Tactics Of Resistance Research Articles

From Spectators to Participants: Rhetorical Approaches to Digital Nonviolent Resistance in Social Media Video

ABSTRACT This article contributes a rhetorical approach to nonviolent resistance that is enacted in short-form social media video environments. By examining how three viral videos on the platform TikTok reimagine the nonviolent resistance tactics of sabotage, disruption, and civil disobedience, this article considers the similarities, differences, aptitudes, and constraints of digital nonviolent resistance in social media video compared to fully offline counterparts. Consideration of three short-form social media videos that involve sabotaging an antiabortion group’s web portal, disrupting a Donald Trump campaign rally, and enacting civil disobedience by dancing without a headscarf in Iran showcase digital nonviolent resistance in social media video to more rapidly coordinate ad-hoc social networks, be more intensely calibrated for mediation, be more global and lighthearted, and be comparatively limited in scale, scope, efficacy, and risk to participants while still rhetorically generating meaningful consequences.

Resistance in the data-driven society

Individuals and groups increasingly seek to resist the harms and risks of a data-driven society. This essay explores the possibility of individual and collective resistance vis-à-vis datafication, drawing on examples from across the globe. It shows how infrastructure, political agency, and tactics have changed in response to datafication. It reviews six resistance tactics, distinguishing between “defensive resistance” and “productive resistance”: self-defence, subversion, avoidance, literacy, counter-imagination, and advocacy campaigning. Investigating them offers insights on the ability of social actors to contribute to innovation in mobilising practices amidst intrusive surveillance.

Mētis: a framework for understanding tactics of resistance

ABSTRACT Teachers’ negative experiences of high-stakes accountability have been documented extensively, but the ways in which teachers are able to engage in tactics of resistance in response are less well known. This is most especially true in terms of the subtle, covert forms of resistance which occur through the practice of teachers’ everyday working lives. This paper contributes through a novel exploratory application of ‘Mētis’, a framework for understanding tactics of resistance derived from the thought of Detienne and Vernant (1978). When Mētis is harnessed alongside de Certeau’s (1984) notion of the practice of everyday life, it provides an innovative means of exploring the complex, elusive and intricate ways in which teachers pursue tactics of resistance within a context of high-stakes accountability. By so doing, it demonstrates how teachers are able to evade or resist high-stakes accountability in order to pursue their own educational goals. Thus, the article also adds to an understanding of the gap between policy formulation and its enactment. This initial exploratory study contributes to the literature by offering a transferable conceptual approach which is recommended for broader use while identifying some important considerations which attend the empirical application of Mētis.

“Niente serre, voglio fare la cheffa”. La vita quotidiana dei bambini e delle bambine in contesti di marginalità

Based on an ethnographic case study of children’s everyday life in the Ragusan “Fascia trasformata” (Sicily), the paper proposes a reflection on children’s everyday life in contexts of marginality and spatial and cultural segregation, exploring some dynamics of resistance and children’s agency. It examines three pedagogical issues, which are crucial for preventing and combating inequalities from an early age: namely, tactics of resistance to the idea of a future determined by the family, the complexity of the relationship with the school, and forms of “sibling caregiving”.

Valuing Trans Lives After Suicide: Rituals of Commemoration in Digital Social Media Culture

In 2014, a trans teenager named Leelah Alcorn posted a suicide letter to her public Tumblr account. Almost a decade later, in 2023, Eden Knight, another young trans woman, posted a suicide letter to her public Twitter account. Both suicide letters went viral and inspired memorial hashtags on the platforms where they initially circulated. In this article, I identify similarities between the cases, conceptualizing both as rituals of commemoration aimed toward restoring value to trans lives lost too soon. My analysis shows how ordinary users leverage the connective affordances embedded within popular social media platforms to sustain structured, value-laden acts of remembrance and mourning. In doing so, I elucidate four stages of the ritual process: (1) sharing suicide letters, (2) enshrining selfies, (3) modulating memories, and (4) casting blame. Ultimately, I argue that trans-led rituals of commemoration can function as justice-oriented tactics of resistance against engrained systems of oppression that perpetuate disproportionally high rates of early death within trans communities.

Counter-hegemony with English Language

Presented in this article are explications of language ideology and a sociocultural linguistic theory that links language ideologies to language identities with implications for acquiring and using hegemonic English language knowledge. The theory frames analyses of data collected in a study of college students in the People’s Republic of China conducted to discern the impact of national language ideologies promoting the English language. Prior research indicates that students with strong indigenous/local language ideologies and identities commonly adopt anti-hegemonic tactics of linguistic resistance to using the English language exclusively or extensively. Students in this study envisioned markedly uncommon counter-hegemonic tactics where the English language is used to elevate the hegemony of Chinese language.

