Lee Ann Fujii Award Honorable Mention 2023: Farah Godrej, for Freedom Inside? Yoga and Meditation in the Carceral State

Farah Godrej’s Freedom Inside? brings together a sustained attention to methodological, epistemological, and ethical challenges of studying violence within the carceral state. The book opens up the methodological entanglements at every step of the research process as Godrej navigates her own experience as a prison volunteer and participant-observer teaching yoga inside prisons. She examines these entangles as they relate to IRBs, interviewing and accessing formerly incarcerated persons, and ethnography in prison environments. Godrej carefully thinks through key methodological concepts, such as consent, confidentiality, anonymity, member-checking, without providing simple answers or resolutions. She also pushes the boundaries of who is considered a legitimate knowledge producer and what counts as scientific inquiry by co-authoring with two formerly incarcerated persons. Godrej also thoughtfully examines the role of race and gender within mass incarcerations, prisons, and population control, thus centering racial and gendered violence in a way that speaks to the Lee Ann Fujii Award.