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How are social groups unmade? Current theories identify the symbolic power of the state as a primary factor in the creation of social groups. Drawing on Gramsci's The Southern Question, this chapter extends state-centered theories by exploring policies that are critical but under-theorized factors in group formation. These include the concession of material benefits as well as the use of coercive means. Further, while current theories focus on how social groups are made, a Gramscian perspective draws attention to how the state intervenes to prevent or neutralize group-making projects from below. This chapter explores a case of a decrease in national group solidarity. Specifically, this study explains how in the 1990s the Israeli state weakened national group formation among Palestinians by adopting two spatially distinct but coordinated strategies. First, the rearrangement of the military occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank through the establishment of an authority of self-rule (the Palestinian Authority) demobilized and divided Palestinian residents of the Occupied Territories, especially along class-cum-moral lines. Second, state practices and discourses centered on citizenship rights shifted the center of political activism among Palestinian citizens of Israel toward citizenship issues. I argue that these two routes, which I call the indirect rule route and the civil society route, were complementary components of a broader attempt to neutralize Palestinian collective mobilization around nationhood. Despite recent changes and contestations, these two strategies of rule continue to affect group formation and to create distinct experiences of politics among Palestinians under Israeli rule. Analysis of the Palestinian–Israeli case shows that the state can unmake groups through the distribution of interrelated policies that are specific to certain categories of people and places. Understanding the conditions under which certain policies of inclusion or exclusion affect group formation requires going beyond the analytic primacy currently given to the symbolic power of the state.

I am honored to present Volume 23 of Political Power and Social Theory. I do so amid tumultuous times. It is now spring 2012. Fiscal uncertainty and economic stagnation freeze the globe, racial division continues to plague political discourse in the United States (witness the case of Trayvon Martin), new social movements like Occupy proliferate and resurface while war, revolution, and political instability unsettle the Middle East. The essays in this volume do not directly address these specific issues but they do offer informed research and theoretical reflection on the larger themes the more specific issues invoke. Robin Archer's thoughts on revolution “Free Riding on Revolution” invites reflection in the wake of the revolutions that still grip the world's attention and perhaps, too, on the Occupy movement. Manali Desai's essay on the origins of neoliberalism in India offers some historical context to rising criticisms of neoliberalism around the world while also revealing the importance of national political parties in the formulation of globally circulating policies. Nitsan Chorev's essay on the World Health Organization illuminates how health programs are challenged and reformulated in response to political pressure from different parts of the world; an important observation given that international organizations face the prospect of dwindling revenues amid the current economic crisis.