Themed Issue Launch: The moral and ethical worlds of coercive confinement

Join us for a discussion on the moral and ethical lives of people in coercive confinement. This event will feature contributors to the themed issue published in Incarceration (Sage Journals).

Morality is everywhere and nowhere in studies of coercive confinement. Sometimes a form of capital ‘M’ Morality is imposed on those who inhabit these institutions. For many politicians and members of the public, prisons – the confining institution par excellence – are where law-breakers and bad people go, and where (perhaps) they are made good. Morality has taken on another meaning in studies of confinement, though. Early sociological work on prisons has described a so-called prisoner code, a system of oppositional and subcultural rules and norms which are described as ways of compensating for what is painful about imprisonment. Other work on life in institutions has hinted at this small ‘m’ morality, implying values which are highly localized and respond to the needs and histories of the moment.

In a recent themed issue in Incarceration, an international and diverse group of scholars build on this work and explore how studying questions of ethics and morality can enhance our understanding of these institutions and the lives of people within them. The studies cover a range of geographical regions (India, Central America, the United States, Europe and the United Kingdom) and contexts of confinement (prisons, nursing homes and post-release community settings). Drawing on a range of existing work in anthropology and sociology which aims to study ethics empirically, they ask questions like: What does a good life in these institutions look like? How do political and institutional discourses and understandings of morality shape how people live within them? What are their lasting effects on people’s ethical experiences?

In this hour long launch of the themed issue, editors Ryan Williams (University of Queensland, Australia) and Alice Ievins (University of Liverpool, UK) will outline what the empirical study of ethics involves and why they think it is a useful approach for scholars of coercive confinement (drawing on their prologue to the themed issue). We will then hear from the contributors:

·       Julie Laursen and Kristian Mjåland, The absent-presence of the offence in prisons in Norway and England & Wales

·       Jago Wyssling, Fragmented personhood: Ethical subjects with dementia in a Swiss nursing home

·       Anna Jordan, “I’m not allowed to express anything”: (Re)entry and ethical confinement in the shadow of California prisons

·       Julienne Weegels, Between state theatres and prisoner performances of change: Nicaragua's contested moral politics of incarceration

·       Ryan Williams, Prisoner morality beyond the inmate code? Being a working-class Muslim stuck in an English high-security prison

·       Maitreyi Misra and Zeba Sikora, Living on Death Row in India: The Many Becomings (in press)

·       Alison Liebling, Epilogue: Moral and ethical worlds of coercive confinement

*this event is free but please register for online link