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Over the last fifteen years, the analytical field of punishment and society has witnessed an increase of research developing the connection between economic processes and the evolution of penality from different standpoints, focusing particularly on the increase of rates of incarceration in relation to the transformations of neoliberal capitalism. Bringing together leading researchers from diverse geographical contexts, this book reframes the theoretical field of the political economy of punishment, analysing penality within the current economic situation and connecting contemporary penal changes with political and cultural processes. It challenges the traditional and common sense understanding of imprisonment as 'exclusion' and posits a more promising concept of imprisonment as a 'differential' or 'subordinate' form of 'inclusion'. This groundbreaking book will be a key text for scholars who are working in the field of punishment and society as well as reaching a broader audience within law, sociology, economics, criminology and criminal justice studies.

In this special issue, we explore the limits of existing theories for understanding migration governance from a Southern perspective and what the potential for rethinking border controls and their study, such as alternative epistemological and methodological approaches, might engender. We invited contributions to imagine what a 'Southern perspective' on the field of border criminologies would look like. In other words, what does it entail to study and theorise border control from the South? We organised a panel at the European Society of Criminology in September 2021 and then invited further authors. We sought to engage multiple disciplinary traditions and diverse case studies that speak to the various disciplinary perspectives and geopolitical dimensions of bordering. Many of the authors in this special issue are early career researchers who, through engaging with postcolonial theory and decolonial approaches, are fostering novel perspectives within border criminologies. Collectively, the articles bring together the different geopolitical, sociocultural and economic ways in which borders in the Global South are imagined, constructed, negotiated and reconstructed. The articles offer a wide range of epistemological and methodological insights for border criminologies to engage with, shifting our understanding from Northern perspectives.

Lack of standardization of terms in the social sciences has resulted in ambiguity & debate. Problems of understanding concepts are further hindered by translating the information from one language to another. In India, where there are regional languages to contend with as well, the government organizes much of the information to be disseminated, & there is a low regard for the quality of translations. The different languages & their translations result in alterations of the material itself & its intellectual perspective. There is dim hope that the various perspectives will result in a true comparative sociology. A standardization of terms & concepts would make possible a truly comparative sociology. A. Rothman.

There are five levels in social inquiry: ontology; epistemology; approaches; methodology; and methods, which we see as means of gathering information. There is no determinate relationship such that one school will consistently choose the same options all the way down. We can cross between what are often seen as competing world views at various of these levels. Natural sciences have not arrived at a unified field theory and there is no reason why social sciences have to do so. Adapted from the source document.