The Czechoslovak Arms Industry and the Changing Face of Global Warfare, 1859–1989

Molly Pucci, Trinity College Dublin

Research Grant, 2018

---

This book project, Marxism and the Interpretation of Dreams: Visions of Communism in Czechoslovakia in the 1920s, examines the history of the Czechoslovak Communist Party in the period between the First and Second World Wars. In doing so, it sheds light on the evolution of the radical political left in Central Europe and the various ways that leftist intellectuals understood and engaged with the Bolshevik revolution in its earliest years.

Rather than a political history from above, the book looks at the topic through the lens of journalism, law, literature, and nationality, four of the major ways that Central European communists engaged with the Russian Revolution in the 1920s. 

Given the difficulty of learning the Czech language, the Czechoslovak Communist Party has been given almost no attention in English-language scholarship on interwar communism. This is a missed opportunity, given the size and significance of the party, and its importance in setting major precedents for other global communist movements the world over.

The book will contribute to the history of Europe and Russia after the First World War and explore the link between mass politics and radical culture at this crucial time.

The Czechoslovak Communist Party was, per capita, the largest communist movement in Europe in the interwar period. It was the only communist party in Europe that carried out its activities legally during a time when most other movements were banned. Emerging from a strong nineteenth-century social democratic and anarchist tradition, the party was rooted in the Marxism of the late Austro-Hungarian empire, which had a strongly pluralist intellectual tradition and gave us leading theorists of nationalism and national identity.

The party was used as a “model” for important decisions made in the Communist International (the Comintern) in 1922 and 1924. The party was notable not only for its unusual mass appeal and liberal tradition, but also for its national and linguistic diversity. It was initially organized as a federation of Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, German, Jewish, Polish, and Ukrainian (Ruthenian) communist parties, a structure that united different national traditions and Central European Marxist ideas and led to unique experiments in multinationalism, translations, and attempts to bridge linguistic and cultural differences through art and culture.

Because of its location between East and West, the movement was a crossroads for artistic experimentation, from Italian Futurism to Russian proletarian culture, to French surrealism. It combined Marxism with new literary and philosophical currents from East and West, from the experimental psychology of Sigmund Freud to the new philosophy of Martin Heidegger to the formless poetry of Russian avant-gardist Vladimir Mayakovsky.

This book examines the place of Czechoslovakia in the international communist movement; its complex relationship to the Soviet Union and the Russian revolution; and how (and whether) the communist movement in Czechoslovakia became “Bolshevik,” a question with implications for understanding the political radicalism of the age, the cultural and intellectual experiments that accompanied it, and the impact of the Russian revolution on twentieth-century Europe.

Through the story of the Czechoslovak communist party, this book explores three important questions: the meaning of “cultural revolution” in the 1920s premised on the communists’ belief in an indivisible link between culture and politics; the appeal of the Bolshevik revolution to leftist intellectuals in Central Europe; and the significance of law and political trials in popularizing the Russian revolution abroad.

It views the era through the lens of experiments to fuse Marxism and the radical left with artistic experimentation, ethnic and national diversity, anti-imperialism, and antifascism. In their search for revolution, leftist intellectuals of the age travelled widely, visiting Russia, Italy, the United States, Germany, and France, and translated writings from French, English, Russian, German, and Italian. The book will contribute to the history of Europe and Russia after the First World War and explore the link between mass politics and radical culture at this crucial time.

Targeting Institutional Risk Factors to Reduce Patient Violence

Jennifer Skeem, University of California, Berkeley

Barbara McDermott, University of California, Davis

David Cooke, University of Bergen

Research Grant, 2018

---

BACKGROUND: In forensic institutions, staff supervise and treat distressed adults who are involved in the criminal justice system, detained against their will, and restricted in their activities. Here, violence is common, costly, and serious. Current violence-prevention strategies focus on identifying and managing a small group of high-risk patients and are limited in their effectiveness.

According to leading theories and some evidence, strategies must be broadened to target situational or institutional risk factors (e.g., authoritarian relationships, crowding) to maximize violence prevention. Institutional risk factors—particularly those that engender a sense of injustice, disrespect, and deprivation—can provoke violence even among low- to moderate-risk patients.

This project shed light on situational risk factors featured in violence theories, and provided some empirical guidance on integrating organizational and individual approaches to maximize violence prevention.

