Questions:
How did individuals experience the community?
How did the individual impact their conditions?
How did the meaning of their actions change in the circumstances?
What symbols were defining their perspective?
Answers:
Individuals began to think that the prison community was legitimate because of a unified interpretation of symbols. This was most apparent when the priest visited, and the prisoners introduced themselves by number and explained their ‘crime.’ In typical circumstances, lying to a priest is wrong because of their symbolic role, but the prisoners were so effectively convinced by the symbols around them: jumpsuits, prisoner numbers, bars on cells, visiting priest, etc. 819 felt so connected to the community that he did not want to leave early as a bad prisoner. Prisoner 416 entered the community later, and therefore missed the conditioning period. Upon entering, he did not respond to the guards brutality, because he did not experience the same conditioning as his counterparts. His interpretation of his environment and the validity of its symbols was vastly different than the other prisoners, and that is why he was so separated from them, as shown that no one supported his hunger strike or would even give up their blanket. The prisoners tried to impact their conditions by making them better with striking and collective action. The guards were not trying to make conditions better for themselves, but focused on worsening conditions for the prisoners. Because they symbolically must punish them, they found it their personal goal to dismantle the prisoner’s sense of self with various symbols: arbitrary commands, counts, etc.
Perspective 2: Social Conflict Approach
Questions:
How was the community divided?
How did the guards preserve their power?
How did the prisoners fight for themselves?
Answers:
The community was arbitrarily divided, yet the separation was defining in their experiences. Each group immediately tried to strengthen their own group. The experiment was not innately prisoners vs guards, but the groups made it that way. The prisoners united together initially -- including rejecting the nicer dinner of the privilege cell. The guards united with increasingly brutal treatment. The guards preserved power by maintaining that each prisoner had no right to refuse them. They realized the most effective method was to punish everyone except the trouble-maker to remove the unity the prisoners once had. Ultimately the prisoners had no reason to stay united, so this tactic removed their collective strength, and therefore the prisoners had to decide their own individual course of action -- whether it be rebellion or following every rule. Moreover even the model inmates were punished, which seems counterintuitive, but demonstrates that guards’ regime was based on constant terror.
A sociological imagination would have greatly aided the participants’ sanity, but would have made the results much less gruesome and compelling. The participants completely redefined their biography because of the history of their prison community. The prisoners demonstrated that when they introduced themselves to the priest as a their prison number and accounted the fake crime they committed to come here. Their new and adapting identities were formed because of their environment. If the participants used their sociological imaginations, they could identify, and possibly fix, the thinking patterns that were slowly being conditioned into them.
This experiment supports the fundamental idea behind the sociological imagination: the individual is affecting their society and vice versa. The experiment’s brutality is likely the result of some guards becoming aggressive and setting standards for the rest. Watching the video, I could see that every event -- caused by an individual or group -- would drastically impact the entire environment. Even once 8612 left, his presence remained in their community because of his impact, and that is why they started the rumors about him returning. Every individual was crucial in shaping the community, but that doesn’t mean one person can dictate. When 416 tried to do a hunger strike alone, he failed because he was only an individual protesting, and that is why he failed. I see that an individual can make a change if (some of) the community is supportive. This experiment built my sociological imagination because I could see the direct cause and effect of individual actions in the community and the community upon individual actions. When we study the sociological imagination on a macro-level, we can’t see the clear connection -- especially in between individuals.
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