For every topic, you will answer each question below in no fewer than three sentences and no more than 2 answers blank. Reading Guide Who is the author? What kind of disciplinary background are they...

Changing the Subject: Conversation in Supermax
1. Who is the author? What kind of disciplinary background are they coming from (e.g. anthropology, history, sociology, medicine?) Who is it written for? How can you infer the audience?
Lorna A. Rhodes is the author. Her background is Cultural Anthropology. This article is written for the government officials. This can be inferred by the points being raised about the mental effects of detention in supermax prisons and how inhumane the conditions are there.
2. What is the main argument and the goal of the writing? How would you explain the main point of the article to the class?
The goal of the writing is to throw light on the appalling conditions in the supermax prisons and how they affect the prisoners mentally. The main emphasis is on the shouted conversations the prisoners can have with each other through the cell doors – the different types of conversations and their impact.
3. Identify the author’s thesis. What are the key concepts used? Are the concepts challenged or invented? Meaning, is the author presenting their own/new theory? Or are they critiquing or adding to someone else’s established theory?
Thesis: The peculiar conversational dynamics of the supermax unit intersect with popular ways of positioning oneself as a liberal subject to produce a hidden and problematic outpost of the public sphere… (Rhodes, 389)
Key concepts: solitary confinement, conversations, child molesters, vigilantism, supermax prisons, Washington, U.S
The author is adding to the work of the social psychologist Michael Billig (1997, 1999).
4. What larger structure(s) does this article fit into? In other words, what social, political, economic, cultured, medical, ideological structure is this article commenting on?
This article is commenting on the social and cultural structure by laying emphasis on the effect that the supermax prisons have on the prisoners held there, some of who will eventually be released to the streets.
5. What is the article or chapter about empirically? What is being studied as the object? Where are the events and people geographically situated? What is the scale of the analysis? (e.g. nation, city, region, institution, person?) When did the study take place? Is there an explicit comparison? If so, what? Is there an implicit comparison? If so, what?
The article is about the mental state of prisoners in the supermax prisons who are being studied. The analysis was done in all-male supermax facilities, in the State of Washington, USA between 1993-2005.
There is an implicit comparison between the conditions at supermax prisons as opposed to the normal prisons.
6. What methods were used in collected data? (ethnography, interviews, statistics, textual analysis, archival research) Does the data look at what people do, say, or think? How was the data analyzed? What assumptions- of the author or the society- shaped the inquiry? What core values are assumed, especially values related to health and illness? What data would strengthen the text?
Interviews and observation of internal environments were used to collect data. The data looks at how people behave and converse in confinement at supermax. Assumptions about the ineffectiveness of confinement in supermax shaped the inquiry. It is assumed that supermax conditions deteriorate mental health of prisoners.
More data on how the prisoners of supermax live as free men after the period of confinement would strengthen the text.
7. Discuss a passage (cite page number) that inspired or frustrated you. Write a paragraph between 200-300 words discussing the passage and describing how it resonated with other course content.
The details on the first passage in (Rhodes, 389) are frustrating. It describes how the supermax prisons are designed to confine the prisoners on various degrees. It also mentions the painful conditions faced by the prisoners where they are kept in their tiny cells for most part of the day and taken out only for occasional showers or yard time. They are kept in control by reducing social contact to the least, using technology and specially designed cells. These conditions that are short of solitary confinement still have long-lasting and harmful effects on the mental conditions of the prisoners, in fact this form of imprisonment borders on torture and can drive prisoners insane.
These circumstances together with the internal struggles of the prisoners to feel human leads them to divert their frustration towards those they view as inhumane i.e. sex offenders, particularly child molesters. They abuse the latter through verbal aggression and exclusion from the social conversations in the prison tiers.
Also the effect of these conditions is not limited to the prisoners because these prisoners will eventually be released to the general prisons or set free in to the streets; and as the studies show such confinement and its influence may lead to obsession or preoccupation with physical violence leading to endangerment of society.
