Theatrum criminológicum. Kafka, Park y los avatares del control social

Abstract

Theatrum criminologicum. Kafka, Park, and the Vicissitudes of Social Control

It is often suggested that, at the beginning of the 20th century, investigations about social control abandon the prison as the central theme, to start thinking about the problem of order taking the city as point of departure. Little has been said, however, about the connection, sometimes underground, that exists between these investigations and the work of Franz Kafka. We consider it possible to retrieve, in the literature of the Czech author, the process by which the city becomes an axis in which countless events unfold, at the very moment the Chicago School was putting the grounds of an ecological theory of social organization.