Building Capitals Pending Revolution: Gardens Behind Bars as Clinical Sociology

This chapter analyzes prison gardens through a clinical sociological lens and provides a comparative analysis across all data. Our projects represent community interventions at the intersection of gender justice, criminal justice, food justice, and human rights. At the most basic level, our work uses scientific inquiry and sociological intervention as an attempt to improve human conditions by improving incarcerated women’s access to and to increase their consumption of fruits and vegetables. Our two garden projects illustrate the importance of sociological theory and clinical sociological practice in the development of programs benefiting incarcerated women who remain underserved and disenfranchised in US society. In addition, when we apply Bourdieu’s theories of capital (Bourdieu, Sociological Theory 7:14–25; Bourdieu, Forms of capital. In J. G. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education, pp. 241–258) to understand incarcerated women’s lived experiences, we find that besides the effect of increasing food security, our interventions fostered women’s rehabilitation and well-being as sites of capital and skill-building for participants.