Beyond The Walls Of The Order

What will the form of Chinese prison order be like in the mysterious veil? Many so-called 'Big Wall' literary and artistic works have provided us some answers. Its value for studying prison order can not be denied. Yet it seems that we cannot understand the order in prisons in that way.Most scholars insist that when we study prison order, it is very important to comply with the political superstructure ideology. They seldom realize that this study also have to be from the perspective of situational interaction between staff and inmates.The author of this dissertation has been working in prison for nine years, and an anthropological fieldwork lasting six months has been carried out in prison. A large number of first-hand information has been collected through participant observation and in-depth interviews and other methods. By combining emic and etic research, The present author focus on listening the voice of party concerned, i.e. the prison staff and inmates, because their point of view may be able to prove or deny some'stereotype' of prison order.The main contents of this study cover the following eight points:1. Brief introduction of prison. Introduce the difference of reform-through-labor institution, prison, detention house and educated-through-labor institution. Introduce the doctrinal definition, characteristics and features of the prison, and describe the prison image in the public. Let the readers know that the evolution of Chinese prisons and their operating system, etc.2. The main body of prison order---staff and prisoner. Readers may have an overall understanding to prison staff group through an introduction to their addressing, constitution, responsibility, occupational risks, work hard level, social status and so on. And readers may have a primary knowledge of inmates group by describing their addressing, source, difficulty of survival.3. Hierarchical authority of order. As far as the prison staff is concerned, the ideology of distinction between 'top' and 'bottom','leaders' and 'ordinary staff' provides a basic sense of authority building and consolidating. In terms of inmates the hierarchical authority is also obvious. As for the relationship between staff and prisoner, on one hand it is needed to emphasize the concept of'boundaries between staff and inmate', ion the other hand it needs to be equipped with some fairy good technology in order to secure the authority.4. Spatial rules of order. This part includes contents like the form of prison space, spatial arrangement, spatial experience, beyond space and other items.5. Time rules of order. It is described that inmate's daily life, routine activity in a week, monthly special date, an annual festival, nodes of imprisonment for life,and so on in order to reflect the order constructed by the time rules.6. Written rules of order and marks. This section briefly introduces the written rules of the prison, focusing on the function of assessing'marks'7. Living rules of the daily interaction order. This section introduces the self-protection of prisoners, mutual-benefit exchange among prisoners, communicating strategy between prisoner and staff. As a weaker, how the prisoner resists. As a strong, how the prison staff becomes tender. It is found that'Living way' is indeed the source of wisdom in life.8. Order of reflection. Three issues are focused on here. They are:1) How to understand the problem of order beyond the prison walls? 2) Why must criticize the common sense of'ordered is order'? 3) How to investigate the order?The main point of this study:Prison, as any society, it is required to have a healthily order system to run. This order system is supported by the political superstructure ideology and situation interaction between the main bodies of order. Thus, it is not good to go any one extreme. It is found that common sense of reflecting on'ordered is order'would help understand the essence of prison order. This study also shows that the rules, human nature and renqing (the Chinese people's characteristics of stressing personal relations) are the foundation of the traditional order of the Chinese local culture. The prison order seems to be no exception too.The innovation of this study:From content speaking, the research field of order has been enlarged to some extent to re-incorporate the prison into social or anthropological areas. And in methodology, a combination of the emic study and etic study may make up for some shortcomings from many related research in the past. As for the writing style, readers are provided with an ethnographical works, which practice seems to be rare seen in research area of domestic prison.