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Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1367-287X
AccessType
Open Access Dissertation
Document Type
dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Program
Anthropology
Year Degree Awarded
2055
Month Degree Awarded
February
First Advisor
Jacqueline Urla
Second Advisor
Julie Hemment
Third Advisor
Jen Sandler
Fourth Advisor
Barbara Cruikshank
Subject Categories
Social and Cultural Anthropology
Abstract
This dissertation draws on ethnographic research conducted with prison abolitionists and criminal justice reform activists in Western Massachusetts - a context in which the sheriffs who operate county jails see themselves as reformers. I use the concept of a “progressive jail assemblage” to analyze the varied actors and logics that sustain incarceration locally, focusing especially on the use of care discourses and practices. I consider how progressive jailing puts prison abolitionists in the position of being against some forms of care. At the same time, abolitionists have put forth competing notions of care, ones they see as building a world in which prisons and jails would not exist. Informed by interviews with formerly incarcerated organizers who navigate this assemblage, I argue that both tendencies have the potential to reinforce the hierarchies that sustain incarceration, but they also have the potential to create openings for undoing the world as it exists.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/33160113
Recommended Citation
"The Abolition of Care: An Engaged Ethnography of the Progressive Jail Assemblage" (2023). Doctoral Dissertations. 2754.
https://doi.org/10.7275/33160113
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/2754
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.