A01=Philip S. Gorski
academic
Author_Philip S. Gorski
behavior
bureaucracy
bureaucratic
calvinist
capitalism
capitalist
Category=QRMB33
communal
community
cultural
culture
discipline
election
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
era
european
growth
historical
history
infrastructure
military
office
power
reformation
religion
religious
research
revolution
scholarly
sociologist
sociology
strategy
surveillance
technique
time period
vote
Product details
- ISBN 9780226304830
- Weight: 510g
- Dimensions: 16 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 01 Jul 2003
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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What explains the rapid growth of state power in early modern Europe? While most scholars have pointed to the impact of military or capitalist revolutions, Philip S. Gorski argues instead for the importance of a disciplinary revolution unleashed by the Reformation. By refining and diffusing a variety of disciplinary techniques and strategies, such as communal surveillance, control through incarceration and bureaucratic office-holding, Calvin and his followers created an infrastructure of religious governance and social control that served as a model for the rest of Europe -and the world. Gorski shows, for instance, how Calvinist-inspired social discipline contributed to the governance and pacification of Dutch society and to the rationalization and centralization of the Prussian state. He also compares religious and social disciplining as practiced by Calvinists, Lutherans and Catholics and finds that Calvinists took the disciplinary revolution much farther and faster, which helps explain the greater political strength of the Calvinist states.
Written with clarity and vigour, "The Disciplinary Revolution" should be seen as a major work in European history, political science, social theory and religion.
