Edukacja autorytarna. O przemocy symbolicznej w szkole

The aim of this article is to reflect on education and the school system in the context of authoritarianism and symbolic violence. The subject reflection is based on two mental trails. The first shows that culture justifies symbolic violence at school. The second, however, treats symbolic violence in education as a manifestation of the school’s activity as a total institution.

Szpital psychiatryczny jako przykład instytucji totalnej

The aim of this article is attempting to answer the question whether the psychiatric hospital can still be considered as a total institution. The concept of a psychiatric hospital as a total institution was formulated by Erving Goffman. In this type of facility, the personnel has full control over the patient, their time, private life, and mobility. However, a psychiatric hospital is also a special place. Is this type of hospital still a total institution? Is it not better now to call it a quasi-total institution?

Boundaries in the Making: Transformations in Erving Goffman’s Total Institution through the Case of a Female Benedictine Monastery

Total institutions have undergone profound changes since Erving Goffman published his seminal work Asylums in 1961. This article explores the persistence and transformation of total institutions under late-modern conditions. Based upon empirical research conducted in a female Benedictine monastery, I analyse changes in the physically bounded structure of a total institution. Specifically, I address the trend towards greater permeability and flexibility of enclosed total spaces. Inspired by Georg Simmel’s spatial insights, I examine how boundaries are historically reshaped through changing relations of distance and proximity to wider society, and how these shifts alter the material expression and configuration of power that originally characterised the monastery’s totality. This article claims the ongoing relevance of Goffman’s conceptualisation to accommodate such modifications and illustrates how, in certain cases, adaptations of total institutions to contemporary conditions can be understood as involving the reconfiguration, rather than the dismantling, of totality.

Huronia's Double Bind: How Institutionalisation Bears Out on the Body

Frequently missing from histories of forced institutionalisation are close readings of the enduring impact on survivors' corporeality. In this article the authors analyse interview data featuring people who survived the Huronia Regional Centre: a total institution designed to warehouse people with intellectual disabilities that operated in Canada from 1876 to 2009. These interviews reveal the impact of institutional technologies on the bodies of the institutionalised, and how institutional survivors resisted those technologies. Institutional rituals meant to organise and cleanse residents, resulted in the reification of institutional subjects as inescapably contaminated. Drawing from Mary Douglas's theory of dirt and Julia Kristeva's interpretation of dirt as abjection, the authors engage with interview data on daily institutional care routines, particularly dressing, eating, showering, and the administration of medication, to show how these rituals produced for the institutionalised subject meanings around gender and disability as markers of defilement. The authors argue that the kinds of deeply oppressive and often violent rituals central to lived experiences of institutionalisation are grounded in the assumption that disabled gendered bodies are already-abject, hence the institutional demand for the institutionalised to be brought under control.

Hjørnestenene i den danske kriminalforsorg:

The principles of normalisation and openness are cornerstones of modern prison philosophy. Normalisation involves making prison life as similar as possible to normal outside life and openness counteracts the negative effects of the total institution (Rentzmann, 1996). Both normalisation and openness imply that it should be the norm to place a person in an open prison. He or she should only be placed in a closed prison if there is a concrete, real risk of escape or if the prisoner is considered dangerous. The question is: does the Danish prison system in the era of the millennium still pay tribute to these two cornerstones when it comes to prisoner placement and furloughs? Since sentence length and disciplinary offences can determine both prisoner placement and prison furloughs, the article also explores developments in determinate sentencing and disciplinary punishment. Based on statistics and legislation, the analysis reveals that the severity of penalties increased during the period 2002-2019, e.g., average sentence length increased, more prisoners were placed in closed prisons, fewer prison furloughs were permitted, and more prisoners were exposed to disciplinary punishment. These developments can be explained by laws and rules implemented to deal with gang-related crime andgang-connected prisoners, who make up about 10 percent of the total prison population. While these strict laws and rules are designed to discipline the few, they have influenced the many and undermined the basic principles of normalisation and openness in Danish prisons.

Mat, makt och motstånd: Om konflikter inom tvångsvård

This article discusses how food constitutes a source of conflict at locked compulsory care institutions for youth and adults. The conflicts that arise are often about where, when and what one is allowed to eat, and can have serious consequences such as isolation of the inmate. Both the inmates and the staff describe these conflicts as being about »small things«. But while the staff maintains this level of interpretation, stories from the inmates reveal that in the context of the total institution, these »small things« can be very significant. The rules regarding food are both a reminder of the loss of the outside world and evidence of the loss of control and power that comes with confinement. The results show that younger inmates are more thoroughly controlled than their older counterparts in several respects.