Education during colonialism in India and Norway: A comparative study

This research compares and contrasts how colonialism affected the educational systems in Norway and India. It looks at how British colonial control affected education in India via a historical lens, highlighting how it helped spread colonial ideals and maintain social inequalities. On the other hand, the study explores Norway's history under Swedish and Danish control, emphasizing initiatives to maintain cultural identity through patriotic movements and education. The research clarifies the disparate paths of educational development by contrasting these environments and exposing different colonial control and resistance tactics. It examines how colonial education continues to influence modern educational practices, governmental regulations, and public attitudes in both nations. The research provides insights into the intricacies of colonial education systems and their lasting effects on post-colonial countries through the use of a comparative methodology.

Ecofeminism and the Cultural Affinity to Genocidal Capitalism: Theorising Necropolitical Femicide in Contemporary Greece

Resilient necrocapitalism and the zombie genre of representations of current dystopias are persistent in their political purpose in producing changes in the social order to benefit plutocracies around the world. It is through a thanatopolitical lens that we should view the successive losses of life, and this zombie genre has come to represent a dystopia that, for political purposes, is intended to produce changes in societies which have tolerated the violent deaths of women. This article focuses on contemporary Greece and proposes a theoretical framework where femicide is understood as a social phenomenon that reflects a global gendered necropolitical logic which equals genocide. Such theoretical assemblages have to be situated within intersectional imperatives and tacitly as the result of the capitalist terror state performed in an expansive and direct immediate death, exacerbated by the lingering slow social death of the welfare state. The article contends that the scripted hetero-patriarchal social order of the necrocapitalist state poses a unique political threat to societies. With the silence of the complicity of the state, what is necessary is the creation and spread of new political knowledge and new social movements as resilient political tactics of resistance. This article foregrounds an ecofeminist perspective on these issues and considers ways through which new pedagogies of hope can counter the gendered necropolitics of contemporary capitalism in Greece.

Good Muslims, good citizens? An intersectional approach to Muslims’ everyday (hidden) resistance tactics in Belgium

ABSTRACT This paper explores Muslim participants’ political endeavours, aiming to tackle their marginalization in a secular racialized environment. Drawing on critical race scholarship (Du Bois), resistance studies (de Certeau, Scott) and lived experiences captured by in-depth interviews with Muslims in Belgium, I focus on everyday hidden resistance tactics enacted by my research subjects to challenge the status quo. I find my research participants aiming to counter racialization through everyday (hidden) practices such as reversing the Muslim gaze, modelling their religious behaviour as a form of da’wa and building up a counterpower to achieve recognition as citizen. Second, this study shows the salience of Du Bois’ notion of double consciousness – or Muslim participants seeing themselves through the eyes of the dominant group – shaping subordinate forms of political resistance.

Leo Tolstoy’s Anti-Colonial Views and Their Influence on Liberation Movements in Africa

Leo Tolstoy is one of the few Russian thinkers of the pre-Soviet era whose views influenced leaders of liberation movements in Africa. Soviet researchers explored his anti-colonial views and their perception in the African continent. Although based on extensive source material, these publications are overly ideologized. The topic is reconsidered, using previously untapped archival data, as well as publications which appeared in Russia and internationally over the past thirty years. Tolstoy’s first attempts to speak out in the press about the colonial partition of Africa date to the Italo-Ethiopian War of 1895–1896. He denounced colonial expansion as an attempt by governments to distract their people from problems at home and force them to sacrifice themselves for business and political interests of others. Tolstoy advised people in metropoles not to take part in colonial schemes, and prompted colonised peoples to defend their rights through peaceful means so that the vicious circle of violence could be broken. His anticolonial rhetoric resonated in Africa, and from the beginning of the 20th century, his ideas were accepted as a guideline. M.K. Gandhi, a future leader of the struggle for Indian independence, who spearheaded a civil-rights movement of South African Indians in the 1900s, used Tolstoy’s ideas in developing his tactics of nonviolent resistance (satyagraha). Indirectly, these ideas continued to impact the South African liberation movement thanks to Gandhi’s influence. It was not until 1961 that the African National Congress (ANC) had to form a military organisation to fight against the apartheid regime. Yet the ANC managed to achieve a non-violent transition from apartheid to non-racial democracy. The success is associated with President N.R. Mandela, who shared Tolstoy’s views on the need to abandon armed confrontation.

