social euphoria

is a feeling (within the theory of punishment) of social repair brought about when a penal sanction is enforced and the offender punished.

A term used to denote a state of social well-being. It was used by A.R. Radcliffe-Brown in his discussion of primitive law in the Encyclopaedia of the Social Scicneces, 1933. Here the distinction is made between a condition of social dysphoria which results from the committal of an offence by an individual in society, whereby some strong moral sentiment is outraged, and a state of social euphoria which can only be brought about, he argued, if the penal sanction is enforced and the offender punished. Only in this manner, it is maintained, can the community be reconstituted. The theory owes much to Durkheim's analysis of repressive law. (dictionary of the social sciences p.73)

social euphoria, n.All

social euphoria