Resistance

This book provides a broad and detailed theoretical exploration of resistance and the complexities of power and social change. Engaging with past and contemporary theoretical debates and drawing from the author’s empirical research in Europe, the USA and South East Asia, the book both challenges the limits of existing conceptual paradigms and advances theoretical knowledge about resistance. The chapters illuminate subjects such as: reactive modes of opposition and ‘against-ness’, creative and future-oriented modes of resistance, cultural and digital resistance, the role of emotions in resisting, resistant epistemologies and radical imaginations, the commodification of ‘rebelliousness’, State and public responses to resistance, and the significance of moments of confrontation between power and its opposition. By doing so, the work elucidates not only how and why people resist – or why they don’t – but also how conceptualising resistance enables us to understand contemporary social, cultural and political conflicts and cleavages.