Suchergebnisse

This book explores how prisoners turn themselves into active opponents of the prison regime, and thus reclaim their freedom and manhood. Using extensive ethnographic fieldwork from Norway's largest prison, Ugelvik provides a compelling analysis of the relationship between power, practices of resistance and prisoner subjectivity. Thomas Ugelvik is an Associate Professor at UiT The Arctic University of Norway

How can adult men retain their masculinity and sense of self when they, as prisoners, are given less freedom than a child? This book shows how prisoners, through relentless creative entrepreneurship, are able to bend rules and 'fool the system', and thus reclaim their sense of both freedom and manhood. Based on extensive ethnographic field work in Norway's largest prison, Ugelvik provides a compelling analysis of the relationship between forms of power, practices of resistance and prisoner subjectivity in everyday life in prison. The book reveals how prisoners turn themselves into active opponents of the prison regime, not passive objects of state power, through various methods including spatial transformations, food related resistance and self-repositioning. It also shows how resistance practices have profound effects on prisoners' ongoing renegotiation of subjectivity within the confines of the penal institution.

According to official statistics, about half of the male prisoners in Norwegian prisons are fathers. At the same time, just over three prisoners in 10 are foreign nationals. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a Norwegian remand prison, this article will discuss some of the problems imprisoned ethnic minority fathers are facing, and detail some of the solutions they employ. I will focus particularly on two narrative problem-solving strategies. One is the promotion of parental values based on a strong (paternalistic) version of the pater familias combined with narratives about the sorry state of Norwegian parenting. The other is a form of symbolic resistance through narratives about violent revenge taken on responsible state agents. Finally, I will show how the imprisoned ethnic minority fathers reposition themselves as both real men and good fathers in the process.