Not Looking Hard Enough: Masculinity, Emotion, and Prison Research

In her recent article on autoethnography and emotion in prison research, Jewkes suggests that “most prison studies remain surprisingly ungendered texts,” and that—on the whole—the scholars who have written about the emotional dimensions of prison research have been women. This article explores both of these claims. First, it draws attention to areas of prison research in which male researchers have been relatively reflexive about matters of emotion and masculinity, while also highlighting the way that some of the emotional dimensions of prison research can be identified even within the classic studies of prison sociology. Second, it suggests that one of the most striking omissions from most studies of men’s imprisonment is the analysis of “homosocial relations” between men—relations defined by flows of masculine intimacy that are submerged or expressed indirectly. Third, it describes some of the author’s experiences as a man undertaking research with imprisoned men, highlighting the degree to which entwined discourses of masculinity and class shaped the research process.