Negative visibility and ‘the defences of the weak’

The interplay of a managerial culture and prisoner resistance

Bibliographic Data

ID12586366
AuthorsAnton Symkovych (0000-0001-8477-5783, University of Johannesburg, South Africa; Centre for Advanced Study-Sofia, Bulgaria, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume24
Issue2
Pages202-221
Publication date2018-06-22
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTheoretical Criminology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1362-4806 • E-ISSN: 1461-7439
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1362480618779404
OpenAlexW2808786717
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited52

While being structurally subordinate, prisoners are neither powerless nor mute. Drawing on semi-ethnographic research in a Ukrainian medium-security prison for men, in this article, I advance the concept of ‘negative visibility’—that is, an administration’s fear of external attention and intervention, and make a case for the interplay of prisoner resistance with a managerial culture. Using Soviet penal and managerial legacies as an example, I argue that structure can be both constraining and enabling even within the milieu of the gross power imbalance of which prison is an archetype, thereby attesting to the coherence of agency and structure and the contingency of power. Furthermore, by highlighting that prisoners may undermine officer power for all sorts of reasons, including opportunistic and selfish ones, this study cautions against romanticizing the ‘defences of the weak’ and a priori politicization of prisoner resistance

Agency (philosophy · Contingency · Criminology · Epistemology · Ethnography · Officer · Political science · Power (physics · Prison · Resistance (ecology · Social science · Sociology · Structure and agency · Visibility · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Law · Policing Practices and Perceptions · Psychology · Social Psychology

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