Deviant Motherhood

Social Text ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-88
Author(s):  
Leyla Savloff
Keyword(s):  
Incarcerated Women ◽  
Small Children ◽  
Institutional Violence ◽  
House Arrest ◽  
State Surveillance ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Relocation Centers ◽  
Institutional Confinement ◽  
Prison Studies ◽  
A Site

This article discusses two intertwined forms of care that engage with incarcerated women in Argentina. First, it examines the consequences of a policy change that allows incarcerated women who are pregnant and/or caregivers of small children to serve their time at home. Institutional confinement extends beyond the prison and has taken various forms, such as the shelter, the asylum, relocation centers, and prison camps. Inspired by recent prison studies that disrupt the prison as a fixed and hardened site, this article contends that house arrest is far from a benefit. Rather, home confinement constitutes a site of neglect where women must fend for themselves to perform reproductive labor as a way to complete their sentence. This practice reveals new forms of social control and state surveillance in which judges, social workers, and penitentiaries determine which women are appropriate for house arrest while policing the terms of their confinement. Second, this article presents the author’s fieldwork involving a women’s collective that offers art-related workshops to encourage incarcerated women to develop a different understanding of their agency and potential. Institutions such as neighborhood and women’s collectives offer new forms of sociality that redefine imprisonment. As women under house arrest are expected to provide for themselves and their children, it is important to understand how they meet such challenges, considering how gender norms and institutional violence impact women’s lives today.

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hem Borker
Keyword(s):  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Marriage Education ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
The Media ◽  
Education And Employment ◽  
A Site ◽  
Anthropological Literature ◽  
Educational Journeys ◽  
The Ideal

This ethnography provides a theoretically informed account of the educational journeys of students in girls’ madrasas in India. It focuses on the unfolding of young women’s lives as they journey from home to madrasa and beyond. Using a series of ethnographic portraits and bringing together the analytical concepts of community, piety, and aspiration, it highlights the fluidity of the essences of the ideal pious Muslim woman. It illustrates how the madrasa becomes a site where the ideals of Islamic womanhood are negotiated in everyday life. At one level, girls value and adopt practices taught in the madrasa as essential to the practice of piety (amal). At another level, there is a more tactical aspect to cultivating one’s identity as a madrasa-educated Muslim girl. The girls invoke the virtues of safety, modesty, and piety learnt in the madrasa to reconfigure conventional social expectations around marriage, education, and employment. This becomes more apparent in the choices exercised by the girls after leaving the madrasa, highlighted in this book through narratives of madrasa alumni pursuing higher education at a central university in Delhi. The focus on journeys of girls over a period of time, in different contexts, complicates the idealized and coherent notions of piety presented by anthropological literature on women’s participation in Islamic piety projects. Further, the educational stories of girls challenge the media and public representations of madrasas in India, which tend to caricature them as outmoded religious institutions with little relevance to the educational needs of modernizing India. Mapping madrasa students’ personal journeys of becoming educated while leading pious lives allows us to see how these young women are reconfiguring notions of Islamic womanhood.

scholarly journals From Above and Below: Surveillance, Religion, and Claim-Making at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 446-458
Author(s):  
Lior Volinz
Keyword(s):  
Digital Surveillance ◽  
State Surveillance ◽  
A Site ◽  
Temple Mount ◽  
East Jerusalem ◽  
Policies And Practices

This article explores the development and negotiation of colonial surveillance practices and technologies at religious sites. In this article I posit that colonial surveillance at religious sites is different—that, unlike in other colonial spaces, the particularities of holy sites as arenas of contestation can enlarge the scope of worshippers’ negotiation of state surveillance technologies and practices, while enabling new modes of claim-making of rights and resources articulated through surveillance. I draw on the case study of Haram-al-Sharif/Temple Mount, a site in occupied East Jerusalem holy to both Muslim and Jewish worshippers, to explore how different surveillance policies and practices are articulated and contested at religious sites in a (settler) colonial setting. I examine three facets of surveillance employed at this holy site: Israeli digital surveillance, Palestinian grassroots sousveillance, and internationally prescribed adjudicating surveillance. Through an examination of these different facets, this article investigates how particular religious, national, and citizenship claims emerge when surveillance is leveraged in order to balance, mitigate, or resolve conflicts.

