The Curious Eclipse of Prison Ethnography in the Age
of Mass Incarceration
This article first takes the reader
inside the Los Angeles County Jail, the largest detention facility in the `Free
World', to give a ground-level sense of how the entry portal of the US
detention system operates by way of prelude to this special issue on the
ethnography of the prison. A survey of the recent sociology and anthropology of
carceral institutions shows that field studies depicting the everyday world of
inmates in America have gone into eclipse just when they were most needed on
both scientific and political grounds following the turn toward the penal
management of poverty and the correlative return of the prison to the forefront
of the societal scene. Accordingly, this issue seeks to reinvigorate and to
internationalize the ethnography of the carceral universe understood both as a
microcosm endowed with its own material and symbolic tropism and as vector of
social forces, political nexi, and cultural processes that traverse its walls.
Field researchers need to worry less about `interrupting the terms of the
debate' about the prison and more about getting inside and around penal
facilities to carry out intensive, close-up observation of the myriad relations
they contain and support. This article discusses the obstacles to such
research, including questions of access and funding, the professional
organization of academe, the lowly social and therefore scientific status of
the object of investigation, and the (mis)use of the military metaphor of
`collateral damage'. It concludes by suggesting that getting `in and out of the
belly of the beast' offers a unique vantage point from which to contribute to
the comparative ethnography of the state in the age of triumphant
neoliberalism.
Any analysis of the modern prison system has
to begin with a discussion of the various goals behind the system.
Imprisonment is generally viewed as a way to prevent crime by
incapcitating offenders and keeping them separated from other members of
society. It also serves as a means of retribution, providing a feeling
of justice for the victims of crimes committed by the incarcerated. Many
believe that prison should also provide rehabilitation for offenders,
helping them to avoid committing future crimes and encouraging prosocial
behavior.
No comments:
Post a Comment