A Carceral Ecology: Ushuaia and the History of Landscape and Punishment in ArgentinaCloser to Antarctica than to Buenos Aires, the port town of Ushuaia, Argentina is home to a national park as well as a museum that is housed in the world’s southernmost prison. Ushuaia’s radial panopticon operated as an experimental hybrid penal colony and penitentiary from 1902 to 1947, designed to revolutionize modern prisons globally. A Carceral Ecology offers the first comprehensive study of this notorious prison and its afterlife, documenting how the Patagonian frontier and timber economy became central to ideas about labor, rehabilitation, and resource management. Mining the records of penologists, naturalists, and inmates, Ryan C. Edwards shows how discipline was tied to forest management, but also how inmates gained situated geographical knowledge and reframed debates on the regeneration of the land and the self. Bringing a new imperative to global prison studies, Edwards asks us to rethink the role of the environment in carceral practices as well as the impact of incarceration on the natural world. |
Contents
Rethinking Prisons and Patagonia | 1 |
Constructing an Open Door Penitentiary | 17 |
The Martyr in Argentine Siberia | 84 |
The Lettered Archipelago | 105 |
Notes | 171 |
Bibliography | 227 |
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agricultural American anarchist Argentina argued authorities Buenos Aires capital carceral cell century chapter Chile claimed climate confinados Conservation continued Convicts criminal cultural Development director door Duke University early ecology economy environment Environmental example exile experience facilities felling figure fires five forest Forestry geography global guards History human hundred incarceration indigenous inmates institutions International island Journal Juan labor land landscape later Latin America limited lived Muratgia Museum natural northern noted operations Park past Patagonia penal colony Penitenciaría penitentiary Pettinato police political population practices prison reform punishment Radowitzky reform region reveal Revista Penal Rojas Santa served social Society southern southernmost space Studies territory thousand throughout Tierra del Fuego timber tion Tourism town train University Press Ushuaia Ushuaia prison walls York