Shifting the Paradigm: Embracing Home Pedagogies in Southern Prison Ethnography

• In Event: Culture, Narrative and the Sensory in Research

Abstract

Researchers from the global South have often struggled with what Monzo (2015, p.373) refers to as ‘reclaiming our subaltern’. Our geographical contexts, epistemologies, pedagogies, and sources of knowing and learning have always been deemed ‘unique’ -- but restrained, perhaps submerged, in our yearning to climb the ivory tower and thrive in an academic world that largely values western epistemes of knowledge production. Consequently, it is unsurprising that much of the research on prisons, while predominantly concentrated in the global North, continues to rely on empirical concepts and methodological practices that are largely unexplored outside the metropole, even when carried out by highly reflexive Southern scholars conducting research in their homelands.

This paper is an attempt to reclaim my subaltern voice by bringing into the fore what Delgado Bernal (2001) refers to as ‘pedagogies of the home’. Drawing from my experiences conducting ten months of fieldwork in seven closed and two open prisons across two states of India, I advocate for an ethnographic approach rooted in culturally informed home pedagogies, particularly tailored for South Asian prison settings. This approach stems from a deep understanding of local, regional, and caste-based practices, as well as cultural beliefs. Practically, it involves employing 'cultural intuition' for data inquiry, utilising 'jugaad' (hacks) to access institutions and participants' lives, relying on sensory processes for consent, embracing cultural concepts like 'shared grief' and 'intimate disclosure' in research design, and establishing fictive kinship ties to build trust and cultural credibility in the field. I argue that this methodological approach is not only essential for disrupting the western playing field of traditional ethnography but also for opening up new, alternative, and more emancipatory pathways for scholars conducting research in the global South.

Author

• Kanupriya Sharma, University of Cambridge