Toward a Feminist Political Economy of Capitalism and Carcerality

Abstract

This article assesses carceral institutions and the social relations surrounding them in the United States in terms of their constituent role in the functioning and reproduction of capitalism in the neoliberal period. Highlighting the interplay between the state’s exertion of more directly coercive forms of power and market relations of confinement, the article develops the concept of carcerality to capture the matrix of carceral relations that underpin the market by shaping individual and collective action and agency. Documenting key trends associated with prisons, debt prisons, and carceral relations surrounding the household, the article challenges critical political economy’s tendency to reproduce liberal representations of the market wherein capitalism appears to be reproduced through people’s voluntary involvement in an autonomous marketplace rather than through the coercive apparatuses and social relations of domination that the market requires to recreate its neutral and natural appearance.