Resistance as a Way of Life: How a group of workers perpetuated insubordination to neoliberal management

Abstract

This article sheds light on how a group of workers manage to create an enduring collective resistance, in an uncongenial context of neoliberal management pushing for compliant behaviours. Research on resistance has given scant attention to the concrete conditions through which collective resisting efforts can be sustained, despite adverse contexts. We highlight the process through which everyday collective resistance produces substantial effects and becomes viewed by management and workers as an integral part of an organization’s power relations. We particularly illuminate how practices that mutually constitute belongingness and insubordination continuously reinforce collective resistance to make it the very texture of workers’ lives. We therefore analyse everyday resistance as a way of life, through which workers aim to simultaneously contest managerial authority and protect their own social boundaries in a neoliberal context. Thereby, we offer a way to reconcile recognition and post-recognition politics in a dialogue envisaging the ‘efficacy’ of resistance in a new light.