Lipstick, Lace, and Longing: Constructions of Femininity inside a Russian Prison

Abstract

This paper examines the construction of femininity within Russian women's prisons. On the basis of fieldwork carried out in three women's prisons in the secure and restricted penal zone within Mordovia, Russian Federation, we present unique and original qualitative data, as well as a critical engagement with contemporary Russian press sources. Starting from the assumption that the (free) female body is a particular target of Foucauldian disciplinary power, in that gender is a discipline which produces bodies and identities and operates as an effective form of social control, we examine the ways in which this disciplinary power of gender is compounded by bodily imprisonment. Criminal women are often considered not only to have broken the law but also to have offended against their culturally specific gender role expectations, and punishment applied to women prisoners is grounded not on what women are like, but on how women ‘ought’ to behave in a particular cultural context, with interventions coercing or persuading women to reintegrate into a recognisably ‘feminine’ form. We uncover Russia's exceptional and exclusionary geography of women's imprisonment, and rehabilitative and educational processes, including a beauty pageant, which seek to rescript criminal women toward a predetermined ‘ideal’ of Russian womanhood, and also explore the ways in which women seek to resist.

Leaving behind the ‘total institution’? Teeth, transcarceral spaces and (re)inscription of the formerly incarcerated body

“…The project 1 was carried out between 2006 and 2010, when a team of UK and Russian colleagues were permitted access to women's prisons. The methodological and ethical challenges of conducting research inside of prisons are well known and have been discussed elsewhere as they pertained to this project (Moran, Pallot, and Piacentini 2009). However, a constant concern in the undertaking of this research was to pay close attention to women's personal experiences and to their 'everyday', encouraging them, in the interview context, to describe aspects of their experiences that might otherwise be overlooked as 'mundane'.…”

The production of bedspace: prison privatization and abstract space

“…Scholars have paid particular attention to ways that the imprisoned "create their own spaces within [prisons and detention centers]; making them temporarily their own as they occupy and move through them" (e.g., Jewkes, 2013:128). Studies also account for various subjectivities that are specifically constructed in carceral settings (Moran et al, 2009;Shabazz, 2009;Valentine and Longstaff, 1998). Carceral geographies have also accounted for prisoners' loved and loving ones, who are "part of" carceral institutions despite their distance from the imprisoned (Gilmore, 1999(Gilmore, , 2007Moran et al, 2012;Pallot, 2007).…”

The silenced voices of architectural discourse: promoting inclusion through qualitative research

“…These provide insight into possible avenues of inquiry. For example, an article exploring constructions of femininity in the Russian penal system includes fieldwork and qualitative data gathered from interviews with prison staff and from media sources to give deeper understanding into the intensely personal constructs of gender in relation to the strictures of the architectural type (Moran, et al 2009). Another article analyzing the conditions of gentrification in Edinburgh, Scotland uses interviews with new residents in gentrifying neighborhoods to provide representative texture to the language and direct insight into motivations, which often deviated from quantitative data also gathered (Bondi 1999).…”