Published
Jul 15, 2025Page count
210 pagesISBN
978-1529229486Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressPublished
Jan 31, 2024Page count
210 pagesISBN
978-1529229455Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressPublished
Jan 31, 2024Page count
210 pagesISBN
978-1529229493Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressPublished
Jan 31, 2024Page count
210 pagesISBN
978-1529229493Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University Press
Sound, Order and Survival in Prison
The soundscape of prison life is that of constant clangs, bangs and jangles. What is the significance of this cacophonous din to those who live and work with it? This book tells the story of a year spent with a UK prison community, bringing its social world vividly to life for the first time through aural ethnography.
Kate Herrity’s sensory criminology challenges current thinking on how power is experienced by the imprisoned and the lasting effects of incarceration for all who spend time in these environments.
"This book will be a key source as we move forward in seeking to fully understand sound as an aspect of carceral experiences and environments." Crime, Media, Culture
“The book has laid a foundation for future work on penal settings, as well as transitions from community to prison and from prison to community.” The British Journal of Sociology
“Kate Herrity's research on the sounds of prison life is one of the most vivid – or rather, resonant – new contributions to prison studies in many a long year. It refreshes our feel for what is involved in inhabiting that world as very few other studies have done. Our methods and our concepts for apprehending that reality can never be quite the same again.” Richard Sparks, University of Edinburgh
Kate Herrity is the Mellon-Kings Research Fellow in Punishment at the University of Cambridge.
1. Just Landed
2. What Are You Hearing, Right Now?
3. Warp and Weft
4. “He’s Never Even Had a Magnum!”
5. Weft and Warp
6. A Night Inside
7. Talk to Me
8. Kackerlackas
9. A Kettle, a Penguin and a Word Arrow
10. Emotional Contagion
11. Arrhythmia
12. Polyrhythmia
13. Jingle Jangle
14. Disentangling Power and Order
15. Learning the “Everyday Tune”
16. Listening To Power
17. Singing Frogs, Looping the Slam
18. The Auld Triangle
19. The Hustle and Bustle
20. Phasing
21. Polyrhythmia Revisited
22. Bells, Whistles, Ships and Prisons
23. Shipping Out
24. References
