RT Article
T1 Creative disruption: Edward Bunker, carceral habitus, and the criminological value of fiction
JF Theoretical criminology
VO 24
IS 2
SP 222
OP 240
A1 Page, Joshua
A2 Goodmann, Philip Russell
LA English
YR 2020
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1734903007
AB Drawing on Edward Bunker’s semi-autobiographical novels, this article argues for the criminological value of fiction. Drawing inspiration and extending core insights from “narrative criminology” and “popular criminology”, we posit that novels and other creative sources can disrupt scholarly commonsense, pushing scholars to reconsider and extend theoretical perspectives. Specifically, Bunker’s fiction encourages re-thinking of overly cognitive (i.e. “mentalist”) understandings of “prisonization”, which do not sufficiently capture the embodiment of carceral culture and routines. Through Bunker’s work, we flesh out the concept of “carceral habitus”—itself deeply gendered and raced—to extend theories of prisonization, deepening understandings of how incarceration transforms people. We affirm that literary devices provide scholars innovative paths to communicating full-bodied accounts that breathe new vitality into criminological theory.
K1 Bourdieu
K1 Habitus
K1 Prison literature
K1 Prisons
K1 Subjectivity
DO 10.1177/1362480618769866