Everyday resistance is a form of resistance based on the actions of people in their everyday lives. Everyday resistance is perceived to be the most common form of resistance to oppression. This particular form of resistance is a way of undermining power in a matter that is typically disguised or hidden. Everyday resistance (also, by James C. Scott, called infrapolitics) is a dispersed, quiet, seemingly invisible and disguised form of resistance [1] seemingly aiming at redistribution of control over property. [2] The acts of everyday resistance are considered to be relatively safe and they require either little or no formal coordination. [2]
Everyday resistance can be understood as exploited, oppressed people undermining power as a way of surviving, [1] holding onto their dignity [3] and executing agency. [4]
Defining resistance depends on interpretation and context. Activities described as resistance can alternatively be perceived as rebellion or even deviance. [5] The oppositional act that is resistance is, like all acts, situated within certain relations with regards to a certain space and time. Resistance engages with various actors and takes different forms. Techniques, discourses and practices vary. [1] Resistance can be understood as any mental or behavioral act in which an individual makes an attempt to stop, repel, prevent, expose, abstain from, withstand, work against or refuse to comply with, any form of oppression or violence. [3]
The concept was first introduced by James C. Scott in the year of 1985. By introducing the concept of everyday resistance, Scott was able to study how peasants resisted power in acts of everyday life. Studying a subaltern culture for the first time, that being one of peasants in South East Asia, Scott saw how small acts of resistance were being coordinated. Despite the concept originating from the study of peasants however, everyday resistance is not a peasant monopoly [2] but rather a concept of all categories of subalterns.
Political ecology is the study of the relationships between political, economic and social factors with environmental issues and changes. Political ecology differs from apolitical ecological studies by politicizing environmental issues and phenomena.
Identity politics is politics based on a particular identity, such as ethnicity, race, nationality, religion, denomination, gender, sexual orientation, social background, caste, and social class. The term could also encompass other social phenomena which are not commonly understood as exemplifying identity politics, such as governmental migration policy that regulates mobility based on identities, or far-right nationalist agendas of exclusion of national or ethnic others. For this reason, Kurzwelly, Pérez and Spiegel, who discuss several possible definitions of the term, argue that it is an analytically imprecise concept.
Oppression is malicious or unjust treatment of, or exercise of power over, a group of individuals, often in the form of governmental authority or cultural opprobrium. It is related to regimentation, class, society, and punishment. Oppression may be overt or covert, depending on how it is practiced. Oppression refers to discrimination when the injustice does not target and may not directly afflict everyone in society, but instead targets or disproportionately impacts specific groups of people.
Structural violence is a form of violence wherein some social structure or social institution may harm people by preventing them from meeting their basic needs or rights.
Marxist feminism is a philosophical variant of feminism that incorporates and extends Marxist theory. Marxist feminism analyzes the ways in which women are exploited through capitalism and the individual ownership of private property. According to Marxist feminists, women's liberation can only be achieved by dismantling the capitalist systems in which they contend much of women's labor is uncompensated. Marxist feminists extend traditional Marxist analysis by applying it to unpaid domestic labor and sex relations.
In social justice theory, internalized oppression is a recognized understanding in which an oppressed group accepts the methods and incorporates the oppressive message of the oppressing group against their own best interest. Rosenwasser (2002) defines it as believing, adopting, accepting, and incorporating the negative beliefs provided by the oppressor as the truth.
James Campbell Scott was an American political scientist and anthropologist specializing in comparative politics. He was a comparative scholar of agrarian and non-state societies.
Intersectionality is a sociological analytical framework for understanding how groups' and individuals' social and political identities result in unique combinations of discrimination and privilege. Examples of these factors include gender, caste, sex, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, religion, disability, height, age, and weight. These intersecting and overlapping social identities may be both empowering and oppressing. However, little good-quality quantitative research has been done to support or undermine the practical uses of intersectionality.
In gender studies, hegemonic masculinity is part of R. W. Connell's gender order theory, which recognizes multiple masculinities that vary across time, society, culture, and the individual. Hegemonic masculinity is defined as a practice that legitimizes men's dominant position in society and justifies the subordination of the common male population and women, and other marginalized ways of being a man. Conceptually, hegemonic masculinity proposes to explain how and why men maintain dominant social roles over women, and other gender identities, which are perceived as "feminine" in a given society.
