Abstract

Outlaws have been formidable local authorities throughout history and some of their stories survived thanks to poems, ballads, and plays within a culture deeply colored by violence, avenge, injustice, punishment, and state response against them. I underscore the role of power relationship in society to examine the emergence of outlaws and utilize it to deconstruct the social, political, and cultural conundrum. Consulting the British, Mexican, Bulgarian, U.S., Ottoman, and Brazilian archives, I attempt to theorize the activities of bandits, brigands, and militants within the global history of social dissent. I argue that if we employ social dissent as an instrumental concept, we can effectively determine both local factors and uncover global connections that explicate why various outlaws and societal reactions against them demonstrate astonishing similarities in distant geographies and different time periods. This study contributes to our knowledge in the historical sociology of outlaws by offering new theoretical ventures and highlighting methodological challenges in studying outlaws within the conundrum of crime, conflict, and violence.