Liminality revisited: Mapping the emotional adaptations of women in carceral space
| Author | Ben Laws,Yvonne Jewkes |
| Published date | 01 July 2021 |
| Date | 01 July 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1462474520959623 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Liminality revisited:
Mapping the emotional
adaptations of women
in carceral space
Yvonne Jewkes
University of Bath, UK
Ben Laws
University of Cambridge, UK
Abstract
This article draws on interview data with women in two prisons in the UK to understand
the emotionally nuanced and sensorially attuned relationship between confined individ-
uals and carceral space. The article presents an ‘emotional map’ comprising: (i) living or
‘being’ spaces; (ii) free places; and (iii) ‘therapeutic spaces’ in prisons.This tri-spatial the-
matic analysis enables us to use Victor Turner’s concepts of ‘liminality’ and ‘communitas’
to uncover the complex,contradictory and sometimes transientemotions that permeate
spaces in prison. This in turn allows us to explore the particular challenges that accom-
pany transitional periods of adjustment to prison life, the environmental constraints that
women in prison live with and navigate, and the careful ‘spatial selection’ strategies they
implement in order to seek or avoid particular emotional states.
Keywords
communitas, emotions, environment, liminality, prisons, senses, space, women
Introduction
This article is about the intersections of space and emotion in prison. Although not
the focus of prison scholarship until very recently when researchers in criminology
and carceral geography prompted a ‘spatial turn’ in qualitative studies of
Corresponding author:
Yvonne Jewkes, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY, UK.
Email: yj629@bath.ac.uk
Punishment & Society
2021, Vol. 23(3) 394–412
!The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1462474520959623
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imprisonment (see Jewkes and Moran, 2017, for an overview), it is now common-
place to highlight the architectural and spatial features of incarceration, even when
the study is ostensibly about something else. We know from studies in environmen-
tal psychology that the built environment shapes our lives and identities, affects
moods and emotions, enhances or diminishes a sense of wellbeing, and gives rise to
complex and sometimes contradictory feelings, simultaneously and over time
(Goldhagen, 2017).Our purpose here is to turn this lens on women’s prisons, exam-
ining how carceral spaces intersect with and produce particular emotional states.
In her analysis of the prominent themes in the literature on women’s imprison-
ment, Liebling (2009: 20) criticizes what she describes as an ‘obsession’ with emo-
tional relationships; the emphasis almost always being on ‘women’s relationships
with each other, and how sexual and family-like they are’, rather than on themes
relevant to the prison, such as power, authority and justice (as conventionally
found in studies of men’s prisons). She rhetorically asks why there is an emphasis
in this literature on impulsiveness, manipulativeness and resistance to taking
orders, but not on the emotions of anger and defiance (Liebling, 2009: 21,19).
While we did not set out specifically to address these deficits, the themes identified
by Liebling chime with our research objectives and underpin our findings. Our aim
was to attend to the synthesis of spatial, sensory and emotional dimensions of
prison life, highlighting the profound challenges for prisoners to survive, thrive or
simply reach a tolerable state of being. In pursuing this line of enquiry, we have
extended and developed the focus of scholarly attention from themes relevant to
our participants’ status as emotional – yet emotionally limited – subjects, to agents
with a full repertoire of emotions that are pertinent to the dynamics of incarcer-
ation (Crewe et al., 2014; Laws, 2019; Laws and Crewe, 2016). The article also aims
to contribute to the nascent literature on the sensory dimensions of imprisonment
(Herrity et al., 2021), because we believe that an understanding of places of pun-
ishment and coercive control is deepened by paying due regard to the sensuous,
atmospheric and visceral dynamics between people and space.
Our analysis is framed by the premise that the prison is a space that differs –
physically, temporally and emotionally – from the world before and after the car-
ceral experience. In attempting to understand the emotionally-nuanced relationship
between individuals and space we draw on and develop Victor Turner’s (1974)
theorisation of ‘anti-structure’ and in particular his concept of ‘liminality’ – the
‘betwixt and between’ middle phase of any ritualised process, during which the
individuals involved are understood to be ‘no longer’ and simultaneously also
‘not yet’. Turner was influenced by the work of cultural anthropologist Mary
Douglas (1966) on ‘purity and danger’, and both help shed light on the ambivalent
relationship that some individuals have with places and spaces that might be deemed
by the casual observer to be unproblematically desirable, e.g. environments designed
to offer privacy or opportunities for association and sociability. However, in spaces
where a spirit of equality, homogeneity and comradeship can be fostered, the shared
experience of liminality enables participants to achieve an acute state of community
– ‘communitas’ (Turner, 1969). Douglas and Turner both argued that all social
Jewkes and Laws 395
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