Prison experiences and scales in history, between global paradigms and national contexts : recent trends in historiography

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 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 approachaimed at avoiding the reification of both categories of analysis and periodisations, thus adopting a perspective that is never static. [Publisher's Text].