Tali C., Flickr, 2011.
The last two decades have seen the formation of Palestinian state structures, while the Palestinian (proto-) citizenry has witnessed a transformation in the modes of everyday life regulation and management. The transition from a situation of direct occupation to 'state building' under indirect occupation subjected Palestinian society to a compounded set of regulatory systems that are transforming and re-defining the meaning of Palestinian lives. The dual authority, under which Palestinians live, the Palestinian Authority and Israel, has generated multiple legal systems that manage different but often intersecting aspects of Palestinians' lives.
The focus on everyday life has received relatively little attention in academic literature and presents an original area of investigation that is strengthened by its attention to the multiple regulatory layers – local, regional, international – that impinge upon and shape the lives of Palestinians living under occupation. Most significantly, the ways in which Palestinians from different groups and areas negotiate these multi-layered technologies of normative governance, remain seriously under-examined and inadequately understood in scholarly literature.
This project seeks to examine the way Palestinians are influenced and transformed by these complex regulatory and normative systems, and the ways in which Palestinians in their everyday lives perceive, negotiate, manipulate, adapt and resist them. The research explores the forms of plural subjectivity which replicate themselves through engagement with different norms, institutions, and actors in a non-sovereign state-like apparatus, within a context of Israeli political and economic domination and the rise of neoliberal modes of governance.
This project forms part of the Academic Collaboration with Arab Universities Programme, funded by the Emirates Foundation.
Project Outputs
Research Team
Chetan Bhatt | Principal Investigator
Chetan Bhatt is Director of the LSE Centre for the Study of Human Rights and Professor of Sociology.
Mudar Kassis | Co-Principal Investigator
Mudar is Assistant Professor and Director of the Muwatin Institute for Democracy and Human Rights at Birzeit University .
Haneen Naamneh | Research Assistant
Haneen is a PhD candidate in the LSE Department of Sociology department researching Palestinians in Jerusalem and their engagement with the Israeli legal system since 1967.