Deborah H Drake, Rod Earle and Jennifer Sloan (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Ethnography
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474516654099 |
| Author | Catarina Frois |
| Published date | 01 April 2018 |
| Date | 01 April 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Deborah H Drake, Rod Earle and Jennifer Sloan (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Prison
Ethnography, Palgrave Macmillan: New York, 2015; 514 pp.: 9781137403872, E197.94 (pbk),
E149.99 (ebook)
The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Ethnography is the first volume of the kind to deal
specifically with a social sciences methodology that focus on a qualitative approach
to understand, comprehend and interpret the complexity of carceral environments:
ethnography. Not being exactly new in itself – ethnography is a methodology used
by diverse social sciences – in this particular case ethnographic fieldwork is acknowl-
edged as an indispensable tool for in-depth qualitative research, and furthermore, as
expressed throughout this work, a high-quality analytical instrument. Divided in to
25 chapters distributed in four parts – Part I – ‘‘About Prison Ethnography’’; Part II
– Through Prison Ethnography, Part III – Of Prison Ethnography, Part IV – For
Prison Ethnography – the volume includes contributions from criminology, pen-
ology, sociology, anthropology, and human rights and development.
Now, as it is stated throughout this book’s different chapters doing qualitative
work in prison is, in itself, an experience that marks the researcher on different
levels. That is perhaps one of the major challenges of doing ethnography where one
cannot, as repeatedly underlined throughout the book avoid what are otherwise
common feelings like empathy, sympathy, horror, compassion, repulse, estrange-
ment regarding the subjects, the environment, the ideologies and practices we find
in the field.
The symposium that served as the leitmotiv for this book has its origin in a
polemic article by Lo
¨ic Wacquant on what he termed as the ‘‘eclipse’’ of prison
ethnography in a time when the USA was experiencing a massive incarceration
phenomenon. It is interesting to note how this very book somehow reveals the
opposite of such an assumption. In fact, there is an abundance of works on
prison in diverse world settings, showing an increased concern with this so
highly intricate subject. We cannot disregard that the geographic centrality of
most studies focusing in prison continues to prevail, – and the sample of the
authors in this volume is also a mirror of this panorama, being affiliated and/or
working in Great-Britain–, nevertheless this tendency is starting to change, as we
verify with chapters on Russia (Piacentini), India (Bandyopadhay), Uganda
(Martin), Dutch-Belgium (Beyens and Boone), Norway (Fransson and Johnsen),
South Africa (Moolman), France (Chantraine and Salle
´e), Sierra Lione (Jefferson),
Canada (Waldram)and Ghana (Ayete-Nyampong).
This is an effort which must continue to be pursued; otherwise, we may tend to
reify what was already identified as a shortcoming (also stressed by Yvonne Jewkes
in the Foreword); that is, we need to actively produce and divulge prison ethno-
graphies on contexts other than the Anglo-Saxon, even if our common language
continues to be English. Prison studies must include, compare and deepen data and
information having in mind what the Other – to use a very anthropological concept
– has to say and contribute. In this sense, this is a formative and pedagogic volume
and will certainly be highly influential in prison studies. If there is something that
everyone who has studied prisons knows, it is that if we hope to understand those
Book reviews 259
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