The Militarisation of Behaviours: Social Control and Surveillance in Poland and Ireland

by Blazej Kaucz

Overview

This book examines how historical military influences can become embedded and used by the state to control citizens' behaviour, termed the militarisation of behaviours. It refers to the treatment of citizens by their state in a manner resembling the treatment of soldiers by the army. The militarisation of behaviours is a process of mass social control where the state exercises its powers over the population, blurring the boundaries between a dichotomous divide of civilian and military life. This book focuses on the social process of how Polish post-WWII emergency legislation was normalised and how through it the Polish communist state (from 1943/4 until 1989) introduced and enforced the process of militarisation of behaviours. It discusses the impact of the emergency legislation on the Republic of Ireland as a comparison. It offers a useful lens to understand the social and political processes happening currently in Poland, Ireland, and elsewhere, with the increasing influence of the (far) right. This book is situated in the framework of criminology and socio-legal studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783031166037
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	10/31/2022
Series:	Critical Criminological Perspectives
Edition description:	1st ed. 2022
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

Błażej Kaucz is a researcher in criminology and socio-legal studies. He completed his PhD in criminology in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at University College Cork, Ireland.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction.- 2. Development of Polish Criminal Law.- 3. Ireland, Church, and Emergency Legislation.- 4. Subduing a Nation Through Military Influences [Militarisation and Demilitarisation].- 4. Elements of Militarisation of Behaviours.- 5.- 6. Conclusions and Recommendations.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

This book is original and innovative. So far, little attention was paid to the criminological literature devoted to this subject and therefore the author deserves recognition for making the effort to familiarise the readers with this issue.

–Dr. hab. Brunon Hołyst, Professor of Criminology, Warsaw Management Academy, Poland

This is an important book that offers a rare, comparative sociological-criminological analysis of Poland and Ireland, focusing on legal textbooks, using some promising analytical terms like ‘securitisation’/ ‘desecuritisation’ and the ‘guilty knowledge’ of professional experts. Taking inspiration especially from the work of Michel Foucault, but also Mikhail Bakhtin on chronotope and Victor Turner on the ritual process and liminality, the book explores the vexing question of how ideologically so different political regimes nevertheless converged on similar practices of social control, imposing as norm a certain rigid and mechanical mode of acting which,according to the author, amounted to a genuine militarisation of behaviour. Of particular interest, especially given our current situation, is the focus on the way in which emergency legislation was used, and abused, for political purposes. The book also helps to revisit the just as disturbing question of why there was a strange ‘elective affinity’ between Communism and Catholicism, first explored in the literature of ‘crowd psychology’, and also Thomas Mann.

–Arpad Szakolczai, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University College Cork, Ireland

This book is a very important contribution to critical criminology. It creates a new kind of symbolic connection between Polish criminology and the global perspective on it, especially Irish criminology. This monograph represents the author’s original way of thinking about social control and social justice within the European system of democratic countries; and it opens a new level of discussion as part of critical criminology in Europe. The author represents a new generation of Irish and Polish Criminologists looking for general trends in contemporary societies and their legal systems. Błażej Kaucz is to be congratulated for his extensive analysis of the subject.

–Christopher Czekaj, Professor of Criminology, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Pedagogical University of Cracow, Poland