scholarly journals Parramatta Female Factory Precinct as a Site of Conscience: Using Institutional Pasts to Shape Just Legal Futures

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Steele ◽  
Bonney Djuric ◽  
Lily Hibberd ◽  
Fiona Yeh
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
New Methods ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Legal Frameworks ◽  
Institutional Confinement ◽  
A Site

Parramatta Female Factory Precinct Association through its Memory Project is activating PFFP as Australia’s first officially recognised Site of Conscience. Through the Memory Project, survivors of Parramatta Girls Home are using art practices and social history to disrupt dominant, official narratives that have silenced their experiences, to put their memories of the Home into action and to prevent future injustices of institutionalisation. For law students and legal practitioners the work of Parragirls through the Memory Project offers possibilities for confronting the complicity of Australian legal systems and legal actors in the harms and injustices of institutional confinement. It provides examples and new methods to direct them towards practices of collective ethical accountability in order to shaping more just future legal frameworks of institutional confinement. In support of this argument the article discusses a recent collaboration between the authors to engage law students in the Precinct through an excursion to the site.

scholarly journals Unreal Homes: Belonging and Becoming in Indian Women Narratives

Humanities ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 133
Author(s):  
Sofia Cavalcanti
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Indian Women ◽  
Anglophone Literature ◽  
Moving Force ◽  
Structural Framework ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Jhumpa Lahiri ◽  
A Site

In an epoch which has to do fundamentally with space, the concept of home has entered the epistemic scene, both as a commodity and a discursive formation. Contemporary Indian women writers, who are a major facet of present Anglophone literature, have often chosen the domestic sphere as the structural framework of their stories. However, despite the traditional idea of home as a static physical site where women’s lives unfold, a more complex and fluid concept emerges from their narratives. After discussing conflicting definitions of home both as a site of belonging and becoming, I will provide a comparative analysis of the short story Mrs. Sen’s by Jhumpa Lahiri and the novel Ladies’ Coupé by Anita Nair. By looking at the transitional spaces inhabited by the women protagonists—respectively, the diasporic space in the U.S. and a train car in India—I will show how home is a psychic-inhabited place taking shape in memory, imagination, and desire. In conclusion, home is an unreal site at the core of women’s subjectivities, transcending the physicality of the homeland or the household and assuming a metonymic significance. Its inward or outward-moving force gives birth to “homeworlds” made of liminal paths where new possibilities of identity construction are produced.

Haunted by Meaning

2017 ◽  
pp. 660-680
Author(s):  
Sherry B. Shapiro
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Awareness ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Community Dance ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Critical Understanding ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
A Site

This chapter explores the concept of aesthetic activism as a vehicle for wellbeing that emphasizes the importance of social justice and compassionate community. Drawing on critical and feminist pedagogies, the author links pedagogy and aesthetic activism to social integration and cohesion and of shared consciousness. The choreographic process described centres on the body as a site for self and social awareness and a critical understanding of the context of women’s lives. The aesthetic here is understood as that domain in which dominant meanings are disclosed and possibilities for social change can be imagined and realized. The author describes a community dance process in Cape Town, South Africa, in which notions of embodied knowledge and critical understanding unite to create a dance performance. This pedagogy suggests that meaning and purpose within a changing global context can be grounded in an ethic of social justice, human rights, and inclusive community.

scholarly journals Trajectories of victimization to violence among incarcerated women

