Stellan Vinthagen

Sovereign power, disciplinary power and biopower: resisting what power with what resistance?

This article links Foucaultian power forms with its corresponding resistance. If resistance is a reaction to power, then the characteristics of the power strategy/relation affect the kinds of resistance that subsequently prevail. Accordingly, it becomes interesting to discuss what kinds of resistance emanate from what kinds of power. We discuss this relationship between power and resistance by drawing on Foucault’s ‘triangle’: (I) sovereign power; (II) disciplinary power; and (III) biopower. Thus, deviating from Foucaultian studies’ preoccupation with ‘power’, we utilise Foucault in order to focus on ‘resistance’. And by connecting to empirical examples from within the emerging field of resistance studies we argue that the peculiarities of power decide how resistance can be conducted.

Dimensions of Everyday Resistance: An Analytical Framework:

Since James Scott introduced the concept of ‘everyday resistance’ in 1985, research has grown within partly overlapping fields. Existing studies utilize very different definitions, methodologies and understandings of ‘everyday resistance’, which makes a systematic development of the field difficult. In previous work, the authors have suggested a theoretical and definitional framework where everyday resistance is understood as a specific kind of resistance that is done routinely yet is not publicly articulated with political claims or formally organized. A more comprehensive and systematic exploration of this challenging phenomenon is possible through an analysis where: repertoires of everyday resistance are taken into account, together with relations between actors, as well as the spatialization and temporalization of resistance. These analytical dimensions are explained and motivated through illustrations from existing research. Finally, it is argued all four dimensions need to be studied in intersections.

Exploring ‘irrational resistance’

This article will examine irrationality in relation to the concept of resistance. Is there such a thing as an irrational resistance? While one tendency has been to irrationalise the ‘other’ and their resistance in order to construct a subaltern identity position, within the social sciences, an opposing tendency can also be identified; there is a trend to try to rationalise what seems to be people’s irrational behaviours. In this article, however, we will take a different stance by arguing that resistance is generally both irrational and rational depending on its relation to power.

Fighting with and Against the Time: The Japanese Environmental Movement's Queering of Time as Resistance

Abstract This article aims to add to the discussion on civil society, resistance, and environmental politics by departing from the concepts of affects, time, and temporality. In essence, the article suggests two things. Firstly, when theorizing civil society, we argue that we should depart from the idea that the present is not a singular, linear moment, but comprises affective relations to other times and people situated within these times. To support the argument, we will display how the ‘doing’ of various civil societies is performed in relation to people of the past as well as the future—that is, how already deceased people of the past or not-yet-born people of the future contribute to the creation of the present in various ways. Secondly, we will show how civil society actors are carrying out various forms of resistance against global warming by suggesting multiple temporalities that are operating simultaneously. By reviewing interviews with local representatives of the environmental movement in Tokyo, the promotion of another temporality prevails as a form of resistance, or as a means to resist, in order to negotiate current discourses and future prospects. To further understand this embracing of time, the article is inspired by affective theory and takes temporality in queer studies as a starting point to examine different strategies of resistance. Overall, the article highlights the importance of adding the affects/time nexus to the analysis of national and transnational civil societies.

Rethinking nonviolent action and contentious politics: Political cultures of nonviolent opposition in the indian independence movement and Brazil’s landless workers movement

The emerging synthesis between nonviolent action and contentious politics studies has yielded important insights. Yet it also reproduces the dichotomy between politics and culture that continues to haunt both fields. Extending recent work by Jean-Pierre Reed and John Foran, our contribution introduces the political cultures of nonviolent opposition concept to forge a new synthesis, one that recognizes the politics of nonviolent culture and the culture of nonviolent politics. We apply our theoretical framework to two empirical cases, the Indian independence movement and the Landless Workers Movement in Brazil (known as Movimento Sem Terra or MST), and conclude with ideas for further research on political cultures of nonviolent opposition.

How resistance encourages resistance : Theorizing the nexus between power, ‘Organised Resistance’ and ‘Everyday Resistance’

ABSTRACT Lately, the concept of ‘resistance’ has gained considerable traction as a tool for critically exploring subaltern practices in relation to power. Few researchers, however, have elaborated on the inter-linkage of shifting forms of resistance; and above all, how acts of everyday resistance entangle with more organized and sometimes mass-based resistance activities. In this paper, these entanglements are analysed by taking into consideration the connections between articulations of resistance and technologies of power. Empirical observations from Cambodia are theorized in order to provide better theoretical tools for searching and investigating the inter-linkage between different resistance forms that contribute to social change. In addition, it is argued that modalities of power and its related resistance must be understood, or theorized, in relation to the concepts of ‘agency’, ‘self-reflexivity’ and ‘techniques of the self’.

Decolonizing Civil Resistance

Western scholars dominating the field generally suggest that civil resistance struggles involve public contention with unjust states to expand political rights and civil liberties. We argue that th...

Resisting resettlement in Rwanda: rethinking dichotomies of “survival”/“resistance” and “dominance”/“subordination”

ABSTRACT This article problematizes the dichotomies between “survival” and “resistance,” and between “dominance” and “subordination.” Based on fieldwork in Rwanda among peasants who experienced the country’s large-scale villagization program, the article shows how some poor farmers – motivated by survival needs – negotiate the reform pressures in a way that amounts to “everyday resistance,” while the local reform implementers – as a result of their “in-between position” as leaders and members of the local communities – navigate between resistance and dominance in ambivalent ways. In this way, our empirical data contribute to the field of resistance studies, particularly to explorations of “everyday resistance,” by (1) questioning the conventional focus on the political consciousness (or “class antagonism”) of subalterns, as well as (2) destabilizing the binary class model of dominant superiors and resisting subalterns.

Defining and Analyzing “Resistance”: Possible Entrances to the Study of Subversive Practices

This article explores the meaning of “resistance” and suggests a new path for “resistance studies,” which is an emerging and interdisciplinary field of the social sciences that is still relatively fragmented and heterogeneous. Resistance has often been connected with antisocial attitudes, destructiveness, reactionary or revolutionary ideologies, unusual and sudden explosions of violence, and emotional outbursts. However, we wish to add to this conceptualization by arguing that resistance also has the potential to be productive, plural and fluid, and integrated into everyday social life. The first major part of the article is devoted to discuss existing understandings of resistance with the aim of seeking to capture distinctive features and boundaries of this social phenomenon. Among other things, we will explore resistance in relation to other key concepts and related research fields. We then, in the article’s second major part, propose a number of analytical categories and possible entrances aiming at inspire more in-depth studies of resistance.