Thursday, 15 August 2013

Peering through the keyhole

Between the Bars (BTB) was created by two students as a university project and has been sustained by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Inmates in US prisons submit hand written blog posts to the University, which are scanned and uploaded to the site.  The creators hope this process will encourage communication and build relationships outside prison walls.  They also aspire to "improve prisoner's lives, and help to reduce recidivism" with this network. http://betweenthebars.org/

BTB is mapped openly which welcomes participators, providing them with a sense of empowerment in the layout of space (Allen, 2003. p11).  The home page offers endorsements and a pause at the prison gates before committing to walking into individual cells.  The site offers the 'Cyber Flanuer' the opportunity to embrace the spectacle of prison life without having to participate (Barnes, 1997) although when you do, the outcome is quite unexpected.

My persona remains authentic within this network out of respect for those who disclose personal contemplations.  Bloggers appear to view this site as a privileged opportunity to reach back into the world that excluded them, in an effort to re-engage a community identity, while aspiring to develop self-identity.


Power is a very central theme throughout this network and appears to empower those who participate.  Dr Petray (2013b) argued "Power is not always oppressive, it can be open" and although many posts are raw and confronting, bloggers share willingly, inviting the reader in.  As this post does, questioning the power of love.  http://betweenthebars.org/posts/13187/love
Figure 1. Mahaffey, Johnny (2013)

As the Small World Mystery revelas, we all share a connectedness (Buchanan, 2002), our lives are all under surveillance and detainees live very literally in a modern day panopticon (Petray, 2013b and Turkle, 1995.).  They are sruveilled ceaselessly, yet freedom is procured through this network.  The Stanford Prison experiment asked 'what happens when you put good people into an evil place?' (Petray, 2013b), perhaps this site illustrates the reverse, revealing how people residing in an evil place intuitively reach for something better, desiring to contribute outside a network of negativity.

References
Allen, J. (2003). Lost Geographies of Power, Blackwell Publishing.

Barnes, G. (1997). Passage of the Flaneur.  Retrieved from http://www.raynbird.com/essays/Passage_Flaneur.html

Buchanan, M. (2002). Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks. W.W. Norton & Company, New York.

Mahaffey, Johnny (Artist). (2013). The Novelist Portent. [Image of Drawing]. Columbia, SC; Between the Bars.  Retrieved from http://betweenthebars.org/posts/13063/

Petray, T. (2013a). BA1002: Our Space: Networks, Narrative and the Making of Place, week 1. [Audio Recording]. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au

Petray, T. (2013b).  BA1002: Our Space: Networks, Narrative and the Making of Place, week 1. [Audio Recording]. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au

Turkle, S. (1995). "Panopticon'. In Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. Simon & Schuster, New York.


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2 comments:

  1. Unknown16 August 2013 at 08:17

    I have never heard of this network before but it is a great example of how ANYONE has power regardless of their social status. Prisoners, considered to be of lower calls, have the power to share their stories with the rest of the world (Petray, 2013).

    I think it is great that you have decided to be a flaneur in this situation by just wandering through the page as you wish without disrupting the flow of the social network (Prouty, 2009).

    I believe the stories the prisoners tell about their experiences allows a map of their life or even a map of the prison network itself to be produced. This map expands our knowledge of a world that would usually be inaccessible to many in the real world. (Petray, 2013)

    I look forward to hearing more about your experiences in the social netowrk in the more posts to come!


    References:
    Petray, T. (2013). BA1002: Our Space: Networks, Narrative and the Making of Place, week 2. [Audio Recording]. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au
    Petray, T. (2013) ). BA1002: Our Space: Networks, Narrative and the Making of Place, week 3. [Audio Recording]. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au
    Prouty, R. (2009). One way street, Retrieved from http://www.onewaystreet.typepad.com/one_way_street/2009/10/a-turtle-on-a-leash.html

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  2. T19 August 2013 at 23:25

    Hi Nicola,

    I have also never heard of this site before but then again the internet is a vast wonder with so much to discover. I found it very interesting and like the way you describe how empowering the site is for those who spend their time in confinement. Taun (1991) writes that ‘Speech- the right to speak and be heard, the right to name and have that name "stick" is a form of empowerment’ and this site seems to allow the prisoners a voice with which to do this.

    Although the prisoners feel empowered because they are gaining access to the outside world aren't they also placing themselves under a different form of surveillance? We on the outside have our freedoms but when it comes to the internet we are all the same – we all can and probably in some way are being monitored by someone else. The difference is that the prisoners can see and are aware of those that are watching them and this has probably made them wearier of what they say and do. Where as ours watchers are less obvious and we are less careful of what we do. So while they are gaining freedom through the use of the internet can we not in turn be seen as giving up ours?

    I look forward to hearing more about your network

    Tuan, Y. (1991). Language and the Making of Place: A Narrative-Descriptive Approach. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 81(4), 684-696

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