To resist = to create? Some thoughts on the concept of resistance in cultural criminology

Abstract

Today, we are told, the practice of resistance – especially political resistance in the form of protest and activism – is making a comeback. ‘The world is facing a wave of uprisings, protests and revolutions’, according to the back cover of Paul Mason’s influential recent book Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere (2012), an engrossing text that has become something of a handbook for all sorts of activ‐ ists, from hard-core cyber-protestors to would-be revolutionaries. But while resistance is once again highly fashionable, we should not lose sight of the fact that it is also characterized by a palpable lack of definitional consensus, with the term being employed in a haphazard fashion to describe everything from fullblown revolutionary protest (Adib-Moghaddam, 2013; McDermott & Stibbe, 2006) to women who watch television soap operas (Brown, 1994). This broad application of the label ‘resistance’ to a very diverse and often contradictory set of practices also extends to a growing number of activities and pursuits that occur within the discipline of criminology. It is essential therefore that criminologists interested in studying the subject do so with some measure of conceptual clarity. This article aims to provide a more analytical understanding of the label ‘resist‐ ance’ – especially as it is deployed and appropriated in Western liberal democra‐ cies. It sets out from the premise that the notion of resistance, although it has been current in criminology for some time, is still vaguely defined. In order to provide more analytical precision, we will first review how notions of resistance and rebellion are currently employed within criminology generally and cultural criminology specifically. In the second part, we explore the implications for how we might conceive of a conception of resistance as a positive or ‘creative force’, rather than simply a negative counter-reaction against cultural, social or econom‐ ical power relations that exist at a particular moment in a society. The third part is devoted to four events that radically transform a certain situation in the fields of politics, art, love and science. In the fourth part we investigate the limitations of resistance by reference to the counterculture of the Sixties. In the fifth and final part, we put forward the case for thinking about resistance as a three-stage process.