The politics of conceptualizing the carceral

This article responds to the call for debate opened by Moran et al.’s ‘Conceptualizing the Carceral in Carceral Geography,’ arguing that how geographers define the carceral has political implications for the work produced in this growing sub-field. While Moran et al. propose detriment, intent, and s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Progress in human geography 2018-10, Vol.42 (5), p.799-802
Main Authors: Hamlin, Madeleine, Speer, Jessie
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Concept formation
Foucauldian analysis
Geographers
Geography
Human geography
Imprisonment
Political analysis
Politics
Risk factors
Surveillance
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Summary:This article responds to the call for debate opened by Moran et al.’s ‘Conceptualizing the Carceral in Carceral Geography,’ arguing that how geographers define the carceral has political implications for the work produced in this growing sub-field. While Moran et al. propose detriment, intent, and spatiality as three conditions of carcerality, this commentary instead suggests that geographers adopt Foucault’s metaphor of the carceral continuum as one way to conceptualize how carcerality is enacted across a range of intensities and sites, while avoiding strict typological categorizations of particular spaces. In advocating this more flexible approach, this article emphasizes that geographers must always attend to who is imprisoned, by whom, and to what ends. Failing to consider such structural factors risks de-politicizing geographical analyses of incarceration.
ISSN:0309-1325
1477-0288
DOI:10.1177/0309132517716997