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Journal ArticleDOI

Denuding Surveillance at the Carceral Boundary

01 Jul 2014-South Atlantic Quarterly (Duke University Press)-Vol. 113, Iss: 3, pp 447-473
About: This article is published in South Atlantic Quarterly.The article was published on 2014-07-01. It has received 13 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Boundary (topology).
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A discussion of the expansion of Latin American imprisonment, changes in the region's prison regimes and their embeddedness within wider social and economic contexts, as well as the impact of institutional histories, larger economic and political transformation processes and globally circulating penal ideas and institutional models, all of which contribute to the growing punitiveness of contemporary Latin America states and politics are presented in this article.
Abstract: Throughout the last three decades, almost all Latin American countries witnessed a dramatic growth of their inmate population that is indicative of the rebirth of the prison in the region. This article contextualizes the rebirth of the prison in contemporary Latin America in empirical and theoretical terms. To this end, it offers a discussion of the expansion of Latin American imprisonment, changes in the region’s prison regimes and their embeddedness within wider social and economic contexts, as well as of the impact of institutional histories, larger economic and political transformation processes and globally circulating penal ideas and institutional models, all of which contribute to the growing punitiveness of contemporary Latin America states and politics.

46 citations

Book ChapterDOI
TL;DR: Darke et al. as discussed by the authors explored the key features of prisons and prison life in Latin America as a whole and drew particular attention to two paradigms of globalised crime control that quite clearly have particular resonance in Latin American: those of criminal justice militarisation and, quite the opposite of rehabilitation, securitisation of the prison environment.
Abstract: This chapter is co-authored by criminologists from the United Kingdom and Brazil. The first named author is one of just a handful of Northern researchers to have familiarised themselves with Latin American prisons literature and conducted fieldwork in Latin American prisons. The second named author similarly joins a relatively small club of Latin American prison researchers to have published in English. The authors have previously collaborated in publishing two articles on Brazilian prisons (Darke 2014a; Darke and Karam 2012). Here we broaden our object of analysis and explore what we perceive to be the key features of prisons and prison life in Latin America as a whole. Alongside our more general aim to provide an overview of prisons and prison life, in this chapter we draw particular attention to two paradigms of globalised crime control that quite clearly have particular resonance in Latin America: those of criminal justice militarisation and, quite the opposite of rehabilitation, securitisation of the prison environment. In the first half of the chapter we chart the extraordinary rise in Latin American prison populations over the past two decades, as well as deteriorating prison conditions, and question the extent to which the region's prison systems continue to adhere to international human rights norms (if they had ever adhered to these norms). We turn our attention to the daily lives of prison inmates and staff in the second half of the chapter. Here our focus shifts onto the self-governing nature of Latin American prisons.

39 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors consider the transformation of the Israel-West Bank border to be a result of four major processes: reterritorialization, bureaucratization, neoliberalization, and de-humanization.
Abstract: At Israel’s new border crossings with the West Bank, modernization has become the buzz-word: not only referring to modernized mechanical means – a Wall, newly designed crossings, and micro-mechanics such as turnstiles, signs, and fences – but also to new and sophisticated scientific technologies, such as sensor machines and scanners, and to modernized means of identification, such as advanced computer systems and biometric cards. This paper considers the transformation of the Israel-West Bank border to be a result of four major processes: reterritorialization, bureaucratization, neoliberalization, and de-humanization. I utilize in-depth interviews with top military and state officials and with human rights activists as well as a series of participatory observations to explore the on-the-ground implications of the borders’ transformation.

35 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article explored how the deep interdependencies that develop between male prisoners and female visitors sustain not only these prisoners and their visitors, but also the prison system itself, drawing on ethnographic research across Guatemala's penitentiary system.
Abstract: Based largely on research completed in the North American context, scholars of prisons detail the multiple ways in which carceral practices extend beyond prison walls to transform a wide variety of spaces, ultimately assessing how carceral imaginaries inhabit the most intimate aspects of everyday life. In Latin America, this division between the inside and the outside of prison breaks down even further when read from the perspective of survival. Drawing on ethnographic research across Guatemala's penitentiary system, this article explores how the deep interdependencies that develop between male prisoners and female visitors sustain not just these prisoners and their visitors but also the prison system itself.

