The Prison and the City: Spaces of Incarceration, Practices of Exclusion, and Public Communication

Description

This workshop aims to discuss penal prisons as a historical microcosm of urban societies and examine their contemporary re-usage. Historically, spaces of incarceration have been a part of the penal system, which meant prisons were often located near court buildings. Although peripheral within 19th century urban structures, most prisons became central locations in the 20th century. Our goal is to go beyond the narrative of disciplining established by the Foucauldian model of control – a model that presents control as an entity monopolized by the state and internalized by the inmates. Rather, this workshop will examine the prison as a space of negotiation between various actors, including not only those acting on behalf of the state (such as guards, priests, medics), but also legal actors and inmates themselves, who have agency (albeit limited) to use the prison for their own purposes. While prisons have been conceptualized as symbolic and metaphorical places that represent the state, we are more interested in the specific urban settings of these spaces of incarceration as well as the interactions and configurations between the players involved.

Period	3 Oct 2019 → 4 Oct 2019
Held at	Center for Urban History, Lviv, Ukraine, Ukraine
Degree of Recognition	International