Continuità disciplinare nell’internamento femminile: due approcci storico-sociologici a confronto

This paper aims to reflect on the potential of two sociological-historical approaches in the analysis of women's confinement. Beginning with a comparison of the perspective of revisionist history and the process-oriented approach of Elias/Spierenburg in relation to the birth of the prison, the contribution will focus on the applicability of these approaches to the analyses of the institutions of confinement for women that arose in the European context from the early modern period onward. In this regard, special attention will be paid to studies that have adopted a gender perspective. In addition, the potential of such theoretical approaches in investigating the complexity of the nineteenth and twentieth-century Italian prison context will be explored, with a focus on the archipelago of confinement institutions for women active in the same period.