Abstract
Sykes’ (1958) seminal work has inspired several scholars to explore the long-lasting effects and pains of imprisonment (see, for instance, Crewe, 2011; Liebling and Maruna, 2005). Sixty years after the publication of The Society of Captives, Chamberlen’s book gives voice to the punished bodies in order to comprehend the lived experience of imprisonment. This book provides a much-needed reflection on how imprisonment is experienced through the body and the effects it has on women’s lives and identities. By reflecting on the subjective understanding of women’s experiences in prisons, the author portrays punishment as an embodied and gendered experience. Indeed, the bodies are central as they ‘materially and physically sense and feel punishment’ (p. 56).
Departing from a phenomenological understanding of women’s experience of imprisonment, this book explores the role played by their bodies, emotions and identities, both theoretically and empirically. From a theoretical perspective, the author is focused on their embodied lived experience and, influenced by Merleau-Ponty (1962), approaches the body from a cultural phenomenological account. The embodiment of imprisonment is theorized inventively by going beyond criminological lenses and adopting contributions from sociology of the body. Chamberlen also highlights the need to engage with feminist criminology that is focused on the body and this is illustrated by the use of a feminist phenomenological analysis of women’s subjectivities and lived experiences in prisons. Such feminist and sociological focus allows the author to explore not only the experiences of the body but also how women are subject to a gendered prison treatment. In the words of the author: ‘[o]ur bodies are non-static, flexible entities; at the same time as they are subject to observation, measuring, judgement, labelling, regulation, and pain, they can also feel difference, experience pleasure and transformation, and enact resistance’ (p. 2). Empirically, a qualitative case study was conducted with female ex-prisoners, allowing interviews, personal conversations and brief observations, in order to understand their bodily experiences of punishment. Qualitative survey questionnaires were also distributed to serving women prisoners in order to explore how control is exercised over their bodies.
The first chapter provides a historical and contemporary contextualization of women’s experiences in prison and argues that women’s imprisonment has always been gendered and embodied. Chamberlen explores the signs of control on women’s bodies situated in prisons that have always operated within a patriarchal structure, ‘a gendered, racialized, exclusionary, and very much bodily oriented logic’ (p. 41). This is illustrated with research on histories of prison and examples of Britain’s colonies and, in her words, ‘the context of prisons today is very much affected by the ghost of these colonial histories’ (p. 36).
The second chapter starts to discuss the empirical findings and how to make sense of women’s bodily awareness and perceptions of imprisonment through senses (such as odours and sounds), both spatially and temporally. As senses play a crucial role in prison space, the sensitivity to sounds or the sense of smell illustrate different sensorial experiences and the ‘bodily feel of prison’s spatial and temporal dynamics’ (p. 79). These sensorial capacities allow us to feel the prison space and interpret the lived and embodied experience of time. The passage of time is visible on the prisoner’s body and it is a crucial element when looking at bodily change and how imprisoned bodies and corporeal identities are in perpetual change.
In the following chapter, the author considers such changing and growing bodies by addressing the ‘damaged relationship between self and body’ and its transformations during imprisonment. Bodily changes are illustrated by physiological changes (such as weight gain) that have an impact on women’s sense of health, well-being and appearance. Indeed, the body is crucial to understand lived experience as its transformations influence women’s subjectivities and body perceptions. The author explores the ambivalence between the changing body and women’s corporeal identities as ‘the prisoner is at once punished through her body and at the same time is reliant on it for survival’ (p. 101).
Chapter 4 explores the impacts of these changing bodies on the maintenance of self-identity and gendered appearance. Bodies play a fundamental role on ‘who’ we are, and, as body changes, identities are reshaped (Turner, 1984). In particular, the bodily existence has an impact on women’s subjectivity and their gendered body. From clothing to jewellery and make-up, there is an interaction between identity and appearance when discussing the experiences of these punished women. The body, as a visual representation of punitiveness, is central when considering gendered subjectivities and resistance. Indeed, the body can be an object of oppression, but it can also be used as a ‘source of gendered resistance’. The author looks at these bodily performances during visits, at the gym, canteen and hair salon to make sense of the gendered sense of identity and sense of individuality in prisons.
Chapter 5 explores how bodies not only have an impact on identity construction but also on ‘how we feel about ourselves and the world’ (p. 143). Chamberlen discusses different practices of bodily care (such as hygiene and care-taking routines) and coping strategies (such as self-distracting and self-harming) in and out of prison. These strategies are connected to a sense of prison escape (e.g. drug use) and a sense of pleasure or self-punishment (eating and food-related rituals). These rituals in particular are central in the organization of prison life due to the symbolic and emotional value of food in the daily routine. The emotional and physical pains are expressed and visible through prisoners’ bodies and this is exemplified by the effects of the loss of appetite and unhealthy eating (i.e. comfort food) on bodily and physiological changes. Indeed, ‘the body as an event, active and reactive to its social environment, is relevant to how social actors’ embodied identities employ the body for the expression and actualization of emotions’ (p. 143).
The last chapter is more focused on self-harming practices that can be understood as self-punishment, self-healing but also as shared experience, since the prisoners are allowed ‘to experience, feel, hear, and see the inscription of the body through self-injury’ (p. 178). Women are over-represented in such practices of self-injury that emerge as coping strategies to deal with the harmful environment and communicate emotions. Again, ‘at times of emotional or physical pain, we reconceptualize our sense of being in deeply corporeal ways, feeling and living the world through our bodies’ (p. 175).
This book brilliantly calls for a more embodied perspective on punishment and emphasizes the urgent need to research imprisonment through the prisoner’s body in order to better understand gendered lived experiences in prison. In particular, this book shows that ‘prison’s “pains” are pains of the body’ (p. 187) and ‘the relationship between bodies and punishment is defined by lived experiences of physical change, ambivalent self-perceptions, gendered performances, emotional turmoil, and, on some occasions, self-harm’ (p. 186).