Read more
Embodying Punishment offers a theoretical and empirical exploration of women's lived experiences of imprisonment in England. It puts forward a feminist critique of the prison, arguing that prisoner bodies are central to our understanding of modern punishment, and particularly of women's survival and resistance during and after prison. Drawing on a feminist phenomenological framework informed by a serious engagement with scholars such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Simone de Beauvoir, Erwin Goffman, Michel Foucault, Sandra Lee Bartky and Tori Moi, Embodying Punishment revisits and expands the literature on the pains of imprisonment, and offers an interdisciplinary examination of the embodiment and identities of prisoners and former prisoners, pressing the need for a body-aware approach to criminology and penology. The book develops this argument through a qualitative study with prisoners and former prisoners, discussing themes such as: the perception of the prison through time, space, smells and sounds; the change of prisoner bodies; the presentation of self in and after prison, including the centrality of appearance and prison dress in the management of prisoner and ex-prisoner identities; and a range of coping strategies adopted during and after imprisonment, including prison food, drug misuse, and a case study on women's self-injuring practices. Embodying Punishment brings to the fore and critically analyses longstanding and urgent problems surrounding women's multifaceted oppression through imprisonment, including matters of discriminatory and gendered treatment as well as issues around penal harm, and argues for an experientially grounded critique of punishment.
About the author
Anastasia Chamberlen is Assistant Professor in Sociology at the University of Warwick. She obtained a Ph.D from
King's College London, a MPhil in Criminology from Cambridge University and a BA (Hons) in
History and Sociology from the University of Warwick.
She was the recipient of the 2017 Women Crime and Criminal Justice Article Prize of the British Society of Criminology, for her article 'Embodying Prison Pain: Women's Experiences of Self-Injury and the Emotions of Punishment', published at Theoretical Criminology.
Summary
Embodying Punishment offers a theoretical and empirical exploration of women's lived experiences of imprisonment in England. It puts forward a feminist critique of the prison, arguing that prisoner bodies are central to our understanding of modern punishment, and particularly of women's survival and resistance during and after prison. Drawing on a feminist phenomenological framework informed by a serious engagement with scholars such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Simone de Beauvoir, Erwin Goffman, Michel Foucault, Sandra Lee Bartky and Tori Moi, Embodying Punishment revisits and expands the literature on the pains of imprisonment, and offers an interdisciplinary examination of the embodiment and identities of prisoners and former prisoners, pressing the need for a body-aware approach to criminology and penology. The book develops this argument through a qualitative study with prisoners and former prisoners, discussing themes such as: the perception of the prison through time, space, smells and sounds; the change of prisoner bodies; the presentation of self in and after prison, including the centrality of appearance and prison dress in the management of prisoner and ex-prisoner identities; and a range of coping strategies adopted during and after imprisonment, including prison food, drug misuse, and a case study on women's self-injuring practices. Embodying Punishment brings to the fore and critically analyses longstanding and urgent problems surrounding women's multifaceted oppression through imprisonment, including matters of discriminatory and gendered treatment as well as issues around penal harm, and argues for an experientially grounded critique of punishment.
Foreword
Winner of the British Society of Criminology 2019 Book Prize
Additional text
In this original and engaging book, Chamberlen reinvigorates theoretical accounts of the prison. Explicitly feminist in its approach, it asks new and exciting questions about women's experiences of incarceration, combining qualitative interviews with complex theoretical concepts. In its emphasis on embodiment it offers new insights about familiar issues of agency, resistance and the pains of imprisonment. The result is an emotionally moving and intellectually inspiring intervention into the field of prison studies that will be of interest to a wide range of readers.
Report
Chamberlen's book is an important and compelling scholarly intervention which evocatively captures the embodied pains of imprisonment in a way which envelops both new theoretical ideas from outside criminology and rigorous empirical research.
Dr Coretta Philips, Associate Professor, Mannheim Centre for the Study of Criminology and Criminal Justice, London School of Economics
