Resistance or friction: Understanding the significance of prisoners’ secondary adjustments
| Author | Ashley T Rubin |
| Published date | 01 February 2015 |
| Date | 01 February 2015 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1362480614543320 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Theoretical Criminology
2015, Vol. 19(1) 23 –42
© The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480614543320
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Resistance or friction:
Understanding the significance
of prisoners’ secondary
adjustments
Ashley T Rubin
Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA
Abstract
Scholars examining prisoners’ “secondary adjustments” have often emphasized prisoners’
“resistance” to the prison regime, particularly their agentic acts that frustrate the prison’s
rules, goals, or functions. While these agency-centered accounts offer an important
corrective to the understanding of prisons as totalizing institutions, they may go too
far. I argue that scholars have overused (and misused) the term “resistance” to describe
certain prisoner behaviors, creating both analytical and normative consequences. Instead,
I suggest the concept of “friction” more accurately describes the reactive behaviors that
occur when people find themselves in highly controlled environments.
Keywords
Agency, history, prison, prisoners, resistance
Introduction
Scholars have long examined prisoners’ “secondary adjustments” (Goffman, 1961).
These secondary adjustments include behaviors that violate the prison regime’s rules or
expectations or, though technically consistent with the rules, frustrate its ultimate goals.
At the most overt and extraordinary level, we find violence, escape, and riot (Carrabine,
2004; Sparks et al., 1996). At the more covert and quotidian level, we find the formation
of a prisoner culture complete with a common normative code and distinct “argot” roles
Corresponding author:
Ashley T Rubin, Florida State University, 112 S. Copeland St., Tallahassee, Florida 32306, USA.
Email: arubin@fsu.edu
543320TCR0010.1177/1362480614543320Theoretical CriminologyRubin
research-article2014
Article
24 Theoretical Criminology 19(1)
(Clemmer, 1940; Sykes, 1958). Both kinds represent prisoners exercising free will in
ways that are contrary to the prison regime’s demands or expectations.
Highlighting the role of prisoner agency, scholars often mobilize prisoners’ secondary
adjustments to challenge earlier accounts of prisoners as mere “docile” subjects (Foucault,
1977: 135–169). These acts also contradict the image of (especially 19th-century) pris-
ons as sites of “unparalleled control over the offender” (Ignatieff, 1978: 90). While some
scholars have examined collective acts of political resistance (McLennan, 2008; Reiter,
forthcoming), most scholars have highlighted acts of everyday “resistance” in which
prisoners challenge the prison regime’s personnel, rules, values, or power. This literature
often draws on the postmodernist literature emphasizing agency over structure, and the
hidden or coded ways in which the oppressed challenge their oppressors’ power
(Comaroff, 1985; Hebdige, 1979; Scott, 1985, 1992). One thread of this research exam-
ines non-cooperation, disobedience, quiet subversion, or passive resistance (Crewe,
2007; Lichtenstein, 1996; Newman and Smith, 2012). Another thread examines how
prisoners adopt or express identities that oppose hegemonic ideals or norms supported by
the prison regime (Bosworth, 1999; Bosworth and Carrabine, 2001). In the process,
scholars have labeled a wide swath of prisoners’ secondary adjustments “resistance”.
While these agency-centered accounts correct the understanding of prisons as total-
izing institutions in which prisoners are mere automatons, they may go too far. I argue
that scholars have overused (and misused) the label “resistance”. The term “resistance”
implies consciously disruptive, intentionally political actions. Much behavior labeled
resistance does not fit this description, given the evidence presented. After outlining both
normative and analytical problems with such labeling, I offer the concept of “friction”
(Digeser, 1992: 995) to describe most reactive behaviors that occur when people find
themselves in highly controlled environments.
Drawing on archival data from Eastern State Penitentiary (1829–1875), I discuss
three episodes of prisoner activity that would normally be construed as resistance.
Instead, these episodes illustrate three characteristics of friction as I define it. First, these
frictional activities are normal human behaviors that happen to take place in prison.
Second, these activities apparently respond to prisoners’ social and physical needs and
desires rather than to their understanding of autonomy, rights, or justice. Third, these
activities are largely apolitical and do not intentionally challenge the prison regime. I
close by suggesting criteria scholars may use for distinguishing resistance from the more
general class of friction. In the end, my goal is to continue “to move beyond simple meta-
phors which involve binary oppositions” (Carrabine, 2004: 126) and instead locate pris-
oner behavior on a continuum. Ultimately, this article suggests that scholars’ attention to
prisoner behavior is not misplaced (far from it), but that some behaviors have been
placed at the wrong end of this continuum.
The case for friction
The utility of agency-centric accounts
For the last several decades, scholars have increasingly examined subordinated peoples’
“everyday acts of resistance” or “microresistance” (Comaroff, 1985; Hebdige, 1979;
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