‘We have become prisoners of our own age’: from a continuing care retirement community to a total institution in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak

Background and objectives during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic in Israel, people residing in continuing care retirement communities (CCRC) found themselves under strict instructions to self-isolate, imposed by the CCRC managements before, during and after the nationwide lockdown. The present study explored the personal experiences of CCRC residents during the lockdown. Research design and methods in-depth interviews were conducted with 24 CCRC residents from 13 different CCRCs. Authors performed a thematic analysis of interview transcripts, using constant comparisons and contrasts. Results three major themes were identified: (i) ‘Us vs. them: Others are worse off’. Older residents engaged in constant attempts to compare their situation to that of others. The overall message behind these downward comparisons was that the situation is not so bad, as others are in a worse predicament; (ii) ‘Us vs. them: Power imbalance’. This comparison emphasised the unbalanced power-relations between older adults and the staff and management in the setting and (iii) ‘We have become prisoners of our own age’. Interviewees described strong emotions of despair, depression and anger, which were intensified when the rest of society returned back to a new routine, whilst they were still under lockdown. Discussion and implications the measures imposed on residents by managements of CCRCs during the lockdown, and the emotional responses of distress among some of the residents, revealed that CCRCs have components of total institutions, not normally evident. This underscores the hidden emotional costs of the lockdown among those whose autonomy was compromised.

Zwischen Haft und Freiheit

There are huge differences between custody and freedom. In the former, life is dominated by the rhythm of the "total institution of prison" (Goffman), whereas, in the latter, it remains relatively self-determined—even in the case of drug dependency. How can the transition from one to the other be organised in such a way that people who are dependent on drugs suffer the least damage? This volume provides both answers to that question and examples of good practice in this respect: the requirements and strategies of drug users when they are released from prison current practice in treating prisoners who use drugs examples of good practice when it comes to release management (networks, counselling, etc.) needs, alternatives and management from a multi-professional perspective.

Social Practices between Individuals with Mental Illness and Griya Schizofren Volunteers in Griya PMI (Indonesian Red Cross) Peduli Surakarta

This research discusses the social practices carried out by Griya Schizofren to address individuals with mental illness who are often disadvantaged due to the negative stigma of their illness. This research uses a phenomenological approach. Data were collected from observations, interviews, and documentation. The results show that Griya Schizofren, to reduce the stigma against individuals with mental illness, established social, economic, cultural, and symbolic relations with those who lived in Griya PMI Peduli (Indonesian Red Cross) Surakarta through voluntary activities for individuals with mental illness. Social welfare activities in individuals with mental illness had shifted to business activity that opened a new field. The habitus of individuals with mental illness positively developed. Griya Schizofren restructured individuals with mental illness in a new layer of the community by promoting it as a society that can work within its limitations and produce products demanded by the community in the form of wedding souvenirs. Field of Griya PMI Peduli became a more humane environment as the shelter for abandoned individuals with mental illness. It also proved that total institution is no longer a frightening but collaborative field for capital exchange. Hence, using the theory of Piere Bourdieu, this research can answer how the stigma can be unfolded through works and capital exchange.

Prisons as total institution semiospheres

The main objective of this article is to combine Juri Lotman’s theory of the semiosphere – including its concepts of boundary, core, and periphery – with Erving Goffman’s theory of the total institution. The purpose is to develop a framework conducive to examining the prison as an object of study, equally emphasizing both its internal as well as external relations. This work positions itself within the contexts of the relative decline of the field of prison ethnography, few or no studies done applying semiotic metalanguage to the prison or the total institution, and none applying the theory of the semiosphere to either. This work is oriented according to an analytical or neutral mode; its point is not to offer a normative programme, but to offer a new description of the research object and a new language of description in which to speak of this object. The secondary objectives of this article include demonstrating that Lotman’s theory of the semiosphere and Goffman’s theory of the total institution are compatible, that Lotman’s theory actually refines Goffman’s original, that Lotman’s theory taken independently and Goffman’s theory as refined by Lotman’s are both compatible with the direction of contemporary prison ethnography, and that the framework presented in this work has the potential to reinvigorate the field of prison ethnography.