8. If you take one thing away from the text, what would that be?
The detailed discussion about how sexual offenders are generally viewed in the American culture and the reasons or justifications for those views could be removed or at least reduced to keep the focus on the supermax prisons.
Works Cited
Rhodes, Lorna A. "Changing the subject: Conversation in supermax." Cultural Anthropology 20.3 (2005): 388-411.
Unmarked Racializing Discourse, Facework, and Identity in talk about Immigrants in Italy
1. Who is the author? What kind of disciplinary background are they coming from (e.g. anthropology, history, sociology, medicine?) Who is it written for? How can you infer the audience?
Valentina Pagliai is the author. Linguistic Anthropology is her disciplinary background. The text has been written for Linguistic Anthropologists. This can be inferred by the conclusion in which the author highlights the need for further study on the given topic and the areas which need to be researched about for better understanding reasons discussed.
1. What is the main argument and the goal of the writing? How would you explain the main point of the article to the class?
The goal of the writing is to shed light upon racial talk that has become accepted in society (here Tuscany, Italy).
The author discusses the various factors that promote, reinforce, and sustain racist and racializing discourses and at the same time discourage resistance.
1. Identify the author’s thesis. What are the key concepts used? Are the concepts challenged or invented? Meaning, is the author presenting their own/new theory? Or are they critiquing or adding to someone else’s established theory?
Thesis: The requirements of conversational rules of engagement, the needs of face, the relationship among the interactants, as well as their moral view, influence the participants’ response to racializing discourses in interaction, and whether they might co construct or oppose them (Pagliai, E94).
Key concepts used: racialization, markedness theory, facework, racism, immigration, Italy
The author is presenting their own theory about the consequences of unmarked racializing discourse has on interactions.
1. What larger structure(s) does this article fit into? In other words, what social, political, economic, cultured, medical, ideological structure is this article commenting on?
This article deals with the problem of racialization in the social structure and how it is woven even in the language or day to day conversations of people -willing and unwilling- to talk about it.
1. What is the article or chapter about empirically? What is being studied as the object? Where are the events and people geographically situated? What is the scale of the analysis? (e.g. nation, city, region, institution, person?) When did the study take place? Is there an explicit comparison? If so, what? Is there an implicit comparison? If so, what?
The study is about Language/Conversations and what they imply. Peoples talk and reaction is being studied in the region of Tuscany, Italy.
The study took place in - 2005 and 2009.
There is an explicit comparison between how people react/ reply to racial talk by agreeing, ignoring by changing the topic or disagreeing.
1. What methods were used in collected data? (ethnography, interviews, statistics, textual analysis, archival research) Does the data look at what people do, say, or think? How was the data analyzed? What assumptions- of the author or the society- shaped the inquiry? What core values are assumed, especially values related to health and illness? What data would strengthen the text?
Methods used in collecting data were unstructured interviews, observations and systematic media watch. The data looks at what people say. The data was analyzed by comparing various responses and studying the factors affecting them. Assumptions about the acceptability/prevalence of racial talk in day to day conversation shaped the inquiry.
Values related to human equality. Data about the effect this kind of talk has on immigrant society as a whole would give more insight about the effects of racial discourse.
1. Discuss a passage (cite page number) that inspired or frustrated you. Write a paragraph between 200-300 words discussing the passage and describing how it resonated with other course content.
The 3rd Paragraph in (Pagliai, E97)describes how the political parties and politicians play a role in racial formation and lead to the acceptance of racial discourse in the day to day life by the normal people.
Such influence causes the intolerable behavior of racism to become acceptable and the norm in society and is no more looked upon as unjustified.
Such talk from people in power creates and imposes a false and widely accepted negative identity of the immigrants. Studies show that racism is becoming more and more accepted and is looked at as justified by an increasing percentage of the youth. Thus, it is having a direct effect on the daily...