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Changing bodies, ambivalent subjectivities and women's punishment
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Chamberlen, Anastasia (2017) Changing bodies, ambivalent subjectivities and women's punishment. Feminist Criminology, 12 (2). pp. 125-144. doi:10.1177/1557085116689134 ISSN 1557-0851.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/1557085116689134
Abstract
This article seeks to explore the punishment–body relation by looking at women’s experience of imprisonment and their embodied identities. It traces the situational construction of bodies and subjectivities, and maps changes in women’s self-perceptions and body-image in and out of prison. Through examples from a qualitative study I conducted with women who experienced punishment in England, I show that while punishment targets the prisoner’s body and often succeeds in inscribing and stigmatizing it with painful experiences and scarred identities, the prisoner maintains a sense of subjectivity and self in custody through her body. She relies on it to make sense of her lived experiences, to survive punishment and often to resist its lasting effects, and uses it to reconstruct and manage an ambivalent, embodied identity. From this perspective, I propose that the prisoner body is understood as both the object and as the subject of modern punishment.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare |
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Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Sociology | ||||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Women prisoners, Women prisoners -- Clothing, Women prisoners -- Clothing -- Social aspects, Body image in women, Sex discrimination in criminal justice administration, Reformatories for women, Female offenders -- Effect of imprisonment on, Female offenders -- Rehabilitation | ||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Feminist Criminology | ||||||||
Publisher: | Sage Publications, Inc. | ||||||||
ISSN: | 1557-0851 | ||||||||
Official Date: | 1 April 2017 | ||||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 12 | ||||||||
Number: | 2 | ||||||||
Page Range: | pp. 125-144 | ||||||||
DOI: | 10.1177/1557085116689134 | ||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 25 October 2016 | ||||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 12 May 2017 |
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