Civil resistance is a form of political action that relies on the use of nonviolent resistance by ordinary people to challenge a particular power, force, policy or regime. Civil resistance operates through appeals to the adversary, pressure and coercion: it can involve systematic attempts to undermine or expose the adversary's sources of power. Forms of action have included demonstrations, vigils and petitions; strikes, go-slows, boycotts and emigration movements; and sit-ins, occupations, constructive program, and the creation of parallel institutions of government.
In the social sciences, coordinated management of meaning (CMM) provides an understanding of how individuals create, coordinate and manage meanings in their process of communication. Generally, CMM is "how individuals establish rules for creating and interpreting the meaning and how those rules are enmeshed in a conversation where meaning is constantly being coordinated", and where "human communication is viewed as a flexible, open and mutable process evolving in an ongoing joint interaction, which enables movement, shifts and evolving ways with each other". CMM embodies this vision and allows interpersonal connection and open conversation among individuals or groups, and can be applicable across multiple academic fields and social scenarios.
Response-Based Therapy is the application of response-based practice in the area of therapy. The overall approach conceptualizes humans as active agents responding to and within richly complex social contexts. It is informed by social justice, and human rights. This approach leaves behind the radical, intra-psychic focus on the individual in isolation that is so common in psychology and psychotherapy. The therapeutic approach is a relatively new psychotherapeutic approach for responding to people who are experiencing difficulties of any sort. The approach was developed in the 1990s by Allan Wade with contributions by Nick Todd and Linda Coates. The approach involves analyzing social interaction, social context, social responses, and how the individual is responding to and making sense of this complexly rich psycho-social situation.
Transmisogyny, otherwise known as trans-misogyny and transphobic misogyny, is the intersection of transphobia and misogyny as experienced by trans women and transfeminine people. The term was coined by Julia Serano in her 2007 book Whipping Girl to describe a particular form of oppression experienced by trans women. In a 2017 interview with The New York Times, Serano explores the roots of transmisogyny as a critique of feminine gender expressions which are "ridiculed in comparison to masculine interests and gender expression."
Decoloniality is a school of thought that aims to delink from Eurocentric knowledge hierarchies and ways of being in the world in order to enable other forms of existence on Earth. It critiques the perceived universality of Western knowledge and the superiority of Western culture, including the systems and institutions that reinforce these perceptions. Decolonial perspectives understand colonialism as the basis for the everyday function of capitalist modernity and imperialism.
Stellan Vinthagen is a professor of sociology, a scholar-activist, and the Inaugural Endowed Chair in the Study of Nonviolent Direct Action and Civil Resistance at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he directs the Resistance Studies Initiative. He is also Co-Leader of the Resistance Studies Group at University of Gothenburg and co-founder of the Resistance Studies Network, as well as Editor of the Journal of Resistance Studies, and a Council Member of War Resisters International (WRI), and academic advisor to the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC). His research is focused on resistance, power, social movements, nonviolent action, conflict transformation and social change. He has since 1980 been an educator, organizer and activist in several countries, and has participated in more than 30 nonviolent civil disobedience actions, for which he has served in total more than one year in prison.
Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance is a 1985 book on everyday forms of rural class conflict as illustrated in a Malaysian village, written by anthropologist James C. Scott and published by Yale University Press.
Epistemic injustice is injustice related to knowledge. It includes exclusion and silencing; systematic distortion or misrepresentation of one's meanings or contributions; undervaluing of one's status or standing in communicative practices; unfair distinctions in authority; and unwarranted distrust.
Stalin's Peasants or Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization is a book by the Soviet scholar and historian Sheila Fitzpatrick first published in 1994 by Oxford University Press. It was released in 1996 in a paperback edition and reissued in 2006 by Oxford University Press. Sheila Fitzpatrick is the Bernadotte E. Schmitt Distinguished Service Professor (Emeritus), Department of History, University of Chicago.
Slow violence is violence which occurs gradually and is not necessarily visible. Slow violence is incremental and is dynamic across time, in contrast with a conception of general violence as an event or action that is immediate, explosive and spectacular. Outcomes of slow violence include environmental degradation, long-term pollution and climate change. Slow violence is also closely linked to many instances of environmental racism.
This is a select annotated bibliography of scholarly English language books and journal articles about the subject of genocide studies; for bibliographies of genocidal acts or events, please see the See also section for individual articles. A brief selection of English translations of primary sources is included for items related to the development of genocide studies. Book entries may have references to journal articles and reviews as annotations. Additional bibliographies can be found in many of the book-length works listed below; see Further Reading for several book and chapter-length bibliographies. The External links section contains entries for publicly available materials on the development of genocide studies.