AIMS: The goal was to assess whether targeting institutional risk factors (a population approach) adds value to violence-prevention efforts that target individual patients (a high-risk approach). Primary aims were (1) to identify institutional risk factors that most robustly predict violence rates (and are relevant both to violence theories and prevention); and (2) to test whether interventions that specifically target a unit’s institutional risk factors are feasible to implement and add value in reducing the unit’s risk level and violence rates. Given that we were unable to complete Aim 2 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the remainder of this summary focuses primarily on Aim 1.

METHOD: University investigators partnered with the Napa site of the California Department of State Hospitals (DSH-Napa) to conduct two phases of study.

In the Phase 1 Assessment, researchers conducted multi-informant, multisource assessments of twenty-six units at DSH-Napa, using the PRISM risk-assessment instrument and other well-validated measures of institutional risk factors. Assessments included semistructured interviews with 262 patients and staff (ten per unit).

In the Phase 2 Follow-up, researchers obtained data on rates of violence on each unit over a three-month (“short-term”) and twelve-month (“long-term”) follow-up period. Analyses focused on testing the association between institutional risk factors assessed at baseline and future rates of violence on units.  

RESULTS:  First, institutional risk factors strongly predicted unit-level variation in violence. For example, units’ risk classifications on the PRISM instrument (low, moderate, or high) strongly predicted units’ violence rates one year later (r= .78). Second, specific factors that strongly predicted future violence included a unit’s historical rates of violence; limited violence-relevant interventions; problems with the physical environment; and limited staff training, competencies, and accessibility. Third, patient perspectives on risk factors were particularly predictive—notably patients’ perceptions of authoritarian staff-patient relationships, a nontherapeutic social climate, and unsatisfactory services. 

SIGNIFICANCE: Violence is an ongoing and serious problem in forensic institutions. Stakeholders need strategies that can better protect staff and patients from harm, improve morale, and enhance the therapeutic milieu. This project shed light on situational risk factors featured in violence theories, and provided some empirical guidance on integrating organizational and individual approaches to maximize violence prevention. DSH-Napa is now testing the effectiveness of an intervention approach that focuses on addressing institutional risk factors for violence in a pilot randomized controlled trial.

Ordinary Soldiers? A Case Study of the Nazi-Soviet War of Annihilation

David Wildermuth, Shippensburg University

Research Grant, 2018

---

While the myth of the “clean Wehrmacht” about the German Army under National Socialism, was largely dispelled in the 1990s, this shift was accomplished without the benefit of an in-depth understanding of the individual histories of the majority of the army’s front-line combat units. Especially absent was an understanding of how front-line units interacted with the Soviet civilian population under their control.

My case study investigated the German Army’s 35^th Infantry Division to contextualize how one front-line combat unit fought this “war of annihilation.” The history of this infantry division that fought on the eastern front for the entire duration of the war lends itself to deducing the typical experiences of German front-line combat divisions during this conflict.

The extensive combat record of the division reveals many examples of extreme violence. 

Within this case study, there were two primary research questions. First, in studying the division’s combat record, what examples of extreme violence, most often understood as war crimes or crimes against humanity, can be quantified and/or explained? And second, what was the extent and nature of the contact between this front-line division and the civilian population of the Soviet Union?

The extensive combat record of the division reveals many examples of extreme violence. I found repeated instances of the summary execution of Red Army political commissars and the shooting of Red Army prisoners of war by the division. Additionally, the division’s treatment of prisoners of war, both in times of intense combat and times of relative quiet, violated international conventions observed in other campaigns.

Not all of these examples of extreme violence can be linked to orders, and some are more reflective of a front-line culture which could deviate from the military culture fostered by the divisional leadership. A further finding of my research was that soldiers and officers at times demonstrated some latitude in fulfilling orders, and even did contest certain orders involving their own physical danger. Criminal orders such as the scorched earth policy accompanying the winter 1941 retreats, however, were fully executed. Additionally, personal pressure could be brought to bear on recalcitrant officers or soldiers to adhere to draconian policies such as the unofficial “no pardon” orders issued repeatedly in 1941.

The context of the war—whether the 35^th Division was advancing, retreating, or stationary, and whether the front line was a place of intense combat or relative quiet—greatly informed the relationship between the division’s soldiers and the civilian population. With a full combat strength of over 17,000, the 35^th Division fought in largely agrarian regions whose towns and villages could not support its existential needs. In 1941 in Wassiljewa and  in 1942–43 near Gshatsk, longer deployments coupled with an entirely inadequate German supply system translated to suffocating burdens on the local population.

