P-AGE
Social Defence. Uncovering the Transnational Epistemology of the Punitive Age
About
Understand the fundamentals of the criminal justice system
Why punish? Around this fundamental question the P-AGE project, “Social Defense: Uncovering the Transnational Epistemology of the Punitive Age” will be developed. This question is at once legal, theoretical and political. The justification commonly offered in support of the right to punish, generally shared by both experts and laypersons, is that punishment ultimately serves nothing but to defend society. But what does it mean to defend society and where does this idea come from? Curiously, while constituting the fundamental justification of the right to punish, social defense is an implicit paradigm, that is, one that is neither based on a written norm nor possesses a clear historical basis. It is thus that, despite its profound impact on people's lives and freedoms, the criminal justice system operates without a clear normative foothold.
P-AGE’s objective is therefore to analyse the long-term discourse on social defence and its current transnational relevance, with the ultimate goal of understanding how and why punishment came to be perceived as an adequate response to various societal issues.
Studying social defense theory
Social defence was first theorised at the turn of the 20th century within the underexplored field of Positivist Criminology. This concept has persisted until today, due to the post-WWII emergence of the New Social Defence (NSD) movement, an association of criminal law reformers who worked in concert with the United Nations Social Defence Research Institute (UNSDRI), now called the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), in shaping current crime policy programmes.
Positivist Criminology emerged in Italy as a modern and scientific approach to crime, differing from Enlightenment-era penology. It developed as a pan-European project and has brought about radical reform projects. Moreover, it extended overseas through translation and dissemination efforts in both Latin America and the US. With the NSD movement, social defence took on a stronger transnational dimension thanks to the alliance established with the UN and therefore the global policy programmes developed by the UN institute devoted explicitly to social defence.
The overall objective of P-AGE is to reveal the rationale behind punitive reason by mapping the largely uncharted social defence epistemic community – a transnational network of ideas and actors composed of experts, scholars, practitioners, and policymakers. Methodologically, the project involves qualitative data collection and the analysis of archives and documents related to Positivist Criminology, that is the “old” social defence, and NSD, that is the “new” social defence as well as UN crime policies. The analysis identifies shared values, theories, methodologies, and policy recommendations to shed light on both the internal and external dynamics of this community. The ground-breaking nature of this project consists in the construction of a transnational genealogy of social defence, the implicit episteme that underpins the dominant penal system. P-AGE blends theoretical criminology, intellectual legal history, and policy analysis to critically rewrite the history of the punitive reason in light of the key concept of social defence.
For further information read also the news "A new ERC researcher at Ca' Foscari: Xenia Chiaramonte" [ITA] on cafoscariNEWS.
Team
Xenia Manuela Chiaramonte
Xenia Manuela Chiaramonte is an Associate Professor of Sociology of Law and Deviance in the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy, where she teaches Theory and Critique of Law as well as Law and Society. Her lines of research are mainly two: the first is on the history of contemporary punitive reason, and in particular on the genealogy of social defense, on which she won the ERC Starting Grant 2024 entitled P-AGE, Social Defense: Uncovering the Transnational Epistemology of the Punitive Age; the second one is on the relationship between law and the words and practices of today's ecology, on which she is developing a forthcoming monograph.
Veronica Marchio
Veronica Marchio is a research fellow at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. As sociologist of deviance and criminologist, she trained at the University of Bologna, where she completed a PhD in Legal Sociology and Criminology. Her work examines social control, policing practices, and coercive prevention, with a particular focus on gender dynamics in judicial settings, institutional responses to violence, and the criminalization of social movements. She collaborates on national and European research projects and teaches in the fields of the sociology of deviance, criminology, and critical penal studies.
Martina Calvi
Martina Calvi works as Project Manager in the Research Office of the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage at Ca' Foscari University of Venice. She is supporting the implementation of EU and National-funded projects through budget and deliverables monitoring and financial report preparation. She holds a Master’s Degree in Economics and Arts’ Management.