Punishment and parade: the cultural form of penal exile in Russia

The chapter explores a cultural understanding of penality in Russia against a Foucauldian account of penal change in that jurisdiction. The chapter examines how memory-making in Russia's penal spaces, and the cultural trope of exile, have created a distinctive penal place, penal purpose and penal culture (parphrasing Garland, 1990). Cultural interpretations of punishment are thin on the ground and the chapter seeks to add to a bugeoning body of punishment and society scholarship by exploring how the current, indeed, highly politicised 'moral-nationalist' climate in Russia is having an effect on punishment styles. The theoretical work of William Sewell on 'cultural turns', the chapter introduces prison sociologists to a wider body of social theoretical work on what I describe as 'culture as punishment'.