PhD Supervisor: Patricia Spyer
Funding Organisation: Swiss National Science Foundation, Doc.CH scheme
Timeline: March 2022–August 2024
Keywords: Incarceration; Prisoners’ families; Global South; India; Prison writings and art

OBJECTIVE

In spite of the violent separation imposed by incarceration, many incarcerated persons, their families and other meaningful social connections from outside the prison find creative ways to collaborate and mutually constitute social life. The overarching objective of my research project is to produce an ethnographic account of how sociality is produced between incarcerated persons inside the prison and the world outside. 

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

By examining the case of Indian prisons, this research further asks: In what ways does the sociality across the prison boundary shape the experience of incarceration for the incarcerated persons, and for their families and loved ones? How does the porousness in the prison boundary facilitate social life? In what ways do visual and material aspects of carceral life enable and mediate sociality across the prison boundary?

METHODOLOGY

I will conduct ethnographic fieldwork at two locations: at an open prison in Jaipur, Rajasthan (6 months) and at the peri-carceral spaces in and around the Tihar Jail complex in Delhi (5 months). The main methods for data collection during these two periods of fieldwork will include participant observation and personal interviews. I will also conduct 15–20 interviews with formerly incarcerated persons and their families (2 months). Other forms of multi-modal methods for data collection will include video and audio recordings, images, textual data from diverse prison writings, prison art, digital ethnography of online activities on decarceration, and ethnographic observation focusing on visuality and materiality in and around my field sites. Through these methods, I intend to capture the flows of the visuality and materiality across carceral boundaries, as they contribute to the production of social life for those incarcerated, and for their loved ones outside.