Redistributing the Poor - Jails, Hospitals, and the Crisis of Law and Fiscal Austerity

In Redistributing the Poor, ethnographer and historical sociologist Armando Lara-Millán takes us into the day-to-day operations of running the largest hospital and jail system in the world. He shows how journalists, academics, and policy makers have drastically misunderstood the rise mental illness in jails as well as the decline of public hospitals in America. Lara-Millán offers a new way to think about how the government makes unsolvable social problems disappear on paper and perpetuates an endless cycle of social suffering.

List of contents

• Preface


• Introduction


• Part One: The Expansion of Medicine in Large Urban Jail


• Chapter 1: Summoning the Sick and Violent into Jail.


• Chapter 2: The Medicalization of the Los Angeles County Jail System


• Part Two: The Restriction of Medicine in Large Public Hospitals


• Chapter 3: Opioids, Observation, and Restricting Access in the Public Emergency Room


• Chapter 4: Building a Public Hospital Everyone Knows is Too Small


• Conclusion: Towards the Administrative Disappearing of Social Suffering.


• Appendix: Historically Embedded Ethnography.


• References


• Endnotes

About the author

Armando Lara-Millán is Assistant Professor of Sociology at University of California, Berkeley. He is an ethnographer and historical sociologist. He studies how powerful organizations generate truths and rationalize problems, shaping the life fortunes of large numbers of people. He has undertaken studies in a wide range of contexts, including law, medicine, criminal justice, economic pricing, and urban poverty governance. His work has appeared in the American Sociological Review, Criminology, and in the volume The Many Hands of the State. He is also the recipient of awards from the National Science Foundation, Law and Society Association, the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, the Ford Foundation, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and the American Sociological Association.

Additional text

There simply is not another book quite like this, making Lara-Milla´&n's work groundbreaking.

Product details

• Authors: Armando (Assistant Professor of Socio Lara-Millan, Armando Lara-Millán
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 26.08.2021
• EAN: 9780197507902
• ISBN: 978-0-19-750790-2
• No. of pages: 254
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories; Social Theory, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Economics / General, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Industries / General, Political science & theory, Political science and theory, Crime and criminology, Penology and punishment, Prisons, Health, illness and addiction: social aspects, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Discrimination, Social Discrimination, Law & society, Housing and homelessness, Hiv / Aids: Social Aspects, Law and society, sociology of law, Social discrimination and social justice, Homelessness