The Consent of the Punished: A Gramscian Revisit of an American Prison Ethnography

Speaker: Michael Gibson-Light from the University of Denver, USA
Chaired by Richard Sparks, University of Edinburgh, SCCJR

Chapters:
00:00 Welcome from Richard Sparks
01:00 Introduction from Michael Gibson-Light
02:30 Antonio Gramsci and The Prison Notebooks
08:52 Towards a Gramscian Theory of Penal Punishment, Labor and Control
11:50 Michael's book, 'Orange Collar Labor: Work and Inequality in Prison
13:27 Good prison jobs and bad prison jobs
17:38 Those who govern: institutional powers
25:01 Those governed: the punished
30:00 Concluding thoughts

Abstract:

To function and persist in its current form, the carceral status quo depends not only on the consent of the governed, but also the consent of the punished. Yet, while processes of consent are multi-faceted and integral to contemporary penality, they remain under-theorized in punishment scholarship, particularly in U.S. penal labor contexts.

This talk outlines a typology of consent processes both external and internal to the prison to advance a Gramscian theory of punishment. It explores how the actions and outlooks of the dominant and dominated—amongst the incarcerated and the free—coalesce to generate carceral hegemony across numerous levels.

In particular, the talk focuses on applying this framework in an interpretive revisit of previous ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a medium security U.S. prison. Reinterpreting prior scholarship (which has been most thoroughly examined in the book Orange-Collar Labor: Work and Inequality in Prison) through a Gramscian lens reveals how acquiescence to punitive excess unfolds on the ground in a U.S. prison.

Bio:
Michael Gibson-Light is an Associate Professor of Sociology & Criminology at the University of Denver. Through his research, he investigates the obscured experiences and struggles of working American prisoners through ethnographic observations, interviews, and historical and archival analyses. He also engages with local and national advocacy groups to help improve prison policy.

This workshop is part of the Social Penalities Across Boundaries series which is organised by Professor Richard Sparks, University of Edinburgh, and Professor Máximo Sozzo, Universidad Nacional del Litoral in Argentina (UNL).