The publicness of voluntary action during crisis: From resilience mechanisms to resistance tactics

ABSTRACT Although the volunteerism approach is regarded as a helpful strategy, critical concerns arise regarding the dynamics of vulnerability and the publicness of disaster-affected communities’ collective action. This study aims to examine the publicness meaning of public interest and its function in enhancing resilience capacity through voluntary action. Using a hermeneutic approach, this study investigates the collective action of “Canthelan” food sharing within the environmental structure of the Special Region of Yogyakarta, Indonesia, during the COVID-19 outbreak. The findings indicate that voluntary action in the context of “Canthelan” is a response to crises accumulated by the pandemic’s socioeconomic threat, the emergence of societal vulnerabilities, and the failure of social protection policies. Voluntary action functions as an alternative resilience mechanism for vulnerable and disadvantaged communities by providing access to and control over food resources in an egalitarian interaction space. Simultaneously, the constructed mechanisms become structurally aggregated knowledge narratives and manifestations of contestation concerning the development of resilience. Voluntary action mechanisms contribute to the development of social resilience through the mediation process, which is a process of mutual support and interaction to face and adapt to threats. However, the deterministic view of power authority hinders the transformative capacity of voluntary action.

Afterword. Relations, Refusal, Reticulation

The articles in the special issue ‘Infrastructural Lives' draw attention to the ‘hidden transcript' of infrastructural practices in distinct urban and rural locations in India and Vietnam, showing technical labour, outright refusal, and improvisation across myriad reticulated connections to be elements of an ‘infrapolitics' that is practical, responsive, and reckons in various ways with the forces of calculability and control inherent in infrastructural expansion, digital surveillance, and urban redevelopment. The authors explore how roads are policed and navigated, how livelihoods are transformed by new technological systems, and how diverse tactics of negotiation and refusal can be mobilised to sustain lives. These articles demonstrate that tactics of resistance and refusal are elements in a wider infrastructural politics, sometimes ‘completing' networked systems and making them ‘work’ for marginalised populations, sometimes evading or refusing their logic of connection and circulation in preference to other patterns of circulation.

STRATEGIC (IN)VISIBILITY: HOW MARGINALISED CREATORS NAVIGATE THE RISKS AND CONSTRAINTS OF ONLINE VISIBILITY

Online creators need their content to be ‘seen’; visibility on platforms can provide financial, social, and representational benefits. A lot of vital research has been done on how creators try to enhance their visibility on platforms and struggle with the threat of invisibility. But, especially for marginalised creators, platformised visibility is not without risks. This paper attends to these risks and creators' tactical use of (in)visibility to manage these. Drawing on 27 interviews with creators - online sex workers, LGBTQ+ activists, sex educators - we outline the harms of hypervisibility and users’ tactics for strategic invisibility. These interviews showcase how hegemonic norms hyper- and invisibilise marginalised groups, and how these dynamics are reproduced and institutionalised on platforms. We find that marginalised creators face serious risks from their platformised hypervisibility, not just their invisibilisation. Yet within the structures of platforms these creators still find ways to manage these risks and engage with strategic invisibility. Tactics of resistance exist across groups of marginalised creators. As such, our analysis shows the need to not just gain insight into how creators maximise visibility, but also into how they seek particular types of visibility, as well as strategic invisibility.

THE RADICAL ROLE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES IN POLITICAL IMAGINATION AND PRODUCTION OF COMMON FUTURE IN BELARUSIAN PROTESTS

The following article explores the idea of how information technologies could serve the idea of a common future in the world of catastrophe. In a world of socio-political catastrophes, violent suppression of rights and freedoms, oppressive state machines and covert control tactics, attempts are being made to find soft tactics of resistance, non-violent forms of confrontation that would allow to overcome the existing patriarchal order and reveal neo-colonial practices. The digital environment can be not only a tool for the production of machines of total control or the maintenance of the capitalist order of consumption. They can also serve as a tool for soft, nonviolent resistance to rigid structures, creating emancipatory tools for overcoming oppressive power relations and transforming the socio-political environment into a more inclusive, open structure. The article also attempts to return to the discussion about the critical potential of the theory of cyberfeminism, which not only analyzes the social and political, but also revises information technologies from the point of view of their emancipatory potential.

A for Anonymous V for Viral: Analyzing Online Activism Through Carnivalesque and Politics of Spectacle

This article examines the texts and practices of online activist group ‘Anonymous’ from the perspective of, ‘carnivalesque,’ ‘détournement,’ and ‘spectacle’ in order to explore the overlaps between the tactics of online resistance and the mass media’s strategic containment. Hackers and trolls are pranksters who know the cultural and linguistic values and connotations they work with. Their practices rely on mischief, provocation, and other forms of pranks that generate spectacle both online and offline. Provocation necessitates a keen observation on dominant and popular values in one society. Carnival, as a concept, manifests new formations of togetherness in any given community. With the element of play, community building, and spectacle Anonymous is a countercultural movement in aligned with Theodore Rozsak’s conception of the term. Anonymous as a group which started as a collective for online antagonism is a perfect example through which one can observe how countercultural practices reflect and subvert hegemonic discourses. In this article, I argue that through the appropriation of mass media cultural practices, Anonymous’ activism reinforces the already-dominant language and symbols in the cultural hegemony of late capitalism. However, by embracing the playful and participatory aspects of carnivalesque, this form of activism holds the potential to transform its ‘users’ from passive voyeurs of mischief to active political subjects.