By the fall of 1941, neglect of the civilian population and/or its limited expropriation had turned into widespread plundering. Whenever divisional casualties mounted and the position of the 35^th Division became increasingly fraught, Soviet civilians were ruthlessly exploited as slave labor to improve the division’s situation. Orders from divisional command to the rank and file that called for a more moderate approach to the treatment of the civilian population, both in terms of comportment and requisitioning, were often disregarded. However, Soviet sources show some examples of leniency and even kindness towards the Soviet civilian population, demonstrating the limits of National Socialist Blut-und-Boden ideology as a motivator of soldiers’ behavior.

Marawi: How Violent Extremism Reached the Southern Philippines

Criselda Yabes, Independent Scholar

Research Grant, 2018

---

My objective was to interview as many as possible of the key “players” involved in the battle of Marawi that took place between May and October 2017. That meant talking to military officers ranging from generals to sergeants; Muslim rebels who joined the pro-ISIS insurgency and later surrendered; hostages; and refugees. These  interviews enabled me to write a nonfiction book that tells the story of the historic battle from beginning to end—the forces and circumstances that led to it, and how the jihadis lost and died in the five-month siege after challenging government forces. 

The daily grind of the battle also showed the unit rivalries in the military and the lack of coherence in leadership

A combination of background research, visits on the ground, and mostly one-on-one interviews took more than eighteen months (of which six months, the most intensive, were made possible by the Harry Frank Guggenheim research grant).

Writing and fact-checking took about seven months, and the book, The Battle of Marawi, was eventually published in late August 2020 in the middle of a global pandemic. It was the first book that gave a full account of the battle, including chapters on the rebel leaders, who they were, why they did it, and the alliances they made with foreign terrorists to carry out their plan to take over the Islamic City of Marawi in the southern Philippines.

It gives answers to the pressing problems of the region of Muslim Mindanao, which has been beset with on-and-off rebellions since the 1970s and which had come to this: an extremely violent situation involving an ideology taken from abroad, enmeshed with the complexities of poverty, warlord governance, corruption, and clan feuds.

The daily grind of the battle also showed the unit rivalries in the military and the lack of coherence in leadership. All of these strands came out of the interviews, bringing to the fore the significance of an event that destroyed a symbolic city and that spoke of the region’s fate.

Drug Cartels’ Violence in New and Traditional Illegal Markets

Gianmarco Daniele, Bocconi University

Research Grant, 2019

---

This document summarizes the main findings of the two papers developed within this project: “Oil Thefts and the Mexican War on Drugs” and “Pains, Guns and Moves: The Effect of the US Opioid Epidemic on Mexican Migration.”

“Oil Thefts and the Mexican War on Drugs”

In this paper, we show that the “War on Drugs” launched by Mexican President Felipe Calderón in 2007 pushed drug cartels into a new illegal business, namely large-scale oil theft. Municipalities in which the presidential candidate barely won 2007–2009 local elections exhibit a larger increase in illegal oil taps over the following years, compared to municipalities in which the presidential candidate barely lost the elections. Challenger cartels in the drug market anticipated incumbent drug cartels in entering the new illegal business, analogously to what is typically observed in legal markets. Since challengers and incumbents specialized in different criminal sectors, the expansion of challengers did not increase violence in municipalities crossed by oil pipelines. At the same time, such municipalities witnessed a deterioration of socio-economic conditions as measured by infant mortality and school dropout rates.

Violence and conflicts increased in Mexican municipalities suitable for opium production as they became highly valuable to drug cartels. People migrated out of these municipalities to escape this violence, mostly to Mexican areas close to the US border and into the US.

Pains, Guns and Moves: The Effect of the US Opioid Epidemic on Mexican Migration

The opioid epidemic and migration along the US–Mexico border are two of the most–debated topics in US politics. We show how these two topics are interlinked: the US opioid epidemic generated large Mexican migration flows.

In 2010, a series of reforms to the US healthcare system resulted in a shift in demand from legal opiates to heroin. This demand shock had considerable effects on Mexico, the main supplier of heroin consumed in the US. Violence and conflicts increased in Mexican municipalities suitable for opium production as they became highly valuable to drug cartels. People migrated out of these municipalities to escape this violence, mostly to Mexican areas close to the US border and into the US.

