The Cage of Days

Michael Flaherty proves himself, once again, a masterful scholar of time with this fascinating addition to his oeuvre. He and coauthor K. C. Carceral’s focus on the ironic juxtapositions and contradictions of incarcerated time yields brilliant and provocative insights into the relationships between time, autonomy, socially constructed meaning, and ultimately power. Anyone who has suffered the temporal experience of being caged by the COVID pandemic will find this a revealing and personally relevant read. -- Patricia A. Adler, coauthor of Paradise Laborers: Hotel Work in the Global Economy
This collaboration between an accomplished convict criminologist and a leading sociologist of time presents a thorough exploration of the ways prisoners experience time. But it does much more: it helps the reader appreciate the many facets of time in all human lives and confront the many unnoticed ways that time shapes our thinking and being. -- Joel Best, University of Delaware
Prisoners’ experience of time is unique and worth studying in greater detail. The Cage of Days provides a thoughtful window into how convicts experience time behind bars. Carceral and Flaherty are experts, and they are able to blend insider and outsider perspectives, autoethnography and scholarship, very successfully. Highly recommended. -- Jeffrey Ian Ross, Ph.D., author of Key Issues in Corrections
A book about prison life with a difference: immensely insightful, extraordinarily sensitive and impressively scholarly. Over a ten-year period of collaboration between a long-term prisoner and an academic, the experience of prison is interrogated through the lens of time. With this focus the authors achieve not only a deep understanding of what it means to ‘do time’ in prison but manage, simultaneously, to illuminate this taken-for-granted aspect of everyday life on the outside, where the generally intangible time emerges with great clarity. -- Barbara Adam, Cardiff University
In addition to appealing to researchers interested in the sociology of time, criminal justice, and symbolic interaction, the unique nature of collaboration and co-authorship between Carceral and Flaherty in this excellent book could prove beneficial in courses on qualitative methodology as well. * Symbolic Interaction *
An imperative to include within a corrections course, introductory sociology course, or an introductory criminal justice class. It would be appropriate for both undergraduate and graduate students. * Contemporary Sociology *
This book provides useful insights into the nature and effects of life in prison and beyond. * Kronoscope *