Tactics of Resistance in Zimbabwean Post-2000 Street Theatre Performances

The aim of this article is to set post-2000 street theatre in Zimbabwe apart from earlier post-1980 postcolonial theatre as representing a new radical aesthetic based on “hidden” rather than “public” transcripts and representing new forms of subaltern aesthetic practice of more direct engagement with audiences. This article analyses performance techniques whose effect is to disguise the playing of resistance against Zimbabwe’s authoritarian regime. The article applies a combination of public and hidden transcript theory and post-linear theory, examining how street theatre adopts techniques that produce and disguise resistance, making the performance appear innocuous. The focus is on how post-linear techniques, which reject dominant theatre practice, provide convenient cover for subordinate groups, appearing less confrontational and placing the hidden transcript beyond the reach of the dominant. Through a combination of James C. Scott’s theory and post-linear theories, the article interrogates the use of performance techniques as necessary in rendering the performance innocuous in contexts where authoritarian regimes censor critical and divergent art.

Knowledge-based resistance: the role of professional organisations in the struggle against statutory assessments in England

ABSTRACT This paper aims to map and understand tactics and practices of resistance to standardised testing in England by focusing on the More Than a Score (MTAS) campaign. More specifically, this paper examines the role of professional organisations affiliated to the MTAS campaign in the production and mobilisation of expert knowledge as a tool for resistance. In particular, by examining their transactions and exchanges, we identify three main tactics of resistance: i) a diffused policy approach, ii) expert reports, and iii) a deep understanding of network boundaries. The development and use of these tactics allowed MTAS to move beyond traditional forms of resistance, towards more complex and granular modes of refusal and contestation. We conclude with a discussion about how this work can extend our understanding of resistance and the tensions and compromise that multi-stakeholder resistance involve.

‘If someone, somewhere had a plan’: Disavowal in the gender-equality resistance talk of STEMM leaders

Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine (STEMM) leaders are expected to drive change towards gender equality. Little is known, however, about their capacity to do so. Drawing on 20 in-depth interviews with STEMM leaders, this article investigates how they resist gender equality efforts through disavowal within STEMM workplaces. By adopting a discourse analysis-based approach, we examine the discursive resistance tactics of disavowal, which are hitherto under-reported in this context. Disavowal includes denying the knowability of gender-based inequality as well as minimising its significance. By enhancing understanding of forms of gender-equality resistance, the article contributes to the scant literature on resistance to gender equality broadly, and specifically within STEMM. We argue that STEMM leaders who either deny that STEMM has a gender equality problem or look for ‘someone, somewhere’ to come up with a plan, need enhanced support and capability development to lead change.

Is it all just melancholic pedagogy? Accelerationism and the future of critical management education

This essay is a personal reflection on the double-bind that we as critical management studies academics feel we face in our pedagogic practice. We want to bring about more ethical and responsible management through teaching our students critiques of the excesses of capitalism, but we are all too aware of capitalism’s extraordinary resilience as a mode of social, political and economic organization. We know how its tendencies readily co-opt even the most ardent criticism into its own ever-mutating paradigm. We thus feel torn between wanting our students to think and act critically, and the fear that critique is simply a part of the process itself. Rather than calling for raising awareness, relationality and the creation of difference, we present an accelerationist provocation. We invite critical management studies educators to struggle with us through upsetting considerations – that perhaps the most effective tactics for resistance might be to encourage and exacerbate capitalism’s excesses. We conclude with a note on melancholy pedagogy and the powers of hopelessness.

The political economy of hipsters in Kazakhstan: mobilization, hybridity and class

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the political subjectivity of hipsters in Kazakhstan, the dynamics of their political mobilization, how they are influenced by global flows, and their constitution within broader issues of class. By conceptualizing hipsters as cultural hybrids who use tactics of everyday resistance and détournement in challenging the authoritarian regime in the country, the work eschews conventional approaches to the study of political mobilization in Central Asia by looking beyond ethnic, religious, and informal movements and instead focusing on this new creative class. The analysis reveals the paradox of hipsters in that they both challenge the regime through détournement, while also being the main beneficiaries of the regime’s neoliberalism. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with young people in Kazakhstan, the essay finds that hipster capacity for successful mobilization is limited because they struggle to draw support from wider society as a consequence of their focus on ideational rather than material politics.