Religion, Conscience, and Abusive Behaviour: Understanding the Role of Faith and Spirituality in the Deterrence of Intimate Partner Violence in Rural Ethiopia

Romina Istratii, SOAS, University of London

Research Grant, 2019

---

The current project was informed by previous long-term research in Ethiopia (Istratii 2019). Year-long, theology-informed anthropological research on conjugal abuse in the local religiocultural system revealed concrete mechanisms through which theology, clergy discourses, and personal faith intertwined with sociocultural norms, gender ideals, and psychological states and dynamics to maintain harmful situations affecting the conjugal relationship.

These findings simultaneously demonstrated the resourcefulness of theology-informed religious discourse to serve as a remedial tool for certain forms of abuse and the need to integrate psychological factors in the analysis of and response to conjugal abuse. 

The current project sought to build on this research and apply it to the alleviation of conjugal abuse in Ethiopia. The study (a) investigated intersections of religious discourse and spirituality with human conscience and abusive behaviour engaging a larger number of communities in Ethiopia and working primarily with the male population; and (b) incorporated a series of culturally adapted participatory workshops with clergy to explore their understandings of conjugal abuse in their communities and the nature and influence of their own mediation in conjugal conflict, as well as to train them to respond with more preparedness to conjugal abuse.

The study engaging the male population integrated an innovative methodological approach by combining an oral and interactive survey with visual methods, showcasing drawings of conjugal abuse in Ethiopia and invoking participants’ reactions and thoughts about the same.

[The clergy] believed that religious teachings were influential in the community and could help in the deterrence and alleviation of conjugal abuse in the community.

The trainings with clergy combined presentations by equipped trainers with interactive, group, and pair activities to elicit discussions around conjugal abuse and mediation practices among the clergy. These activities were integrated in the larger UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)–funded Project dldl/ድልድል (https://projectdldl.org/).

Results from (a): The male participants found the visual methods approach of the study to be pioneering and effective in leading them to reflect on and reconsider their own attitudes towards conjugal abuse.

The study showed that the male participants had some understanding about women’s abuse in marital relationships. In their minds, abuse related more to physical violence (beating), an unequal division of labor, and an unequal power dynamic in the relationship, and to a lesser degree to sexual violence.

An important finding was participants’ belief that the Orthodox Tewahedo faith and church had an important role to play in battling women’s abuse, although it proved challenging to explore the precise mechanisms by which religious norms and values influenced male rationalizations of conjugal abuse as the participants did not directly or explicitly relate the two.

Policy implications: Men need to be engaged more substantively in awareness-raising campaigns about conjugal abuse, and their involvement could be facilitated by the church. It is likely that religious values could be invoked to condemn abusive behavior and motivate more positive male role models in marriage, but this merits further research.

Results from (b): The participatory workshops with clergy resulted in the training of 155 clergy of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The participatory workshops showed that while the clergy tried to respond to conjugal abuse in the best ways they could, they often lacked the theological acumen and means to support victims required to mediate such situations effectively.

They believed that religious teachings were influential in the community and could help in the deterrence and alleviation of conjugal abuse in the community. The training content included explanations of the church’s teachings on gender relations, marriage and domestic abuse, the psychological states of victims and perpetrators in situations of domestic violence, how to respond with confidentiality and victim safety in mind, and the legal framework and referral services available in the country to communicate to victims and survivors.

All the training sections were found to be useful by the participants, but they reported that the most useful section was the combination of a theological and a scientific perspective to build clergy preparedness.

Policy implications: Clergy-centered programs need to engage with theological teachings more substantively to ensure that they are culturally appropriate. The contribution of theological components could be more robustly evaluated to differentiate its effects from effects of other components in the training content.  

Hurt Sentiments and Blasphemy in South Asia

Neeti Nair, University of Virginia

Research Grant, 2019

---

At the time of Partition and the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947, it was widely expected that India would be “secular,” home to members of different religious traditions and communities, whereas Pakistan would be a homeland for Muslims, and an Islamic state.

Almost seventy-five years later, India appears to be on the precipice of declaring itself a Hindu Rashtra, a Hindu state, and Pakistan has drawn increasingly narrow interpretations of what it means to be an Islamic state. The one-time eastern wing of Pakistan, now the independent nation-state of Bangladesh, has oscillated between professions of secularism and an Islamic ideology. How did this come to pass? 

[V]arious ideologies of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh that were first debated in their constituent assemblies evolved to support the claims of “hurt sentiments” of majoritarian communities—Hindus in India, and Muslims in Pakistan and Bangladesh. 

