related Category

social science > criminology

Bestselling

View All

Atomic Habits (Lead Title)

Clear, James

₹585

₹899

(-35%)

₹585

• Author(s): Clear | James • Publisher: Penguin • Publisher Imprint: Penguin Random House • Subject: General Books

Ikigai

Hector Garcia

₹390

₹599

(-35%)

₹390

• Author(s): Hector Garcia • Publisher: Penguin • Publisher Imprint: Penguin Random House • Subject: General Books

The Courage To Be Disliked How To Free Yourself Change Your Life And Achieve Real Happiness Courage To Series

Ichiro Kishimi

₹358

₹550

(-35%)

₹358

• Author(s): Ichiro Kishimi • Publisher: GROVE ATLANTIC • Publisher Imprint: Allen & Unwin • BISAC: Personal Growth - SuccessIchiro Kishimi lives in Kyoto. He writes, lectures and teaches in psychiatric clinics as a certified counsellor and c...

View full details

12 Years: My Messed-up Love Story

Chetan Bhagat

₹260

₹399

(-35%)

₹260

• Author(s): Chetan Bhagat • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India • Publisher Imprint: HarperCollins Publishers India • BISAC: GeneralFrom India's top-selling writer Chetan Bhagat comes a powerful new love story that will make you laugh, cry...

View full details

The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery

Brianna Wiest

₹260

₹399

(-35%)

₹260

• Author(s): Brianna Wiest • Publisher: Manjul Publishing • Publisher Imprint: Amaryllis • BISAC: Body Mind And SpiritThis is a book about self-sabotage. Why we do it, when we do it, and how to stop doing it—for good. Coexisting but conflicting n...

View full details

The Art of Spending Money: Simple Choices for a Richer Life

Morgan Housel

₹290

₹499

(-42%)

₹290

• Author(s): Morgan Housel • Publisher: Pan Macmillan • Publisher Imprint: Pan Macmillan • BISAC: Finance - Wealth ManagementA third book from the International bestselling author of The Psychology of Money and Same as Ever, lessons on harnessing...

View full details

Mother Mary Comes To Me

Arundhati Roy

₹585

₹899

(-35%)

₹585

• Author(s): Arundhati Roy• Publisher: PRH INDIA LOCAL PRINT• Publisher Imprint: Penguin Hamish Hamilton• BISAC: Literary FiguresArundhati Roy’s first work of memoir, this is a soaring account, both intimate and inspiring, of how the author became...

View full details

Truth without Apology: A Guide for Those Who Can Stand It

Acharya Prashant

₹260

₹399

(-35%)

₹260

• Author(s): Acharya Prashant • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India • Publisher Imprint: HarperCollins Publishers India • BISAC: GeneralIn a world where vagueness is mistaken for depth and obscurity passes for wisdom, Truth without Apology ...

View full details

Grandma's Bag of Stories

Sudha Murthy

₹179

₹275

(-35%)

₹179

• Author(s): Sudha Murthy • Publisher: India Puffin • Publisher Imprint: India Puffin • BISAC: Short StoriesWho can resist a good story, especially when it's being told by Grandma? From her bag emerges tales of kings and cheats, monkeys and mic...

View full details

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop

Satoshi Yagisawa

₹260

₹399

(-35%)

₹260

• Author(s): Satoshi Yagisawa • Publisher: Bonnier Books Ltd • Publisher Imprint: Bonnier Books Ltd

Deep Work: Rules For Focused Success In A Distracted World

Newport, Cal

₹260

₹399

(-35%)

₹260

• Author(s): Newport, Cal • Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group • Publisher Imprint: Piatkus

Can We Be Strangers Again?: A National Bestseller

Shrijeet Shandilya

₹195

₹299

(-35%)

₹195

• Author(s): Shrijeet Shandilya • Publisher: Ebury Press • Publisher Imprint: Ebury Press • BISAC: Romance - GeneralIn the electric haze of college life, three friends are bound by laughter, late-night talks and unspoken promises. But when two of...

