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Meeting to end solitary confinement in Massachusetts: Exploring the ease and comfort of “zooming in”
Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Social Anthropology.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-1816-3572
Number of Authors: 22025 (English)In: 2025 Annual Meeting: GHOSTS: New Orleans, LA November 19th-23rd, 2025, 2025, p. 2139-2139Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

This paper explores the significance of meeting architecture, inviting us to consider what sociopolitical possibilities are made and foreclosed by the ways distinct meeting forms circulate bodies and faces. The goal of the grassroots organization Massachusetts Against Solitary Confinement (MASC) is to end solitary confinement – a form of carceral torture – in prisons and jails throughout the state. Long-term political and pedagogical engagement with MASC staff and the survivors of solitary confinement who comprise MASC's base reveals that the zoomiverse shift of 2020-2021 had several divergent effects on the organization's work. The zoomiverse facilitated expansion of MASC's relational solidarities, enabling MASC to engage meaningfully with national and international networks engaged in similar struggles for policy change. It also enabled new strategies for elevating survivors' voices in policy and elite-run advocacy meetings. But the zoomiverse also undermined the power and efficacy of this strategy. For potential allies outside of the survivor community, hearing the stories of survivors of state torture entails profound bodily discomfort, which we suggest is itself psychically transformative. The accordion architecture of zoomiverse meetings enables participants to easily dissociate from discomfort, to evade what we call "affective disconcertment." Such evasion seems to inhibit the transformation of consciousness of potential allies that is necessary to change policy.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2025. p. 2139-2139
National Category
Social Anthropology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-250356OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-250356DiVA, id: diva2:2020698
Conference
American Anthropological Association annual conference in New Orleans 19-23 November 2025.
Funder
Forte, Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare, 2019-00916Available from: 2025-12-11 Created: 2025-12-11 Last updated: 2025-12-16Bibliographically approved

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Thedvall, Renita

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CiteExportLink to record
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Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
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  • vancouver
  • Other style
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Language
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