Jennifer M. Kilty – författare

Numerous books explore the "how to" of qualitative research, but few discuss what it means to actually engage in it, particularly when researchers adopt alternative methods to shed light on the experiences of marginalized populations.In Demarginalizing Voices, scholars share personal stories about their research with marginalized populations, including Aboriginal peoples, sex workers, the dead and the dying, women and men in prison, women and men released from prison, and the homeless and the hospitalized. In the process, they answer questions of relevance to anyone engaged in qualitative research:What can scholars expect when their research requires them to establish human connections and relationships with their subjects?What role do ethics review boards and institutions play when researchers explore new, often less accepted methods?How do researchers reconcile academic life and its expectations with their activism?These powerful accounts from the cutting-edge of qualitative research not only create a space in academia that centres marginalized voices, they open up the field to new debates and discussion.

Numerous books explore the "how to" of qualitative research, but few discuss what it means to actually engage in it, particularly when researchers adopt alternative methods to shed light on the experiences of marginalized populations.In Demarginalizing Voices, scholars share personal stories about their research with marginalized populations, including Aboriginal peoples, sex workers, the dead and the dying, women and men in prison, women and men released from prison, and the homeless and the hospitalized. In the process, they answer questions of relevance to anyone engaged in qualitative research:What can scholars expect when their research requires them to establish human connections and relationships with their subjects?What role do ethics review boards and institutions play when researchers explore new, often less accepted methods?How do researchers reconcile academic life and its expectations with their activism?These powerful accounts from the cutting-edge of qualitative research not only create a space in academia that centres marginalized voices, they open up the field to new debates and discussion.

VOLUME 20, NUMBER 1 (2011) is a special issue of the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons edited by Jennifer M. Kilty.For many years, the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons (JPP) has been a prisoner-written, academically oriented and peer-reviewed non-profit journal based on the tradition of the penal press. JPP brings the knowledge produced by prison writers together with academic arguments to enlighten public discourse about the current state of carceral institutions. This is particularly important because, with few exceptions, definitions of deviance and constructions of those participating in these defined acts are incompletely created by social scientists, media representatives, politicians and individuals in the legal community.These analyses most often promote self-serving interests, omit the voices of those most affected and facilitate repressive and reactionary penal policies and practices. As a result, the JPP attempts to acknowledge the accounts, experiences and criticisms of the criminalized by providing an educational forum where women and men can participate in the development of research that concerns them directly. In an age where "crime" has become lucrative and exploitable, the JPP exists as an important alternate source of information that competes with popularly held stereotypes and misconceptions about those who are currently, or who have in the past, faced the deprivation of liberty.

Western feminists have long treated the rule of law as an essential ingredient of social justice; however, as the contributors to this collection remind us, meaningful justice remains out of reach for many women and racialized minorities precisely because the law turns a blind eye to the inequities that structure their daily lives. In fourteen chapters that open vital debates about the erosion of the welfare state and the media’s complicity in concealing political injustice, Within the Confines details the brutal ironies of a society that criminalizes the vulnerable while absolving the elite. Distinctive in its focus on Canada, the book traces the linkages among racial, ethnic, sexual, and economic vulnerability and reveals the inadequacies of legislative approaches to socio-historical problems such as drug trafficking, homelessness, infanticide, and the legacies of settler colonial violence. In accessible prose, the authors dismantle the myths behind topics that are often sensationalized in the media—pornography, single motherhood, sex work, filicide, gangs, domestic abuse, prison conditions, HIV nondisclosure—and present alternative arguments that expose the justice system’s role in widening the gap between the rich and the poor. What emerges is a poignant challenge to the neoliberal fable that women and minorities in Western democracies now enjoy full equality and an urgent call to action for those who seek to shift institutional norms in more equitable directions. A valuable resource for a wide range of fields, including criminology, sociology, social anthropology, gender studies, political science, social work, and legal history, this multidisciplinary volume offers a fresh perspective on the disturbingly predictable judgments that criminalized women face in Canada.

This collection explores the discursive production and treatment of mental distress as it is mediated by gender and race in different institutional contexts.