Skip to main content

Journeying Towards New Methods in Prison Tourism Research: Mobilizing Penal Histories at the Convict Ship Exhibition

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Tourism

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology ((PSIPP))

Abstract

You start out by stepping foot from the outside, to the inside. You are directed to enter a long, thin room that unfolds in front you. A series of information boards introduce you to where you are standing. This is not just to the start of a convict story, but a convict journey. You have just stepped inside the prison ship. (Ethnographic Diary, November 2013) Convict ships have been the subject of academic attention for the past century from a variety of disciplinary perspectives: maritime history, colonial history, and legal and penal history (see Anderson 2000; Bateson 2004; Campbell 1994; Vaver 2011). In this chapter, we attend to convict ship histories through the lens of penal tourism, focusing on how this period of carceral history has been conveyed and expressed through the tourist site of the Galleries of Justice Museum, Nottingham, UK.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 299.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 379.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Adey, Peter, David Bissell, Kevin Hannam, Peter Merriman and Mimi Sheller. 2014. The Routledge Handbook of Mobilities. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, Clare. 2000. Convicts in the Indian Ocean: Transportation from South Asia to Mauritius, 1815–53. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Baker, Bev. 2014. Crime and Punishment: Discover Nottingham’s Horrible History. Peterborough: Jarrod Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bateson, Charles. 2004. The Convict Ships, 1787–1868. Glasgow: Brown, Son and Ferguson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bruggeman, Seth. 2012. Reforming the Carceral Past: Eastern State Penitentiary and the Challenge of the Twenty-First-Century Prison Museum. Radical History Review 2012/113: 171–186.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Büscher, Monika and John Urry. 2009. Mobile Methods and the Empirical. European Journal of Social Theory 12/1: 99–116.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Butz, David and Kathryn Besio. 2009. Autoethnography. Geography Compass 3: 1660–1674.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Campbell, Charles F. 1994. The Intolerable Hulks: British Shipboard Confinement, 1776–1857. Cirencester: Heritage Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ciolfi, Luigina and Liam J. Bannon. 2007. Designing Hybrid Places: Merging Interaction Design, Ubiquitous Technologies and Geographies of the Museum Space. CoDesign: International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts 3/3: 159–180.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cresswell, Tim. 2006. On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2010. Towards a Politics of Mobility. Environment and Planning. D: Society and Space 28/1: 17–31.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crang, Mike. 1994. Spacing Times, Telling Times and Narrating the Past. Time & Society 3/1: 29–45.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2003. On Display: The Poetics, Politics and Interpretation of Exhibitions. In Cultural Geographies in Practice, eds. Alison Blunt, Pyrs Gruffudd, Jon May, Mike Ogborn and David Pinder. London: Arnold

