Dining in: The Symbolic Power of Food in Prison (original) (raw)

2006, The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice

Just as food plays an important symbolic role in greater society, eating inside a prison is imbued with a great amount of power and significance. Consumption is a constantly recurring aspect of institutional life and, therefore, by examining this ubiquitous act, a researcher can access a subtle, nuanced account of how power operates within the prison apparatus. By drawing on examples from interviews with prisoners about the prison food experience, this article will work to make visible the centrality of prisoner resistance to these power dynamics. In addition, this examination of prison food will support current analyses in the criminological literature by developing an increased understanding of the prisoner as both agent and subject, while highlighting the moral dimensions of penal practice. Sometimes I close my eyes and just remember, remember being in ___ [name of place] and then it was just (pause) sit at the table, and I got a lot of brothers and sisters, you know. My dad's there and I just sit at the table and it's like, eat and laugh and talk and drink and enjoy with my family. .. There's very few feelings like that in the world and a person can experience that through food. (Participant 5) Eating is not something that just happens to us; on the contrary, all of us 'do' food in some way or another. Consumptive acts are a set of practices, rituals, and behaviours that each individual, in conjunction with others, regularly performs. It is through these performances that we infuse food with meaning. The foods we eat, how and where we eat them, and under what circumstances we consume are based on a political, cultural and familial heritage that extends far beyond our biological need for fuel (Iggers 1996; Tisdale 2000; Visser 1991). The aim of this article is to describe and explore food-based resistance as an important theme in prisoners' stories about institutional food. Except for some commentary about the symbolic function of the prison diet (see Pratt 2002), the role that food plays in the daily routine of penal institutions has not been a focus of criminological research. Exploring food-based resistance in prison is valuable because it provides insight into how prisoners use consumptive spaces to negotiate and contest the power inequalities resulting from the prison's highly regulated environment.