Acessibilidade / Reportar erro

Corporeal boundaries and carceral embodiments

Abstract

This paper compares materials drawn from fieldwork in a prison before and after the rise of concentrated incarceration that tightly interlocked it with a handful of urban neighborhoods. As these worlds became continuous, former intra-prison boundaries collapsed, entailing changes that included corporeal and sensorial aspects of prison experience. The imprisoned body is described not as a bounded object of disciplinary power but as constituted first and foremost by social and moral relations, rendering bodily experiences of confinement highly contextual. A comparison between forms more and less shaped by a particular prison-urban relation suggests that these experiences vary according to prison-specific circumstances, but also to social-specific circumstances.

Prison; Embodiment; Body; Senses

Departamento de Sociologia da Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas da Universidade de São Paulo Av. Prof. Luciano Gualberto, 315, 05508-010, São Paulo - SP, Brasil - São Paulo - SP - Brazil
E-mail: temposoc@edu.usp.br