Abstract

This article examines the spatial history of U.S. food production through the evolution of two carceral spaces: rural penitentiaries and Indian reservations. These sites have long provided opportunities to spatially fix surplus labor and capital in U.S. agriculture: from the confinement of Indians during settler colonialism, through the regulation of labor surpluses after Reconstruction, to the present-day expansion of convict leasing to backfill migrant labor shortages. This article challenges traditional framings of prisons and reservations as peripheries excluded from core landscapes of food production and consumption. Instead, these “carceral fixes” participate in specially mediated relationships with “free” agriculture—relationships that respond to the crisis-driven demands of capital and currents of racism and nativism. Within the U.S. food system, this flexibility has made prisons and reservations indispensable for spatially fixing not only capital and labor, but racial violence. Through these relationships, the indirect violence of falling farm prices is translated into the direct violence of physical and mental abuse, exploitation, alienation, diabetes, and malnutrition. Critically, this state-mediated violence is redirected from white to nonwhite bodies.

摘要

本文通过两个监狱空间的演变来审视美国粮食生产的空间历史：农村监狱和印第安人保留地。这些地点长期以来一直为美国农业中的剩余劳动力和资本提供空间解决机会：从定居者殖民主义期间对印第安人的限制，到重建后对劳动力过剩的监管，再到当今扩大囚犯租赁以填补移民劳动力短缺。本文挑战了将监狱和保留地视为被排除在食品生产和消费核心景观之外的边缘的传统框架。取而代之的是，这些“监狱修复”参与了与“自由”农业的特殊调解关系——这种关系响应了资本危机驱动的需求以及种族主义和本土主义的潮流。美国境内 食品系统，这种灵活性使得监狱和保留地不仅在空间上固定资本和劳动力，而且在种族暴力方面必不可少。通过这些关系，农产品价格下跌的间接暴力转化为身心虐待、剥削、疏离、糖尿病和营养不良的直接暴力。至关重要的是，这种以国家为媒介的暴力从白人转向非白人身体。