Poverty, Punitivity and Confinement in 16th Century Spain. The Criminalisation of Misery at the Dawn of Capitalism
Abstract
The problematization of poverty, the criminalization, confinement, reclusion and disciplining of the poor are fundamental factors in successfully explaining the birth of early capitalism. In this article we want to show how poverty, which throughout the Middle Ages had been naturalised as a part of a divine order, became a problematic issue from the 16th century onwards and was the subject of passionate debate. It is in this new problematization of poverty that we will find the foundations with which a whole dense punitive and disciplinary network will later be woven, with the aim of creating an army of submissive workers in conditions of misery.
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