The Carceral State: An American Story

Abstract

This article reviews key works in the anthropology of mass incarceration, generated by anthropologists and their interlocutors whose research is directed outside physical sites of imprisonment. My geographical focus is on the United States during the last decade's political and economic Zeitgeist, shaped by the manifestations and consequences of the carceral state and the prison industrial complex. My discussion is also guided by research invigorated by anthropology's decolonizing drive and growing concern about racism within and outside the academy. Along the way, and emphasized in the final section, I make the case that anthropology's abiding interest in kinship is a productive approach for configuring our understanding of the American carceral state and the racial landscapes of carcerality. The research reviewed shows how deeply carcerality is embedded in race, illuminating its destructiveness in Black and brown communities, yet also revealing the creation of regenerative spaces of kinship.

Turning danger upside down: The prison abolition movement in the US

“…: 51) and notes that this is also commented on by many others, such as for example, Rhodes (2001), Gusterson (2007), and Fassin (2017). Khan (2022) has further demonstrated how anthropology could contribute to these studies and argues that anthropology's interest in kinship could be a productive approach to understand carcerality in the US. In this article, I similarly explore how anthropology's revived theoretical and methodological interest in social movements could be combined with the analysis by activist scholars, involved in the prison abolition movement in the US.…”

“…Now. (Davis et al 2022) revived the movement and took it from the margins to the mainstream (Kaba 2020; Davis et al 2022;Khan 2022). There was a collective expression of discontent and anger with state violence and against racial inequalities, and "abolitionists offered space for a critique that could normatively upend the criminal legal system's claim to public safety" (Kurti and Brown 2023: 2).…”

“…This seems to be one of the reasons for the growing achievements of the movement in the US (Gilmore 2022;Davis et al 2022;Kaba 2021;Alexander 2020). Still, it is only more recently that anthropologists have started showing an interest in the movement (Khan 2022). This article aims to explore, through an ethnographic example, how prison abolitionists not only in theory but in practice, situate contemporary incarceration in the context of slavery and historical struggles.…”

“…There are many similarities with the contemporary prison abolitionist activism in the US. Still, the activism takes place in different historical time periods, different geographical areas, the activists refer to very different histories, and belong to different political, socio-economic and cultural contexts.10 In the last few decades of anthropology, we have seen intense discussions on the relation between scholars, activists, and activist scholars, and further on the need to decolonise anthropology, related to epistemological and ontological questions (see, for example,Harrison 2010Harrison , 2018 McGranahan and Rizvi 2016;Kuokkanen 2008;Smith 2012;Casas-Cortés et al 2008;Khan 2022). I have had all reasons to reflect on my own role in the field.…”

Navigating the emotional terrain of prison reentry: State‐sanctioned gendered violence

“…Society fails to recognize the emotional complexity evoked by a broken system and falls back on the primary explanation available and promoted, optimism via morally infused self‐sufficiency, thus blaming individual behavior. Focusing on “the culpability of individuals and their moral responsibilities, moreover exonerates the State's role in creating and perpetuating conditions that give rise to ‘criminal acts’” (Khan, 2022, 54), ultimately failing to “dismantle social arrangements that make it impossible for some people to make a choice in the first place” (Roberts, 2017, 294). It is not just the material conditions of capitalism and mass incarceration that are harmful.…”