Calories, commerce, and culture: The multiple valuations of food in prison
Published date | 01 July 2023 |
DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221097367 |
Author | Collins Ifeonu,Kevin D. Haggerty,Sandra M. Bucerius |
Date | 01 July 2023 |
Calories, commerce, and
culture: The multiple
valuations of food in prison
Collins Ifeonu, Kevin D. Haggerty ,
and Sandra M. Bucerius
University of Alberta, Canada
Abstract
In the last two decades, a body of critical scholarship has emerged accentuating the
social and cultural importance of food in prison. This article employs a tripartite concep-
tual framework for contemplating and demarcating food’s different valuations in prison.
We draw from our interviews with over 500 incarcerated individuals to demonstrate
how acquiring, trading, and preparing food is inscribed with use, exchange, and sign
values. In doing so, we provide illustrative examples of how food informs processes
of stratification, distinction, and violence in prison.
Keywords
food, prison, value, culture, commerce, violence, Baudrillard, DeCerteau
Food, air, and water are the mainstays of human existence. Of these three, food is a par-
ticularly productive object of sociological analysis (see, e.g. Beardsworth and Keil, 2002;
Johnston and Baumann, 2014; Poulain, 2017). Food provides sustenance but is also sym-
bolically rich. How food is produced, exchanged, and consumed informs all these attri-
butes. For social scientists, attending to the dynamics of food in the distinctive
environment of prison serves as an entrée for understanding important material, economic
and cultural aspects conditioning the lived reality of incarceration.
Traditionally, criminologists have not paid much attention to food in prison. Only in
the past decade or so have a small group of scholars produced a series of critical inquiries
Corresponding author:
Kevin D. Haggerty, Sociology, University of Alberta, HM Tory Building, Edmonton, AB T6G 2R3, Canada.
Email: kevin.haggerty@ualberta.ca
Article
Punishment & Society
2023, Vol. 25(3) 665–682
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/14624745221097367
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into the place and politics of food among incarcerated individuals. Many of these works
frame the practices surrounding food as means for incarcerated individuals to resist
oppressive prison conditions and fashion distinctive identities (see, e.g. Earle and
Phillips, 2012; Einat and Davidian, 2019; Gibson-Light, 2018; Smoyer, 2015, 2019;
Smoyer and Lopes, 2017; Ugelvik, 2011; Valentine and Longstaff, 1998).
These studies have illustrated how, in an environment characterized by extreme mater-
ial deprivation (Sykes, 1958), the acquisition, preparation, and consumption of food
becomes particularly important (Valentine and Longstaff, 1998). That said, there is
much we do not know about the local particularities of what food means in different
prison settings and how those factors shape the lived experience of individuals detained
in those institutions.
After summarizing some of the key research findings in this area, we use Baudrillard’s
(2019 [1976]) tripartite model of consumer commodification as a conceptual framework
to demonstrate how the acquisition, consumption and improvised preparation of food is
inscribed with use, exchange, and symbolic value. The body of this article provides an
illustrative application of this framework by drawing upon interviews conducted with
approximately 500 incarcerated individuals in Western Canada to offer insights into
some of the material, social, and cultural dimensions of food in prison. In doing so we
also point to some of the gendered differences in the use and creative manipulation of
food. This article is in part a response to Gibson-Light’s recent call for more research
on how food in prison relates to ‘…processes of stratification, distinction…and violence’
(2018: 217).
Food in prison
Sykes’(1958) foundational study of a New Jersey prison highlighted a lack of access to
goods and services as one of five fundamental deprivations experienced by incarcerated
individuals. To alleviate such deprivations, incarcerated individuals often establish what
Zelizer (2010) refers to as an informal ‘circuit of commerce,’which are ‘bounded
economic spheres with shared understandings of value and money’(304). Incarcerated
individuals exchange licit and illicit products to improve their material and psychological
condition. Thus, items that in the outside community might be mundane or inconsequential
–cigarettes, bread, coffee, canned foods –can assume a disproportionate importance in
prison, where they become prized items, units of exchange, and cultural markers.
Gibson-Light’s (2018) study stands out for its explicit concern with the rising material
importance of standardized food products to incarcerated men. During his eighteen
months of fieldwork in an Arizona prison, Gibson-Light discovered that packages of
ramen noodles had replaced cigarettes as the de-facto token of exchange. On
Gibson-Light’s account, this development could not be explained by smoking bans,
declining tobacco use, or the increased price of tobacco. Instead, it reflected an emerging
‘foodways-based style of prisoner resistance’(p. 199) whereby prisoners use cheap, reli-
able canteen food products such as ramen noodles for dietary sustenance and symbolic-
ally, to regain control over consumption choices in the face of declining standards of
institutional care. According to Gibson-Light, the preference for ramen noodles
666 Punishment & Society 25(3)
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