Hurt Sentiments conducts an analysis of landmark debates—on the constitutional status of religious minorities before and after M.K. Gandhi’s assassination, the changing meaning of secularism in India, the shifting meaning of an “Islamic state” in Pakistan, and the resurgence of secularism as a state ideology in India and Bangladesh as a consequence of the 1971 war. In doing so, the book reveals how the various ideologies of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh that were first debated in their constituent assemblies evolved to support the claims of “hurt sentiments” of majoritarian communities—Hindus in India, and Muslims in Pakistan and Bangladesh. 

In this book project, I cross political and territorial boundaries to bring together cases of censorship that allegedly “hurt sentiments” of individuals and religious communities. The landmark lawsuits that I discuss were debated in the subcontinent’s courts and parliaments but are increasingly decided on its streets in acts of vigilantism and plays for power. My close reading of a wide range of sources also shows how hurt religious sentiments have fueled a secular resistance, both in the decades immediately following Partition, and in the present.

Economic Shocks, Social Insurance, and Violent Crimes: Evidence from Brazil

Paolo Pinotti, Bocconi University

Research Grant, 2019

---

The project “Economic Shocks, Social Insurance, and Violent Crimes: Evidence from Brazil” aimed to understand the impact of job loss on crime—particularly with regard to domestic violence—and the role of unemployment benefits in preventing criminal behavior after job loss.

To this end, we constructed a large dataset combining detailed administrative data on employment, criminal records, welfare transfers, and family relationships for the universe of Brazilian workers. 

Male job loss increases the probability of committing domestic violence by 32% and female job loss increases the probability of suffering domestic violence by 56%.

The results of the projects can be summarized as follows:

• Job loss increases the probability of committing any type of crime across all workers by 23%.
• The effect is larger for younger workers and workers who are more liquidity constrained.
• Unemployment insurance attenuates the impact of job loss on most types of crime, but the effect is transitory and vanishes away at the end of the benefit period.
• Male job loss increases the probability of committing domestic violence by 32% and female job loss increases the probability of suffering domestic violence by 56%.
• Unemployment benefits have an opposite effect on domestic violence than on any other type of crime; they increase the probability of domestic violence due to longer unemployment spells, which lead in turn to greater exposure of victims to perpetrators. 

Can the State Interrupt the Vicious Cycle of Gendered Violence that it Helped to Create? Evidence from Guatemala

Lynn Stephen, University of Oregon

Erin Beck, University of Oregon

Research Grant, 2019

---

Guatemala, a country with one of the highest rates of violence against women and girls (VAWG) globally, has over the last two decades undertaken reforms to address impunity for VAWG and provide women greater access to security and justice. This has included recognizing the gender-based killing of women as a unique crime (femicide), criminalizing physical, sexual, psychological, and economic VAWG, and establishing courts and public prosecutors that specialize in cases related to VAWG.

To what degree are these reforms combating impunity for VAWG and reshaping societal acceptance of VAWG? Are they altering women and men’s perceptions of state and nonstate systems of security and justice? Are they changing women’s decisions about whether to report, and to whom?

To answer these questions, we draw on more than fourteen months of collaborative, cross-disciplinary research between 2016 and 2023, much of it supported by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. Research included interviews with activists, service providers, judges, and public prosecutors, as well as local authorities like police, midwives, community council leaders, and communal mayors. It also involved ethnographic observations in specialized VAWG courts; analyses of specialized VAWG court case files and data; and separate focus groups with Indigenous women and Indigenous men about gender norms, women’s rights, VAWG, and authority structures in their communities.

Absent broader efforts to address structural inequalities, the impacts of [violence against women and girls] reforms are unevenly experienced, with those most vulnerable to violence and most in need of support—including Indigenous women, lower-class women, and women in rural areas—benefiting the least.

Our findings show that new laws and criminal justice reforms are not enough to prevent and punish VAWG. In Guatemala, VAWG is criminalized but the government underfunds and undersupports the very institutions meant to implement VAWG laws and refuses to reform institutions like police that often obstruct women’s access to specialized institutions. Absent broader efforts to address structural inequalities, the impacts of VAWG reforms are unevenly experienced, with those most vulnerable to violence and most in need of support—including Indigenous women, lower-class women, and women in rural areas—benefiting the least.

