Philip Smith is one of the main followers of the “strong program in cultural sociology”. Along with Jeffrey C. Alexander, he is a co-author of a number of works which are constitutive for the tradition itself. Several of those are the strong program in cultural sociology “manifesto”; some texts which affirm late-Durkheimian program to be productive theoretical resource as well as history of the sociology fact; review of the second English translation of the “Elementary Forms” by Emile Durkheim. The work is representing a theory-oriented research of French revolution punishment technologies. It involves an analysis of expert and mass discourse concerning the guillotine as a regime’s crucial symbolic representation. Cultural sociological reasoning is opposed to Foucault-inspired theoretical tradition which is dominant in criminology and the sociology of punishment.