Abstrakt
By focusing on the final stages of witchcraft prosecution within the Czech lands, England and Scotland, the question of whether the end of this phenomenon indicates the transition towards 'modernity' may be addressed. In outlawing witch persecution, states are arguably rejecting an archaic yet complex and integral social process, in which institutionalized violence enabled society to reject abhorrent behavior.
Norbert Elias' theory of the civilizing process can therefore be applied to the subject through an analysis of the circumstances which led to the repealing of the various witchcraft acts as well as through consideration of the main actors involved in the final stages of witch-prosecution. Through an assessment of Elias' concepts of sociogenesis and psychogenesis, which offer a long-term view of social processes, it is argued that the outlawing of witch-craft prosecutions represents both elite concepts of self-restraint and wider attempts to monopolize violence and consolidate power within the centralized state.By comparing the social, political and economic situations of these nations, the underlying social processes which led to the outlawing of witch-prosecution will be exposed and their position within the wider concept of 'state-formation' revealed.