Anti-establishment Armed Groups as Total Institutions: Exploring Transformations of the Self

Based on an empirical research on the Irish and Peruvian conflicts, this article uses Goffman’s concept of total institution to analyse women’s involvement in the armed struggle. It contends that organisations presenting themselves as the legitimate army of an embryonic state are in fact total institutions attempting to produce a particular self and identity on its members through the use of the physical environment and the framing of all social interactions that take place within their purview. However, members demonstrate agency and self efficacy by mobilizing the same physical space and framed interactions in order to either facilitate their own transformation or resist it, which results in the emergence of an alternative self and identity.