Rival Carceralities: Legitimising Discourses of Prison Regime Formations in Bolivarian Venezuela

Fischer-Hoffman, Cory

doi:10.1017/s0022216x20000310

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 7 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Their experiences revealed differences in visiting a state-run prison, where the procedures were more formal and access was far more restricted, compared to those under carceral self-rule. Because of these differences, this article focuses on prisons under carceral selfrule whereas a comparative analysis of the divergent prison regimes in Venezuela is addressed elsewhere in the literature (Fischer-Hoffman, 2020). Additionally, I conducted an hour-long interview with a longtime friend whose son had been in and out of prison in Caracas.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The quadruple burden: Reproductive labor & prison visitation in Venezuela

Fischer-Hoffman

2020

Punishment & Society

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Utilizing the Feminist-Marxist lens of reproductive labor, I examine how the caring work and bodies of women who visit prisons are central to an analysis of the relationship of incarceration and social reproduction under capitalism. My research is based on participant observation and interviews with women prison visitors in 2014–2015 in Venezuela. I analyze how women bring food, clean laundry and otherwise approved items; they take long journeys, wait in lines for hours and pass through an invasive strip search so that they can visit their loved ones in prisons. This work is even more burdensome because the prisons operating under carceral self-rule—run by armed organizations of inmates through a de-facto privatization that centers not just survival but profit —fail to provide even the most basic necessities. I argue that the work of caring for a loved one in this context creates an additional burden on top of a job, housework, and community activism. This fourth shift requires that women’s labor be incorporated into a neoliberal carceral apparatus and also demonstrates that while the carceral zone is porous, the bodies of poor racialized women are used to enforce the prison border.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The quadruple burden: Reproductive labor & prison visitation in Venezuela

Fischer-Hoffman

2020

Punishment & Society

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Activists and officials worried that airing internal differences could jeopardize the entire project. This tended to transform debates about the relative success or failure of any program or official position — be it health care (Cooper 2019), oil extraction (Strønen 2017), infrastructure (Kappeler 2017), housing (Martinez et al 2010), higher education (Ivancheva 2017), prison reform (Antillano 2017; Fischer-Hoffman 2020), or participatory democracy (Schiller 2018; Wilde 2017) — into existential debates about the survival of the movement itself. Crime was particularly dangerous because the issue crossed class and party lines.…”

Section: Mobilizing the Will To Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The will to security: Law, order, and the shifting terrain of popular struggles

Samet

2023

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Populism is a notoriously unstable phenomenon. This instability has been on full display in contemporary Latin America where the progressive gains of the Pink Tide have confronted a rightwing backlash. How do we understand the sudden shift of fortunes from left to right? What tilted the balance of power in the region? One familiar answer to these questions is the exploitation by rightwing actors of tough-on-crime or mano dura rhetoric, which scapegoats already vulnerable populations (minorities, the poor, the “deviant,” etc.) as the source of insecurity. In conversation with this collection of papers on revanchist populism in Brazil, I want to propose a subtle twist on the theme of security and its role in rightwing populist mobilization. It draws on my research in neighboring Venezuela. Specifically, it looks at the unraveling of the Bolivarian Revolution’s progressive promise to defend the urban popular sectors against death squads, torture, arbitrary detention and other oppressive forms of policing. Comparing Venezuela, the vanguard of Latin America’s left turn, to Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil may seem scandalous at first blush, but doing so asks us to confront an inconvenient truth about what I call the will to security. Rather than imagining security as something imposed from above, the will to security reframes it as an articulation of demands that resonate, at least in part, with the popular sectors. Adding this perspective to our analysis of rightwing populism provides an alternative spatial paradigm to the conversations about security that lends it historical depth and policy relevant positioning.

show abstract

“…In this context, the surplus population from the Black and Brown poor urban communities is incarcerated to fill these prisons. Places such as Brazil (Alves, 2018), Mexico (Santos, 2016), Central America (focusing on El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, see Umaña, 2019), Argentina (Loango, 2019; Rodríguez, 2012), Colombia (Moncada, 2010; Moreno & Mornan, 2017), Ecuador (Rahier, 1998) and Venezuela (focusing on prisons, see Fischer‐Hoffman, 2020 and Salas, 2003) share a similar reality.…”

Section: Urban Redevelopment Western Modernity and Blackness In Citiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Western modernity, cities, and race: Challenges to decolonial praxis in the African diaspora in the Americas

Góes

2022

Sociology Compass

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

How do we decolonize cities? By demanding control over their land and organizing their communities according to ethnic traditions and ancestral ontologies, Afro-descendant movements in the Americas create territories of lifeself-determined collectives in which people can experience new forms of life. Decolonial authors who have studied these communities define them as a path to decoloniality-a rupture with modern/colonial logics. However, most of the studies focus on communities in rural areas. Why are urban spaces not vital to the debates about decoloniality? Do cities pose specific challenges to the creation of territories of life? This paper explores these questions. Analyzing the urban experience of the African diaspora in the Americas, I argue that urban spaces challenge decoloniality because cities are often represented as the spatial and racial image of Western modernity, as white places of progress and development. I also argue this representation is based on Black people's evisceration. Finally, this paper seeks to contribute to decolonial urban struggles. Thus, I propose an urban decolonial praxis-an analytical lens and a praxis of research committed to decoloniality to explore cities' decolonization through the redefinition of territories of life, the redefinition of what 'being urban' means, and the wide range of urban resistances.

show abstract

Rival Carceralities: Legitimising Discourses of Prison Regime Formations in Bolivarian Venezuela

Cited by 4 publications

References 7 publications

The quadruple burden: Reproductive labor & prison visitation in Venezuela

The quadruple burden: Reproductive labor & prison visitation in Venezuela

The will to security: Law, order, and the shifting terrain of popular struggles

Western modernity, cities, and race: Challenges to decolonial praxis in the African diaspora in the Americas

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About