Women in Prison: Victims or Resisters? Representations of Agency in Women’s Prisons in Greece

Abstract

Women in prison have consistently been reconfigured in the literature. The prevailing binary is one that views women as either passive and victims or independent resisters. However, these definitions are exclusionary and do not inform each other. As a result, women in prison are employed as a tool for expressing specific theoretical ideologies and research expectations. Using Greece as a research example, I will attempt to take the debate forward and enable a discussion of the epistemology of theorizing and researching identity in women’s prisons.