ORPP logo

Can't Catch a Break : Gender, Jail, Drugs, and the Limits of Personal Responsibility.

Sered, Susan Starr.

Can't Catch a Break : Gender, Jail, Drugs, and the Limits of Personal Responsibility. - 1st ed. - 1 online resource (262 pages)

Intro -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- List of Tables -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. "Joey Spit on Me": How Gender Inequality and Sexual Violence Make Women Sick -- 2. "Nowhere to Go": Poverty, Homelessness, and the Limits of Personal Responsibility -- 3. "The Little Rock of the North": Race, Gender, Class, and the Consequences of Mass Incarceration -- 4. Suffer the Women: Pain and Perfection in a Medicalized World -- 5. "It's All in My Head": Suffering, PTSD, and the Triumph of the Therapeutic -- 6. Higher Powers: The Unholy Alliance of Religion, Self-Help Ideology, and the State -- 7. "Suffer the Children": Fostering the Caste of the Ill and Afflicted -- 8. Gender, Drugs, and Jail: "A System Designed for Us to Fail" -- Conclusion: The Real Questions and a Blueprint for Moving Forward -- Appendix: Methodology and Project Participant Overview -- Notes -- References -- Index.

Based on five years of fieldwork in Boston, Can't Catch a Break documents the day-to-day lives of forty women as they struggle to survive sexual abuse, violent communities, ineffective social and therapeutic programs, discriminatory local and federal policies, criminalization, incarceration, and a broad cultural consensus that views suffering as a consequence of personal flaws and bad choices. Combining hard-hitting policy analysis with an intimate account of how marginalized women navigate an unforgiving world, Susan Sered and Maureen Norton-Hawk shine new light on the deep and complex connections between suffering and social inequality. As an additional teaching tool, instructors can find updates about the women in Can't Catch a Break on Susan's blog at http://susan.sered.name/blog/category/cant-catch-a-break/.

9780520958708


Abused women-Massachusetts-Boston-Social conditions.
Female offenders-Massachusetts-Boston-Social conditions.
Women drug addicts-Massachusetts-Boston-Social conditions.
Responsibility-Social aspects-Massachusetts-Boston.


Electronic books.

HQ1439.B7 -- .S47 2014eb

362.83/70974461

© 2024 Resource Centre. All rights reserved.