The Culture of Punishment

A deeply insightful and profoundly disturbing dissection of the culture of American penality. -- David F. Greenberg,author of Crime and Capitalism In this important challenge to dominant sociological and cultural understandings of punishment, Brown analyzes the construction of popular ideas about punishment, especially incarceration. Demonstrating that ordinary citizens play a central role in the construction and distribution of pain, she shows how mass imprisonment damages society and, ultimately, the practice of democracy. Browns passionate discussion of penality beyond prison walls pushes us to rethink traditional concepts of responsibility, and it opens up a way to escape from Americas dysfunctional prison policies. -- Nicole Rafter,author of The Criminal Brain Michelle Browns book (2009) offers an insightful application of Foucauldian insights (from, e.g. 1975/1995) to the nature of disciplinary power in America. The book should be praised as much for its theoretical insights as for its applicability; the author considers contemporary media, the War on Terror, and other current trends in American Punishment. The result is a book that seamlessly unites theoretical analysis and informed discussion of these facts in a way that not only diagnoses problems with this system, but also suggest solutions to these problems. * Metapsychology Online Reviews * Brown provides a rich and timely cultural analysis of the cultural conditions under which punishment is constituted. It will, no doubt, be a welcomed addition to reading lists of students and scholars in criminology and cultural studies alike. * Crime, Media, Culture *

Michelle Brown is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Tennessee and Fellow at the Indiana University Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions and author of The Culture of Punishment: Prison, Society, and Spectacle.

Acknowledgments 1 Introduction: Notes on Becoming a Penal Spectator 2 Prison Theory: Engaging the Work of Punishment 3 Prison Iconography: Regarding the Pain of Others 4 Prison Tourism: The Cultural Work and Play of Punishment 5 Prison Portents: Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror 6 Prison Science: Of Faith and Futility 7 Prison Otherwise: Cultural Meanings beyond Punishment Notes References Index About the Author