Description
Book SynopsisMurguia explores food and foodways within institutions of incarceration. Food, like all resources within total institutions, is vulnerable to social manipulation. Within jail and prison settings, food becomes both a mechanism of control and resistance. In the former, the type of food, its quality, its quantity, and the symbolic significance of its presence or absence all contribute to the socio-political experience of the incarceratedperhaps even adding an extra form of punishment to one's sentence not measured in time, but rather in terms of cruelty. In the latter, the incarcerated may view the preparation of food, the innovation it may undergo, its consumption, or even the refusal of its consumption along these same socio-political lines. Thus viewing food within jail and prison as social facts that engender real consequences reveals a virtually uncharted area of research for understanding the intersection between food and life within the confines of incarceration.
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Trade ReviewThis book represents an important first step to begin the necessary conversation about what rights we should view as fundamental. Murguia packs a lot in these pages; exposing the methods of control from the perspective of both corrections officials and inmates. -- Teresa Dalton, University of California, Irvine
Table of ContentsPreface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Food as a Mechanism of Control
2. Quality Control
3. Quantity Control
4. Food as a Mechanism of Resistance
5. Bricolage
6. Survival
7. Pleasure
Conclusion
Bibliography
