This volume brings together a range of work by leading writers in the field and engages with the comparative dimensions of shame, blame, and culpability and their fundamentally important impact upon modern multicultural states. Tracing use, abuse, and negotiation between the 17th and 20th centuries in a number of different geographical locations, this book forms a part of the movement within criminal and legal history to turn the focus away from capital and serious crime to look at the impact of lesser (and more common) criminality which has a daily impact on people's lives. In studying the interaction of how people understand the boundaries of acceptable behaviour, the volume illustrates perceptions of crime and morality at work in previously unstudied societies at different historical junctures.