Doctoral Dissertation Research: Networks of Support and Solidarity in Carceral Contexts

博士论文研究：监狱背景下的支持和团结网络

• 批准号: 2148008
• 负责人: Kaya Williams
• 金额: $ 2.52万
• 依托单位: Harvard University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-05-01 至 2023-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2148008&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Networks; Support

The carceral experience encompasses not only the over two million people currently incarcerated in American prisons, but also those within the broader social, affective, and kin networks with which incarcerated individuals are connected. This doctoral dissertation project seeks to investigate how relationships of solidarity, kinship, and affinity are created, changed, or maintained during imprisonment. In exploring such a question, this research examines how imprisoned people and the people with whom they share close ties manage to build affective networks, bonds of mutuality, and reciprocity within and across prison borders. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology in the methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, the project strives to enrich the public's understanding of science and the scientific method by sharing its findings through public-facing venues and organizational dissemination. The project also broadens the participation of historically underrepresented groups in the production of scientific knowledge. A core hypothesis of this research is that incarceration impacts the strength of social bonds among imprisoned people and their social networks in ways that parallel the systematicity of chattel slavery. The doctoral student tests this hypothesis through an in-depth, rigorous analysis of archival sources from historical and contemporary epochs. The researcher will complement these data with twelve months of participant observation and approximately seventy-five semi-structured interviews with interlocutors in two organizations that facilitate communications with incarcerated individuals. Thus, while many generative studies insinuate a link between enslavement and imprisonment in the United States, the present study will be one of the first to test a hypothesis about the link with a scientific and ethnographic eye. In so doing, this doctoral dissertation project advances the ascendant, interdisciplinary scholarship that seeks to uncover a usable carceral past in order to better comprehend the scope and scale of the contemporary prison system. The project integrates analysis of archival, sociolegal, and ethnographic data to improve scientific understanding of how people navigate institutional bureaucracies and spatial challenges to forge and maintain affective and kin-based relationships.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

监狱的经历不仅包括目前被关押在美国监狱中的200多万人，而且还包括那些与被监禁者有联系的更广泛的社会、情感和亲属网络中的人。这个博士论文项目旨在调查团结，亲属关系和亲和力的关系是如何创建，改变或在监禁期间保持。在探索这样一个问题，本研究探讨如何被监禁的人和他们分享密切联系的人管理，以建立情感网络，相互关系的债券，以及监狱边界内和跨监狱的互惠。除了资助一名人类学研究生接受经验科学数据收集和分析方法的培训外，该项目还通过面向公众的场所和有组织的传播分享其研究结果，努力丰富公众对科学和科学方法的理解。该项目还扩大了历史上代表性不足的群体对科学知识生产的参与。这项研究的一个核心假设是，监禁影响了被监禁者及其社交网络之间的社会纽带的强度，其方式与奴隶制的系统性相似。博士生通过对历史和当代档案来源的深入，严格分析来验证这一假设。研究人员将补充这些数据与12个月的参与者观察和大约75个半结构化的访谈，在两个组织的对话者，促进与被监禁的个人的沟通。因此，虽然许多生成研究暗示奴役和监禁之间的联系在美国，本研究将是第一个测试的假设与科学和人种学的眼睛。在这样做的过程中，这个博士论文项目推进了方兴未艾的跨学科奖学金，旨在揭示一个可用的监狱过去，以更好地理解当代监狱系统的范围和规模。该项目整合了对档案、社会法律和人种学数据的分析，以提高人们对如何驾驭机构官僚和空间挑战以建立和维持情感和亲属关系的科学理解。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。