8: Prisons Pt. 3 Flashcards
- total institutions
place of residence and work where a large number of like-situated individuals, cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time, lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life
structural tensions within a total institution
breakdown of the barriers ordinarily separating three primary spheres of life - work, sleep and play
bureaucratic organisation overseeing many lives
- overarching power responsible for fulfilling their needs
surveillance and conformity
- deviance under conditions of surveillance is much more likely to stand out and be corrected
social distance between the two groups inhabiting the institution
- important to maintain greater control over the institution as a whole
incompatibilities with outside society
- self
sociological vision/structure of the self
no stable core/essence but called into existence in different situations
identity and roles shifting but social situations with constant regularity
Goffman’s interest in the self
how social identities are projected onto bodies
particular types of meaning you and broader society attributes or projects onto various aspects of the body as a core component of yourself
- mortification of the self
destruction of the inmate’s former social identity and concomitant creation of a new social identity (the inmate) and induction into a new social community (the institution)
result of deliberate policies on the side of the administration put towards the end of forging this new person’s identity as an inmate
not dehumanisation but depersonification
- forced into the role of inmate identity as our sole encompassing identity
presenting culture/home world
way of life and being in relation to social situations development in life prior to the institution
institution takes it away from you or disconnects you physically/psychologically from the presenting culture/home world
- disculturation
forcible acclimation to life in a total institution and loss of aspects of presenting culture/home world
more challenging to re-acclimate to life outside the institution if you leave
- role dispossession
being deprived of the social status that one had in the outside world
only role you have is being an inmate, like every other inmate in the institution
- civil death
loss of basic civil rights (voting, parenting)
denied fundamental legal rights associated with being a citizen
trimming/programming
ignoring an inmate’s previous basis of self-identification and imposing an identification of inmate onto them
how inmates are shaped/coded into an object that can be fed into the administrative machinery of the establishment
substitute possessions
personal possession taken away from inmates who are given substitute possessions marked as belonging to the institution
identity kit/decoration specialists
tools/people who modify one’s appearance so that one can project a particular image to the world
all the objects you carry, clothes you wear, people you go to to change your physical appearance which are cut off by the institution
forced deference patterns
patterns of behaviour that inmates are forced to do which exhibit deference to prison guards/administrators under the threat of punishment
in order to establish power hierarchies
- territories of the self
objects of self-feeling like one’s body, immediate actions, thoughts and possessions
things you define as being part of who you are
- violations of these territories of the self to facilitate processes of mortification of the self
contamination of how you conceptualise yourself
- contaminative exposure of the self
ways that the integrity’s of one sense of self, as distinct from others can be violated physically/relationally
not just obvious violations like sexual assault but inter-personal and relational violations like being forced into regular contact with somebody you wouldn’t normally see outside the institution
- contaminates how you otherwise construct your self-identity on the outside
