Life beside Bars : Confinement and Capital in an American Prison Town - Heath Pearson

Life beside Bars

Confinement and Capital in an American Prison Town

By: Heath Pearson

Paperback | 8 November 2024

At a Glance

Paperback


RRP $66.70

$53.25

20%OFF

or 4 interest-free payments of $13.31 with

 or 

Aims to ship in 15 to 25 business days

In Life beside Bars, heath pearson showcases dynamic, interdependent community as the best hope for undoing the systems of confinement that reproduce capital in Cumberland County, New Jersey--a place that is home to three state prisons, one federal prison, and the regional jail. Pearson places today's prisons within the region's longer history of Lenape genocide, chattel slavery, Japanese American labor camps, and other forms of racialized punishment and carceral control. From this vantage, prisons appear not as the structural fix for the region's failed political economy, but as a continuation of the carceral principle that has always sustained it. This ongoing use of confinement, though, is merely the backdrop. Through ethnographic vignettes written in story form, pearson offers an alternative history of the unruly and unexpected ways that people resist, get by, make money, find joy, and build radical social life in the small, unseen spaces beside large-scale confinement. As such, pearson enriches our understanding of daily life in and around prisons--in any American community--while providing a kaleidoscope of possibilities for theorizing and organizing alternative paths.
Industry Reviews
"heath pearson's ethnographic voice is tightly attuned to the politics of living, as he deliberately rejects and excises styles and conventions of liberal humanism as a force in tight collusion with capitalism. This is a major accomplishment in and of itself, while his theorization of prisons is powerful. The wild array of stories from characters of all kinds in this carefully crafted book makes a significant point; I learned something of how people live. The effect of this book is visceral." -- Kathleen Stewart, coauthor of * The Hundreds *

More in Social & Cultural Anthropology, Ethnography

Bullshit Jobs : A Theory - David Graeber

RRP $24.99

$23.75

The Dawn of Everything : A New History of Humanity - David Graeber
Sapiens : A Brief History of Humankind - Yuval Noah Harari

RRP $27.99

$26.50

The Way We Are : Lessons from a lifetime of listening - Hugh Mackay
The Will to Change : Men, Masculinity, and Love - bell hooks
Doing Theology with Photographs - Sarah Dunlop

RRP $130.00

$97.75

25%
OFF
Doing Theology with Photographs - Sarah Dunlop

RRP $44.99

$44.50

Guns, Germs And Steel : The Fates of Human Societies - Jared Diamond
Cities Made Differently - David Graeber
The Last of the Nomads - W J Peasley

RRP $24.99

$23.75

Irving's Dialogism in the Alhambra - Mohamed Dellal

RRP $42.85

$39.95

Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence : Nungar Ser. - Doris Pilkington Garimara

RRP $22.99

$15.35

33%
OFF