Kurzbeschreibung

The research on the unprecedented global growth of the prison population and the theoretical suggestion of the rise of a Penal State as cause and effect of this phenomenon presents unanswered questions about the form the Penal State takes in different regions and how gender articulates the relation between it and its subjects. Two lacunas can be identified in these debates: the first one relates to the particularities of the Latin American case and how these influence the manifestations of the Penal State in different countries of the region from an empirical perspective. The second is related to the research on women’s experiences with the punitive face of the Penal State, with the prison as its main governance institution. Based on these two lacunas, the research poses the following question as a starting point: How does the penal state operate in the Mexican women’s prison and what subjects are (re)produced through the exercise of disciplinary power? It argues that the study of the mundane daily interactions of incarcerated women with the state’s disciplinary power can contribute to the development of an ethnography of the state from the margins. The research utilizes the case of the Centro de Reinserción Femenil (CRF) of Puente Grande in Jalisco, Mexico, the second biggest female confinement institution in the country. The dissertation presents the hypothesis that the disciplinary and punitive techniques used in the female prison are highly informed by gendered notions for the (re)production of ‘rehabilitated’ subjects. These notions (re)produce in the incarcerated women a subordination not only based on gender but also on the other categories with which gender intersects to create new axis of exclusion and inequality. Through ethnographic participant observation and interviews with the inmates’, the research focuses on the daily interactions of incarcerated women with the disciplinary State power in the prison. It concludes that the Penal State operates in the women’s prison through punitive techniques that rely on informality and gender meanings to achieve a discipline that solidifies state power over the bodies confined in the institution. Through the mundane interactions of incarcerated women with the state’s disciplinary power, the female prison not only governs and manages this population sector that is located a priori in advanced marginality, but it constructs that marginality in a systematic manner. This happens through the (re)production of incarcerated women as subordinated subjects in terms of gender and the categories with which gender combines to create new exclusion axis (that include class, ethnicity, educational level, sexual preference and place of origin, among others). This subordination permeates all of the inmates’ interactions with the State and its representatives and places the women in a disadvantageous and vulnerable position even in relation to their male incarcerated counterparts.

Projektdetails

Projektart

Dissertation

Fachgruppe

Rechts-, Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften

Fachliche Zuordnung

Politikwissenschaft

Fachliche Zuordnung 2

Gender Studies

Beginn

2011

Ende

2016

Finanzierung

DAAD-CONACYT (Mexiko)

Einrichtung

Fachbereich/Zentralinstitut

Lateinamerika-Institut

Fachgebiet/Arbeitsbereich

Politikwissenschaft

Projektteam

Leitung

Dr. Jennifer Chan de Avila

Schlagwörter

Gender; Gender Studies; Prison; Mexico; Latin America; Women; Penal State; Mass Incarceration; Body Studies

Publikationen

https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/1067

Forschende

• Dr. Jennifer Chan de Avila

  Ehemalig