Shai Gortler (Santa Cruz) has written a thoughtful review of my book for the upcoming issue of Law and Society Review. Here are two excerpts:

While institutions such as asylums and prisons are rarely considered as worthy sites for an examination of participatory politics, Berk offers his readers a counterintuitive articulation of the advantages of such examination. At its best, the book thus suggests lessons for what analyses of participation in asylums and prisons teach us about participation outside of these institutions. If, as Berk cites Erving Goffman, custodial institutions are “forcing houses for changing persons,” and “each is a natural experiment on what can be done to the self ” (83), then looking at the participatory politics of subject formation within these spaces can yield conclusions on democratic politics writ-large.

Democracy in Captivity is a significant contribution to the understudied space of participation in prisons and asylums. It is a worthwhile response to the dominant view of thinking custodial institutions solely as spaces of exclusion. As such, it is indispensable reading for those who wish to better understand the relations between carcerality and participation.

The full review is available here. To learn more about Gortler’s related work, alluded to in his review, see his excellent article “Participatory panopticon: Thomas Mott Osborne’s prison democracy” and a description of his upcoming book with Minnesota titled Carceral Subjectivity and the Exercise of Freedom.