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Preeta Saxena ◽  
Nena Messina
Keyword(s):  
Substance Use ◽  
Physical Violence ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Specific Treatment ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Incarcerated Women ◽  
Childhood Victimization ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Introduction Limited research has focused on the trajectories of victimization to violence in women’s lives. Furthermore, literature assessing women’s use of violence has primarily focused on adult risk factors (e.g., substance use and criminal histories). Drawing from the pathway’s framework, we explored the impact of multiple forms of childhood victimization and subsequent harmful behaviors on adult-perpetrated violence among women convicted of violent or serious crimes. Methods This secondary data analysis included a sample of 1118 incarcerated women from two prisons. Based on prior literature outlining the lifelong negative impact of childhood victimization, we hypothesized that cumulatively, occurrence of abuses, arrest as a minor, number of lifetime arrests, and poly-substance use prior to incarceration, would increase the likelihood of perpetration of multiple forms of violence. GEE regression models were used to examine the relationship between the predictors and adult perpetration of intimidation and physical violence. Results Experiences with childhood victimization, early (under age 18) and ongoing criminal justice involvement, and substance use significantly increased the likelihood of adult perpetration of violence, regardless of the type of violence measured (intimidation or physical violence). Conclusion Given the documented high prevalence of childhood trauma and abuse among justice-involved women, findings from this study can be used to promote the implementation of trauma-specific treatment for at-risk juvenile girls, whose trajectories of violence might be mitigated.

scholarly journals Doing Marginalized Motherhood: Identities and Practices among Incarcerated Women in Mexico

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sveinung Sandberg ◽  
Carolina Agoff ◽  
Gustavo Fondevila
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Incarcerated Women ◽  
Welfare Institutions ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Global North ◽  
Life Story Interviews

This study examines the mothering practices and identities of incarcerated women in Mexico. Data gathered from repeated life-story interviews with 12 women, were analyzed to describe mothering practices in the different phases of incarcerated women’s’ lives. We argue that knowledge of the Latin American context is crucial to understand their experiences of motherhood. In a society based on familism and marianismo identities that suffers from a lack of welfare institutions, motherhood provided a way for socially and economically excluded women to escape destructive family environments and gain autonomy. Motherhood also provided a way to cope with the stigma of delinquency. Using the framework of Southern Criminology, we explore the importance of marginalized motherhood in this tradition. The results reveal the tragic paradox of motherhood for incarcerated women and the importance of studying marginalized mothering beyond the Global North.

scholarly journals Filhos da (in)justiça

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 508-529
Author(s):  
Luciana SIMAS
Keyword(s):  
Safe Motherhood ◽  
Criminal Proceedings ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Healthy Development ◽  
Institutional Violence ◽  
House Arrest ◽  
Institutional Responses ◽  
Post Natal Care ◽  
Prison Environment ◽  
Natal Care

The following article presents statements by pregnant or breastfeeding women to have been through custody hearings and criminal proceedings while released on bail, illustrating institutional responses to prenatal, childbirth, and post-natal care outside the prison environment. The aim was to document the possibilities for and difficulties of applying release measures, according to the women’s own narratives of violence. The qualitative research is based on an analysis of content and is organized according to thematic modules with an exploration of the material collected in interviews and field data. Several obstacles faced in the empirical study have been highlighted, as have the experiences of the women inside and outside the prisons, in terms of the exercise of motherhood, life with the child, the lack of state assistance, and the consequences of the imprisonment. The report from mothers to have been released on bail or placed under house arrest due to pregnancy demonstrates adequate pre-natal care and the children’s healthy development, although difficulties were still experienced during childbirth. The adoption of measures to release the women allowed for better access to healthcare, in line with the human right to safe motherhood. The satisfaction of being able to care for their children and live alongside family stood out as a positive factor. Situations of institutional violence still persist, given the insufficiency or absence of state protection.

Social Media Usage and Incarcerated Women: A Pilot Study

2017 ◽  
Vol 98 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Perkins ◽  
April Rand ◽  
Allison Sheaffer
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Pilot Study ◽  
Criminal Behavior ◽  
Therapeutic Community ◽  
Incarcerated Women ◽  
Treatment Programs ◽  
Media Usage ◽  
Women's Lives

The purpose of this pilot study was to explore social media usage among incarcerated women in a modified therapeutic community. An author-developed social media questionnaire was administered to 89 incarcerated women. Participants reported high levels of social media usage, and many had used social media to engage in criminal behavior. Although most of the women identified seeing pictures of friends actively using substances on social media as a trigger for relapse, they still planned to reactive their social media accounts upon release. The role and power of social media in these women’s lives must be understood and planned for in prison-based treatment programs.

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