Abstract
The stories being told about Texan punishment, by the media, by scholars, by politicians and indeed by me, often construct Texas as a place of harsh punishment. However, the Lone Star State is more than just the ‘execution capital of the world’. Proud of its history and of its culture; Texas is a place with its own compelling state history. Speaking about the ways in which the small towns and cities of Texas market themselves to tourists, Avraham and Daugherty (2012, p. 1385) suggest that ‘among US states, arguably the strongest narrative is that of Texas—cowboys, cattle, desert vistas and the Lone Star flag are all widely known, and heavily used, symbols of the Texas story’. Drawing on the work of Avraham and First (2003), which considered how ‘Americanicity’ presented itself in Israeli advertisements, Avraham and Daugherty (2012) go on to speak about the images that define what they term ‘Texasnicity’.
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Thurston, H. (2016). ‘Texanicity’ and Its Punishment Dimensions. In: Prisons and Punishment in Texas. Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53308-1_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53308-1_11
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