Prison experiences and scales in history, between global paradigms and national contexts. Recent trends in historiography

Abstract

The publications examined in this article form the basis of a discussion on the extent to which the most recent historiography on prison experiences - civilian internment, in particular - has engaged with the so-called global turn and, at the same time, with the theme of scales in history. Through an analysis of a number of indicators that are present in the three selected works, I argue that the most important progress in historiographical terms depends not so much on the choice between traditional binomial pairs (e.g. micro/macro, local/global), but on the recourse to a micro-sociological approach aimed at avoiding the reification of both categories of analysis and periodisations, thus adopting a perspective that is never static.