View full details

The Secret of Secrets: (Robert Langdon Book 6)

Dan Brown

₹975

₹1,499

(-35%)

₹975

• Author(s): Dan Brown • Publisher: Transworld Publishers Ltd • Publisher Imprint: Transworld Publishers Ltd • BISAC: Thrillers - EspionageDan Brown is the bestselling author of Digital Fortress, Deception Point, Angels and Demons, The Da Vinci C...

View full details

Magic of the Lost Temple

Sudha Murty

₹179

₹275

(-35%)

₹179

• Author(s): Sudha Murty • Publisher: India Puffin • Publisher Imprint: India Puffin • BISAC: Action & Adventure - General

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids about Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!

₹390

₹599

(-35%)

₹390

• Publisher: Penguin • Publisher Imprint: Penguin Random House • Subject: General Books • BISAC: Personal Finance - GeneralApril of 2022 marks a 25-year milestone for the personal finance classic Rich Dad Poor Dad that still ranks as the #1 Pers...

View full details

World’S Greatest Books For Personal Growth & Wealth (Set Of 4 Books) : Perfect Motivational

Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill

₹455

₹699

(-35%)

₹455

• Author(s): Dale Carnegie | Napoleon Hill • Publisher: Fingerprint • Publisher Imprint: Fingerprint • Subject: General Books

The Housemaid: An Addictive Psychological Thriller With Mind-Bending Twists

Freida Mcfadden

₹358

₹550

(-35%)

₹358

• Author(s): Freida Mcfadden • Publisher: Penguin Select Print • Publisher Imprint: Penguin Select Publishing"Multi-Million Copy Bestselling Series •Now Being Made Into a Major Motion Picture Starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried #1 New Yor...

View full details

101 Tales: The Great Panchatantra Collection

Wonder House Books

₹390

₹599

(-35%)

₹390

• Author(s): Wonder House Books • Publisher: Wonder House Books • Publisher Imprint: Wonder House Books • BISAC: Comics & Graphic Novels - Fairy Tales, Folklore, Legends & MTimeless Wisdom, Talking Animals & Life Lessons for Young Min...

View full details

Man's Search For Meaning

Viktor E. Frankl

₹260

₹399

(-35%)

₹260

• Author(s): Viktor E. Frankl • Publisher: Random House • Publisher Imprint: Random Hou • Subject: Medical, Nursing and Health Sciences

Bacchon KI Doctor's Desi Parenting Book: A Doctor-Mom's Guide to Milk, Myths, Motherhood and More

Madhavi Bharadwaj

₹260

₹399

(-35%)

₹260

• Author(s): Madhavi Bharadwaj • Publisher: PRH India • Publisher Imprint: Penguin Ebury Press • BISAC: Parenting - MotherhoodWelcome to the wild, messy, wonderful world of parenting--where the nights are long, the diapers are explosive, and unso...

View full details

The Outsider

Vir Das

₹455

₹699

(-35%)

₹455

• Author(s): Vir Das • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India • Publisher Imprint: HarperCollins Publishers India • BISAC: Entertainment & Performing ArtsComedian and actor Vir Das is beloved (by some, tolerated by others, blocked by a few...

View full details

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Eric Carle

₹293

₹450

(-35%)

₹293

• Author(s): Eric Carle • Publisher: Penguin Books, Limited (UK) • Publisher Imprint: Penguin Books, Limited (UK) • BISAC: Animals - Butterflies, Moths & CaterpillarsEric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a perennial favourite with child...

View full details

Too Good to Be True : A smart, funny will-they-won’t-they romance by mostlysane

Prajakta Koli

₹260

₹399

(-35%)

₹260

• Author(s): Prajakta Koli • Publisher: Harper Fiction India • Publisher Imprint: Harper Fiction India • BISAC: Romance - ContemporaryWinner of the Amazon India Popular Choice Debut Book 2025 Award. From one of India's most-loved creators comes s...

View full details

Tuesdays With Morrie (Export) (A Format)

Albom, Mitch

₹195

₹299

(-35%)

₹195

• Author(s): Albom, Mitch • Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group • Publisher Imprint: Sphere* Subtitled 'An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson', this is a true story of a man's rediscovery of his mentor - a book about second chances.

Rethinking the Penal State

Related Category

Bestselling

Country

Country