This collection presents timely ethnographic accounts of power and resistance under extreme conditions of confinement around the world today. Contributions span case studies relating both to the United States and to understudied non-Anglophone jurisdictions such as Brazil, Ecuador, Honduras, Palestine, and Greece. Particular attention is paid by all contributions to the human body both as a target of control and a means of struggle. There follows the journal’s regular ‘Against the Day’ section, with shorter essays on struggles against imprisonment in Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and the US immigration detention system, as well as the role of intellectuals in such struggles. Contributors to this collection are a vibrant mix of internationally renowned and up-and-coming scholars.