13 citations

References
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Book
18 Apr 2012
TL;DR: Foucault shows the development of the Western system of prisons, police organizations, administrative and legal hierarchies for social control and the growth of disciplinary society as a whole as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In the Middle Ages there were gaols and dungeons, but punishment was for the most part a spectacle. The economic changes and growing popular dissent of the 18th century made necessary a more systematic control over the individual members of society, and this in effect meant a change from punishment, which chastised the body, to reform, which touched the soul. Foucault shows the development of the Western system of prisons, police organizations, administrative and legal hierarchies for social control - and the growth of disciplinary society as a whole. He also reveals that between school, factories, barracks and hospitals all share a common organization, in which it is possible to control the use of an individual's time and space hour by hour.

11,379 citations

Book
01 Jan 1998
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present the logic of sovereignty and the paradox of sovereignty in the form of the human sacer and the notion of potentiality and potentiality-and-law.
Abstract: Introduction Part I. The Logic of Sovereignty: 1. The paradox of sovereignty 2. 'Nomos Basileus' 3. Potentiality and law 4. Form of law Threshold Part II. Homo Sacer: 1. Homo sacer 2. The ambivalence of the sacred 3. Sacred life 4. 'Vitae Necisque Potestas' 5. Sovereign body and sacred body 6. The ban and the wolf Threshold Part III. The Camp as Biopolitical Paradigm of the Modern: 1. The politicization of life 2. Biopolitics and the rights of man 3. Life that does not deserve to live 4. 'Politics, or giving form to the life of a people' 5. VP 6. Politicizing death 7. The camp as the 'Nomos' of the modern Threshold Bibliography Index of names.

7,589 citations

Book
01 Jan 2002
TL;DR: The idea of a public is one of the central fictions of modern life as mentioned in this paper, and it has powerful implications for how our social world takes shape, and much of modern lives involves struggles over the nature of publics and their interrelations.
Abstract: Most of the people around us belong to our world not directly, as kin or comrades, but as strangers. How do we recognize them as members of our world? We are related to them as transient participants in common publics. Indeed, most of us would find it nearly impossible to imagine a social world without publics. In the eight essays in this book, Michael Warner addresses the question: What is a public?According to Warner, the idea of a public is one of the central fictions of modern life. Publics have powerful implications for how our social world takes shape, and much of modern life involves struggles over the nature of publics and their interrelations. The idea of a public contains ambiguities, even contradictions. As it is extended to new contexts, politics, and media, its meaning changes in ways that can be difficult to uncover.Combining historical analysis, theoretical reflection, and extensive case studies, Warner shows how the idea of a public can reframe our understanding of contemporary literary works and politics and of our social world in general. In particular, he applies the idea of a public to the junction of two intellectual traditions: public-sphere theory and queer theory.

2,365 citations

Book
30 Aug 1988
TL;DR: Schmitt as mentioned in this paper argued that the essence of sovereignty lies in the absolute authority to decide when the normal conditions presupposed by the legal order obtain, and that every legal order ultimately rests not upon norms, but rather on the decisions of the sovereign.
Abstract: Written in the intense political and intellectual ferment of the early years of the Weimar Republic, "Political Theology" develops the distinctive theory of sovereignty that marks Carl Schmitt as one of the most significant political and legal theoreticians of the 20th century.Focusing on the relationship between political leadership, the norms of the legal order, and the state of political emergency, Schmitt argues that the essence of sovereignty lies in the absolute authority to decide when the normal conditions presupposed by the legal order obtain. Because the norms of a legal system cannot govern a state of emergency, they cannot determine when such an exceptional state holds or what should be done to resolve it. Thus every legal order ultimately rests not upon norms, but rather on the decisions of the sovereign.Schmitt underpins this analysis of sovereignty and its commitment to the priority of decisions over norms with a "political theology," which argues that all the important concepts of modern political thought are secularized theological concepts, and a sociology of the concept of sovereignty, which argues that the conceptualization of the jurisprudence of an epoch is linked to the conceptualization of its social structure.He concludes with an attack on liberalism and its attempt to depoliticize political thought by avoiding fundamental moral and political decisions.Schmitt's unerring sense for the fundamental problems of modern politics and his systematic critique of the ideals and institutions of liberal democracy, a critique that has never been answered, distinguish him as one of the most original figures in the theory of modern politics. "Political Theology" is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy.

2,215 citations