
Unsettled Futures
Carceral Circuits and Old Age in Japan
Jason Danely(Author)
Vanderbilt University Press
Published on 30. September 2024
Book
Hardback
188 pages
978-0-8265-0701-3 (ISBN)
Description
There are two prevailing myths about Japanese society: first, that it has a successful elderly welfare system and second, that it has a successful criminal justice system. Both of these myths reinforce a social imaginary where cultural values of family and community harmony make extensive state intervention unnecessary. Yet not only are both of these myths and their arguments deeply flawed, but they also obscure the more troubling reality that institutions of welfare and punishment in Japan are co-extensive, both keeping Japan's growing population of "excess" older people contained and controlled rather than providing ways for them to integrate and flourish.
Elderly ex-offenders are some of the most vulnerable and marginalized groups in Japan today, with high levels of poverty and homelessness, disability, mental health problems, and social isolation. Those with a history of incarceration and, by extension, their family, face stigma and discrimination that further erodes their ability to reintegrate and puts them at greater risk of reoffending. Unlike in any other country in the world, older people in Japan have a higher rate of reoffending than other age groups. In Unsettled Futures, author Jason Danely argues that we cannot dismiss these individuals merely as deviants; rather, their circumstances reveal deep contradictions in the overlapping terrain of welfare and punishment, and the precarity that forecloses on possibilities for older people to build a good life.
Elderly ex-offenders are some of the most vulnerable and marginalized groups in Japan today, with high levels of poverty and homelessness, disability, mental health problems, and social isolation. Those with a history of incarceration and, by extension, their family, face stigma and discrimination that further erodes their ability to reintegrate and puts them at greater risk of reoffending. Unlike in any other country in the world, older people in Japan have a higher rate of reoffending than other age groups. In Unsettled Futures, author Jason Danely argues that we cannot dismiss these individuals merely as deviants; rather, their circumstances reveal deep contradictions in the overlapping terrain of welfare and punishment, and the precarity that forecloses on possibilities for older people to build a good life.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Tennessee
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
426 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8265-0701-3 (9780826507013)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Jason Danely is a reader in anthropology at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, United Kingdom.
Content
Preface
Chapter 1: Prison Is Easy
Chapter 2: The Prison Welfare Festival
Chapter 3: Mother House
Chapter 4: Twenty Yen
Chapter 5: Winds of Shaba
Chapter 6: "We Hear the Screams of Life"
Chapter 7: Warm Hearth, Cool Hands
Chapter 8: Wounded Kinships
Conclusion
Bibliography
Chapter 1: Prison Is Easy
Chapter 2: The Prison Welfare Festival
Chapter 3: Mother House
Chapter 4: Twenty Yen
Chapter 5: Winds of Shaba
Chapter 6: "We Hear the Screams of Life"
Chapter 7: Warm Hearth, Cool Hands
Chapter 8: Wounded Kinships
Conclusion
Bibliography