The interrupted sacrifice: Hegemony and moral crisis among Israeli conscientious objectors

In this article, I explain why some of the most elite and dedicated soldiers in the Israeli Defense Forces ultimately became conscientious objectors. I argue that because the sacrificial moral economy, and not the state as supersubject, was hegemonically inculcated in these young people, resistance was possible. This case prompts a reconsideration of anthropological understandings of the relationship between hegemonic inculcation and resistance. Specifically, we cannot only ask to what degree subjects subscribe to hegemony but we must also ask what specifically is inculcated and how this alters agency and its object.