Abolitionist Realities of the Northeast

The Anthropology Department, co-sponsored by the Engaged Humanities Center, welcomes Justin Helepololei to deliver his lecture, “Abolitionist Realities of the Northeast.”

Drawing on activist, ethnographic research conducted in New England, this talk will highlight some of the dilemmas that prison abolitionists face in contexts where jails are run by sheriffs who see themselves as progressive reformers. Focusing on the competing use of “care” discourses by both abolitionists and jail supporters, the talk will explore the deeper cultural entanglements that complicate this field of struggle.

The second half of the talk will focus on Central New York. It will present some of Justin’s more in-progress thinking about Haudenosaunee responses to harm that long pre-date the existence of prisons, and how spaces of privilege, such as highly-selective college campuses, might offer fraught, though generative examples of “abolitionist realities.”

Justin Helepololei is an assistant professor of anthropology at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York.