Doing Indefinite Time
An Ethnography of Long-Term Imprisonment in Switzerland
Buch in deiner Nähe kaufen
Beschreibung
This open access book provides insights into the everyday lives of long-term prisoners in Switzerland who are labelled as ‘dangerous’ and are preventatively held in indefinite, probably lifelong, incarceration. It explores prisoners’ manifold ways of inhabiting the prison which can be used to challenge well established notions about the experience of imprisonment, such as ‘adaptation’, ‘coping’, and ‘resistance’. Drawing on ethnographic data generated in two high-security prisons housing male offenders, this book explores how the various spaces of the prison affect prisoners’ sense of self and experience of time, and how, in particular, the indeterminate nature of their imprisonment affects their perceptions of place and space.
It sheds light on prisoners’ subjective, emplaced and embodied perceptions of the prisons' various everyday time-spaces in the cell, at work, and during leisure time, and the forms of agency they express. It provides insight into prisoners’ everyday habits, practices, routines, and rhythms as well as the profoundly existential issues that are engendered, (re)arranged, and anchored in these everyday contexts. It also offers insights into the penal policies, norms, and practices developed and followed by prison authorities and staff.
Irene Marti is a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute for Penal Law and Criminology at the University of Bern and at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology at the University of Basel, Switzerland. Since 2013, she has been a member of the Prison Research Group at the University of Bern.
This open access book provides insights into the everyday lives of long-term prisoners in Switzerland who are labelled as ‘dangerous’ and are preventatively held in indefinite, probably lifelong, incarceration. It explores prisoners’ manifold ways of inhabiting the prison which can be used to challenge well established notions about the experience of imprisonment, such as ‘adaptation’, ‘coping’, and ‘resistance’. Drawing on ethnographic data generated in two high-security prisons housing male offenders, this book explores how the various spaces of the prison affect prisoners’ sense of self and experience of time, and how, in particular, the indeterminate nature of their imprisonment affects their perceptions of place and space.
It sheds light on prisoners’ subjective, emplaced and embodied perceptions of the prisons' various everyday time-spaces in the cell, at work, and during leisure time, and the forms of agency they express. It provides insight into prisoners’ everyday habits, practices, routines, and rhythms as well as the profoundly existential issues that are engendered, (re)arranged, and anchored in these everyday contexts. It also offers insights into the penal policies, norms, and practices developed and followed by prison authorities and staff.
This book is open access which means that you have free and unlimited access Explores long-term imprisonment in Switzerland and expands the field which mainly focusses on the US and UK Offers a wide range of methodological suggestions including gaining access to the field Critically discusses understandings of imprisonment
Autor*in
Irene Marti
Themen in »Doing Indefinite Time«
Carceral Geography prison incarceration life sentence imprisonment rehabilitation ethnography forensic psychology prison cell prison sociology Open Access
Stimmen zu »Doing Indefinite Time«
“Irene Marti’s Doing Indefinite Time is an exemplary work of prison ethnography that demonstrates the power of grounding critical theories of penal institutions in the experiences of those most impacted by them. … Its profound and moving account of their struggles for some semblance of an ordinary life within the prison illuminates the value of her methodological and theoretical approach, and will hopefully inspire similar research in other contexts.” (Jason Danely, Royal Geographical Society, carceralgeographies.co.uk, October, 2025)
()