Drawing upon social history, political history, and critical prison
studies, this book analyzes how prisons and other instruments of
colonial punishment endured after independence and challenges their
continued existence. In Carceral Afterlives, Katherine
Bruce-Lockhart traces the politics, practices, and lived
experiences of incarceration in postcolonial Uganda, focusing on
the period between independence in 1962 and the beginning of Yoweri
Museveni's presidency in 1986. During these decades, Ugandans
experienced multiple changes of government, widespread state
violence, and war, all of which affected the government's approach
to punishment. Bruce-Lockhart analyzes the relationship between the
prison system and other sites of confinement--including informal
detention spaces known as "safe houses" and wartime camps--and
considers other forms of punishment, such as public executions and
"disappearance" by state paramilitary organizations. Through
archival and personal collections, interviews with Ugandans who
lived through these decades, and a range of media sources and
memoirs, Bruce-Lockhart examines how carceral systems were imagined
and experienced by Ugandans held within, working for, or impacted
by them. She shows how Uganda's postcolonial leaders, especially
Milton Obote and Idi Amin, attempted to harness the symbolic,
material, and coercive power of prisons in the pursuit of a range
of political agendas. She also examines the day-to-day realities of
penal spaces and public perceptions of punishment by tracing the
experiences of Ugandans who were incarcerated, their family members
and friends, prison officers, and other government employees.
Furthermore, she shows how the carceral arena was an important site
of dissent, examining how those inside and outside of prisons and
other spaces of captivity challenged the state's violent punitive
tactics. Using Uganda as a case study, Carceral Afterlives
emphasizes how prisons and the wider use of confinement--both as a
punishment and as a vehicle for other modes of punishment--remain
central to state power in the Global South and North. While
scholars have closely analyzed the prison's expansion through
colonial rule and the rise of mass incarceration in the United
States, they have largely taken for granted its postcolonial
persistence. In contrast, Bruce-Lockhart demonstrates how the
prison's transition from a colonial to a postcolonial institution
explains its ubiquity and reveals ways to critique and challenge
its ongoing existence. The book thus explores broader questions
about the unfinished work of decolonization, the relationship
between incarceration and struggles for freedom, and the prison's
enduring yet increasingly contested place in our global
institutional landscape.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
