Shadows of the self: personhood in recent ethnographies of imprisonment

Type :

Presentation

Pages :

7 pages

Format :

.doc

Published date :

11/11/2008

Category :

Social studies

Sub category :

Psychology

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Summary :

Introduction.
1. The human individual.
2. The modern world fading into postmodern uncertainties.
3. The particular topic of imprisonment.
Michel Foucault's 'Discipline and Punish'.
1. The underlying commonality of theory between Foucault's later works.
2. Banishing the temporal infinity of a social idea.
3. Extension of Foucault's theory of imprisonment to a theory of self is justified.
Lorna Rhides' 'Total Confinement'.
1. A distinctive study of imprisonment.
2. Reviews of Rhodes' work.
3. The postmodernism of Rhodes.
4. The nature of self within Rhodes' analysis.
Harry Dammer's 'Piety in Prison'.
1. Analysis of motive.
2. The implications for public policy.
3. The common concern among prisoners with sincerity toward religion.
Conclusion.

Abstract

The human individual holds the ultimate position of importance to ethnographic research. Undeniably, no aspect of anthropological study escapes the contact of a person, whether as a subject forming a data point in the research, as an informant providing wider arrays of information and perspectives, or as an ethnographer though whose lens the final analysis must be drawn. Yet, the nature of the individual as a concept in itself lacked critical examination throughout the modern history of the social theory. From Cartesian metaphysics, to Fichte's formulation of the psychological 'I', to the plethora of early anthropological theorists, the self remained a real and definite social atom, reified as a solid foundational core in the empirical approaches of the social scientist.