There are still many barriers to reporting VAWG, including women’s economic dependence on men; community and familial norms that encourage women to put up with abuse; mostly male local authorities who are uninformed of or uncommitted to women’s rights; linguistic and geographical barriers for Indigenous women in rural areas; racial, class, and gender-based discrimination among state authorities; corruption and bribery in state offices; and long delays in legal processes that put women at risk of retaliatory violence. There is a widespread lack of trust of state institutions, particularly police, and therefore women may remain silent when experiencing violence. Others develop networks of solidarity amongst themselves and/or turn to local authorities like communal mayors or community council leaders who are unaffiliated with the criminal justice system and who may be ignorant of women’s rights. Among men, while there are some who are supportive of VAWG reforms, many feel confused about social and legal changes and feel left out of the conversation about women’s rights and gender norms.

We conclude that criminal justice reform must be accompanied by social justice reform that addresses extreme race, class, gender, and place-based structural inequalities. Our research also points to the importance of involving local authorities, even those who are not connected to the criminal justice system, in discussions about VAWG, as they are often more trusted by people, particularly in rural, Indigenous communities. Additionally, involving men in transforming gender norms and combating VAWG is crucial. This engagement should be collaborative in nature, draw on men’s ideas, provide them a space to discuss their experiences of violence and their confusion about shifting gender norms, and allow them to develop amongst themselves meaningful alternatives to the dominant forms of idealized masculinity.

The Carceral State in Conflict: Between Reconciliation and Radicalization

Smadar Ben-Natan, University of Washington

Research Grant, 2020

---

This study uses the concept of the carceral state as a key to understanding national and colonial conflict by unraveling the connections between the management of conflict and the management of prisons. Ever since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967, Israel has mass-arrested Palestinians, while also agreeing on mass releases as part of peace negotiations. However, the year 2000 marked a watershed moment when the peace negotiations were forsaken and the second Palestinian uprising (“intifada”) broke out. Driven by Israel’s new position that the conflict should be managed and contained rather than resolved, Israel’s control of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) shifted from temporary occupation to a one-state paradigm.

This has also been a watershed moment for Israeli carceral policies, as this research reveals by analyzing a broad range of legal and administrative documents; a database of 170 Supreme Court decisions; previously classified archival documents, media coverage; and in-depth interviews with former prisoners, prison staff, and government officials.

Both carceral policies and prisoners’ agency are affected by in-prison encounters, and policymakers can shape those encounters to either encourage reconciliation or foster radicalization.

Before 2000, under the paradigm of occupation, Israel operated a military carceral system alongside the civilian carceral system and assigned Palestinian prisoners to either of them. Carceral policies allowed spaces for encounter between Palestinian prisoners and Israeli prisoners, professionals, and prison staff, and allowed access to education and media. These resources were used by Palestinian prisoners to develop an intimate knowledge of Israeli society and politics. Consequently, the Palestinian prisoners’ movement became instrumental in reconciliation processes leading to the 1993 Oslo Accords. However, after 2000, a reorganization of the carceral state dismantled all military prisons and transferred all Palestinian prisoners into Israel and under the tighter control of the civilian prison service, which was rebranded the “national prison authority.”

New policies shrunk spaces for encounters, minimized prisoners’ communications with the outside world, banned education and rehabilitation opportunities, and harshened living conditions, while seeking open conflict with the prisoners’ collective. This new “state-induced radicalization” sought to maintain prisoners as dangerous enemies to justify the protracted conflict. Paradoxically, the transfer of prisoners into Israel also constituted “exclusionary inclusion” of noncitizen Palestinian prisoners into state institutions of both coercion and care, which enabled prisoners to claim rights that were intended for citizens and to engage in a negotiation over their “carceral citizenship.” The reorganization of the “one carceral state” thus changed the citizenship regime in Israel/Palestine.

Current literature on political prisoners is dominated by a conflict framework of state oppression and prisoners’ resistance, which treats the state and the prisoners as constant opposites who struggle from a distance over control and political power. Conversely, this study develops a relational approach to prisons as sites of encounter where prisoners, prison staff, professionals, and government officials interact. Both carceral policies and prisoners’ agency are affected by in-prison encounters, and policymakers can shape those encounters to either encourage reconciliation or foster radicalization.

Going beyond oppression and resistance, this study posits reconciliation and radicalization as competing carceral paradigms that can be pursued both by prisoners and by the state. This framework highlights the potential role of prisoners in transitional justice and reconciliation, the possible role of the state in conflict escalation and radicalization, and the effects of the carceral state on conflict transformation and an emerging citizenship regime.