School of Sociology, Social Policy & Social Work

Dr Denis O’Hearn
Mr Jonathan Greene

The Salience of Place in Popular Resistance: A Case Study of the Contested Palestinian Village of Bilin

My research takes as its case study Bilin, a highly contested space in the West Bank, which has been a site of unwavering grassroots non-violent resistance since the construction of Israel's Wall in the Occupied Territories. It will attempt to provide an analytical picture of how residents experience and make sense of life in this very contested space and place, examining how oppressed/occupied peoples' agency is constrained and or enabled within such a context. In doing so, it will investigate both everyday forms of coping and resistance as well as 'activist spaces'.