Caught In-Between: Coerced Intermediaries in the Jails of Colonial India

IF 0.8 2区 历史学 Q1 HISTORY International Review of Social History Pub Date : 2023-02-22 DOI:10.1017/S0020859023000044
Michaela Dimmers
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Abstract

Abstract This article analyses the role coerced intermediaries had on colonial power and authority in the prisons of British India. Coerced intermediaries in this context were convicts placed in positions of control by the colonial prison administration as warders, overseers, and night watchmen and night watchwomen, summarized here under the term “convict officers”. These convict officers were employed by the colonial authorities to maintain a coercive order and became essential to the exercise of colonial authority and control in the prisons of British India. The article argues that with their employment, the colonial administration created a third group within its prisons, situated between the colonial administration and the inmates. This contradictory practice blurred the lines of colonial control and authority and raises larger questions about intermediation by unfree and coerced people in unfree and coerced colonial contexts. The focus here is not so much on what intermediation is but on what it does. At the same time, the article relates the system of convict officers as intermediaries to the theoretical concepts used by Foucault and Goffman and questions the binarity used in most of their theories.
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夹在中间:殖民时期印度监狱中被胁迫的中间人
摘要本文分析了在英属印度的监狱中,强迫中介对殖民权力和权威的作用。在这种情况下,被胁迫的中间人是被殖民地监狱管理部门安置在控制职位上的囚犯,如狱吏、监工、夜间守夜人和夜间守夜人,在这里总结为“囚犯官员”。这些被判刑的官员受雇于殖民当局,以维持强制秩序,并成为在英属印度的监狱中行使殖民权力和控制的关键人物。文章认为,由于雇用了这些人,殖民当局在其监狱内创造了位于殖民当局和囚犯之间的第三个群体。这种相互矛盾的做法模糊了殖民控制和权威的界限,并提出了更大的问题,即在不自由和受胁迫的殖民背景下,由不自由和受胁迫的人进行调解。这里的重点不在于中介是什么,而在于它能做什么。同时,本文将罪犯作为中介的制度与福柯和戈夫曼所使用的理论概念联系起来,并对他们大多数理论中使用的二元性提出质疑。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
1.10
自引率
0.00%
发文量
68
期刊介绍: International Review of Social History, is one of the leading journals in its field. Truly global in its scope, it focuses on research in social and labour history from a comparative and transnational perspective, both in the modern and in the early modern period, and across periods. The journal combines quality, depth and originality of its articles with an open eye for theoretical innovation and new insights and methods from within its field and from contiguous disciplines. Besides research articles, it features surveys of new themes and subject fields, a suggestions and debates section, review essays and book reviews. It is esteemed for its annotated bibliography of social history titles, and also publishes an annual supplement of specially commissioned essays on a current theme.
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