    Google Scholar 

  • Crang, Mike and Ian Cook. 2007. Doing Ethnographies. London: Sage.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • D’Andrea, Anthony, Luigina Ciolfi and Breda Gray. 2011. Methodological Challenges and Innovations in Mobilities Research. Mobilities 6/2: 149–160.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • DeSilvey, Caitlin. 2006. Observed Decay: Telling Stories with Mutable Things. Journal of Material Culture 11/3: 318–338.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fincham, Benjamin, Mark McGuiness and Lesley Murray. 2010. Mobile Methodologies. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Geoghegan, Hilary. 2010. Museum Geography: Exploring Museums, Collections and Museum Practice in the UK. Geography Compass 4/10: 1462–1476.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gill, Nick. 2009. Governmental Mobility: The Power Effects of the Movement of Detained Asylum Seekers Around Britain’s Detention Estate. Political Geography 28/3: 186–196.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hasty, William and Peters, Kimberley. 2012. The Ship in Geography and the Geography of Ships. Geography Compass 6/11: 660–676.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hoskins, Gareth. 2007. Materialising Memory at Angel Island Immigration Station, San Francisco. Environment and Planning A 39/2: 437–455.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jewkes, Y. 2012. Autoethnography and Emotion as Intellectual Resources Doing Prison Research Differently. Qualitative Inquiry 18/1: 63–75.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, Nuala C. 1999. Framing the Past: Time, Space and the Politics of Heritage Tourism in Ireland. Political Geography 18/2: 187–207.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Last, Angela. 2012. Experimental Geographies. Geography Compass 6/12: 706–724.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Law, John and John Urry. 2004. Enacting the Social. Economy and Society 33/3: 390–410.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MacCannell, Dean. 1999. The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. California: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Macdonald, Sharon. 2007. Interconnecting: Museum Visiting and Exhibition Design. CoDesign: International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts 3/1: 149–162.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Merriman, Peter. 2014. Rethinking Mobile Methods. Mobilities 9/2: 167–187.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morin, Karen and Dominique Moran (eds.) 2015. Historical Geographies of Prisons: Unlocking the Usable Carceral Past. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moran, Dominique, Laura Piacentini and Judith Pallot. 2012. Disciplined Mobility and Carceral Geography: Prisoner Transport in Russia. Transactions of The Institute of British Geographers 37/3: 446–460.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ogborn, Miles. 2008. Global Lives: Britain and the World, 1550–1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ong, Chin-Ee, Claudio Minca and Martijn Felder. 2014. Disciplined Mobility and the Emotional Subject in Royal Dutch Lloyd’s Early Twentieth Century Passenger Shipping Network. Antipode 46/5: 1323–1345.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peters, Kimberley. 2012. Manipulating Material Hydro-Worlds: Rethinking Human and More-Than-Human Relationality Through Offshore Radio Piracy. Environment and Planning A 44/5: 1241–1254.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peters, Kimberley and Jennifer Turner. 2015. Between Crime and Colony: Interrogating (Im)Mobilities Aboard the Convict Ship. Social and Cultural Geography 16/7: 844–862.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Piché, Justin and Walby, Kevin. 2004. Problematizing Carceral Tours. British Journal of Criminology 50/3: 570–581.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ricketts Hein, Jane, James Evans and Phil Jones. 2008. Mobile Methodologies: Theory, Technology and Practice. Geography Compass 2/5: 1266–1285.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sheller, Mimi and John Urry. 2006. The New Mobilities Paradigm. Environment and Planning A 38/2: 207–226.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Strange, Carolyn and Michael Kempa. 2003. Shades of Dark Tourism: Alcatraz and Robben Island. Annals of Tourism Research 30/2: 386–405.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • The Howard League for Penal Reform. 2012. “History of the Prison System.” howardleague.org/history-of-prison-system/

  • Turner, Jennifer. 2016. The Prison Boundary: Between Society and Carceral Space. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Turner, Jennifer and Kimberley Peters. 2015a. Doing Time-Travel: Performing Past and Present at the Prison Museum. In Historical Geographies of Prisons: Unlocking the Usable Carceral Past, eds. Karen Morin and Dominique Moran. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2015b. Unlocking Carceral Atmospheres: Designing Visual/Material Encounters at the Prison Museum. Visual Communication 14/3: 309–330.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. Forthcoming. Carceral Mobilities: Interrogating Movement in Incarceration (Eds). Abingdon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Urry, John. 2002. The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2007. Mobilities. Cambridge: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Aalst, Irina and Inez Boogaarts. 2002. From Museum to Mass Entertainment the Evolution of the Role of Museums in Cities. European Urban and Regional Studies 9/3: 195–209.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vaver, Anthony. 2011. Bound With an Iron Chain: The Untold Story of How The British Transported 50,000 Convicts to Colonial America. Westborough, MA: Pickpocket Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vergo, Peter. 1997. (ed.) New Museology. London: Reaktion Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walby, Kevin and Justin Piché. 2011. The Polysemy of Punishment Memorialization: Dark Tourism and Ontario’s Penal History Museums. Punishment & Society: International Journal of Penology 13/4: 451–472.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kimberley Peters .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Copyright information

© 2017 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Peters, K., Turner, J. (2017). Journeying Towards New Methods in Prison Tourism Research: Mobilizing Penal Histories at the Convict Ship Exhibition. In: Wilson, J., Hodgkinson, S., Piché, J., Walby, K. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Tourism. Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56135-0_30

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56135-0_30

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-56134-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-56135-0

  • eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics