Below is a list of key terms and concepts that were used or referenced in the codebook and helped informed the development of these codes that we used for coding the letters which may be unfamiliar to some.
Bare Life-Concept developed by Giorgo Agamben in Homo Sacer (1998). Refers originally to Roman Law, where homo sacer was a status of a person who can be killed (without it being considered murder), and could not be used in religious acts (part. of sacrifice); In current use, refers to the collapsing of the distinction between “bare” (strictly) biological life and the way that one lives (or a life worth living) in the context of contemporary biopower & permanent ‘states of exception.’
Carceral TimeSpace-Relating to the (re)introduction of time and space within human geography, “TimeSpace” or space-time refers to theoretical approaches which, in “dealing with socially embedded space and time that emphasizes their interdependence, such that space is inextricably bound up with society’s experience of time and time consciousness” (Dodgshon 2008, pg. 12). Carceral TimeSpace refers to the ways in which time and space are experienced in confinement (for example, thinking about the ways in which the “passing of time” is spatialized in the architecture and design of the cell).
Emotional Geographies-Drawing from Crewe et al. (2014) to refer to “the zones in which certain kinds of emotional feelings an displays are more or less acceptable”; relates to an understanding of how affect and emotions are embodied, lived, and spatialized in carceral space (for example, approaching how ‘private’ vs. public life is felt under confinement; how anger, coping, stress, despair, and hope shape, and are shaped, by incarceration, etc).
Hidden Transcripts are a response to the public transcript of domination. If the public transcript entails appropriation of labor, subordination, and justification of that subordination, then the hidden transcript is the “offstage” (private) reaction.
Ideology of Choice-Concept that Lorna Rhodes uses to critique the assumption within the prison system that prisoners can exert a degree of free choice which can then used to justify why prisoners deserve their punishments.
Mortification Processes-The process, discussed by Erving Goffman, is how total institutions create tension between the culture of home and of the total institution. Unlike other institutions, total institutions do not seek to replace the inmates original culture with a fully realized institutional cultural, but instead create a cultural through the tension between the “outside” and the “inside.” This leads to the recontextualizing of the inmate’s original culture, but not the death of that culture.
Surplus Power-A method of describing the power that correctional officers often wield over inmates and how they often abuse this authority be exerting power over prisoners in even the most trivial aspects of their daily lives.
