Skip to main content

Conceptualizing Resistance

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
  • 414 Accesses

Abstract

The conceptualization of resistance offered in this chapter builds upon some of the issues raised in the previous one. It is executed around three core issues: the relationship between the neoliberal regime of symbolic domination and contemporary social movements, the relationship between issues of “recognition” and “redistribution” and the implications of the conceptualization of domination offered in Part II for the conceptualization of resistance.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

eBook
USD   19.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   27.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    I am here using the terms “recognition” to refer to a state of affairs whereby individuals are liberated from their “misrecognition” of “symbolic effects” (Bourdieu 2000: 69). Thus, “recognition,” here, entails a rupture between one’s subjective understanding and objective structures. It entails a denaturalization of reality.

  2. 2.

    The task of establishing whether the “new social movement” thesis has ever been entirely successful in capturing the evolution of social movements in the past 30 year falls outside the scope set out in this chapter. It is nevertheless to note, as Flesher-Fominaya did, that “many of the movements never lost sight of the issues of the material inequalities that accompanied other forms of discrimination, albeit not always obvious as a core ethic” (2014: 2).

  3. 3.

    See Part II for a more detailed analysis of its role in these forms of social ordering.

Bibliography

  • Bauman, Z. (1976). Socialism: The active utopia. London: George Allen and Unwin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bilge, S. (2013). Intersectionality undone: Saving intersectionality from feminist intersectionality studies. Du Bois Review, 10(2), 405–424.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boltanski, L., & Chiapello, E. (2005). The new spirit of capitalism. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, P. (2000). Pascalian meditations. Cambridge: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Calhoun, C. (2013). Occupy Wall Street in perspective. British Journal of Sociology, 64(1), 26–38.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davies, W. (2014). The limits of neoliberalism. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davis, A. Y. (2013). Critical refusals and occupy. Radical Philosophy Review, 16(2), 425–439.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Della Porta, D. (2015). Social movements in times of austerity. Cambridge: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Duggan, L. (2003). The twilight of equality? Neoliberalism, cultural politics, and the attack on democracy. Boston: Beacon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Flesher-Fominaya, C. (2014). Social movements and globalization, how protests, occupations and uprisings are changing the world. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Flipo, F. (2004). L’Altermondialisme: un nouveau movement emancipateur qui ne peut se ramener aux anciennes categories. Decroissance.org. Available at: http://www.decroissance.org/textes/altermondialisme.pdf. Accessed 1 Aug 2016.

  • Fraser, N. (1995). From redistribution to recognition? Dilemmas of justice in a ‘post-socialist’ age. New Left Review, I/212, 68–93.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fraser, N. (2003). Social justice in the age of identity politics: Redistribution, recognition and participation. In N. Fraser & A. Honneth (Eds.), Redistribution or recognition: A political-philosophical exchange. London: Verso.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Giddens, A. (1994). Living in a post-traditional society. In U. Beck, A. Giddens, & S. Lash (Eds.), Reflexive modernization: Politics, tradition and aesthetics in the modern social order. Cambridge: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Habermas, J. (1981). New social movements. Telos, 49, 33–37.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hall, S. (2011). The neo-liberal revolution. Cultural Studies, 25(6), 705–728.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hartmann, M., & Honneth, A. (2006). Paradoxes of capitalism. Constellations, 13(1), 41–58.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Honneth, A. (2003). Redistribution as recognition: A response to Nancy Fraser. In N. Fraser & A. Honneth (Eds.), Redistribution or recognition: A political-philosophical exchange. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jones, R. A. (2012). OWS and the class/race dynamic. Socialism and Democracy, 26(2), 30–32.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moore, J. W. (2015). Capitalism in the web of life. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Polanyi, K. (2001). The great transformation (2nd ed.). Boston: Beacon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Standing, G. (2011). The precariat: The new dangerous class. New York: Bloosmbury.

    Google Scholar 

  • Touraine, A. (1971). The post-industrial society: Tomorrow’s social history: Classes, conflicts and culture in the programmed society. New York: Random House.

    Google Scholar 

  • Touraine, A. (2000). Can we live together? Equality and difference. Cambridge: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wehling, P. (2002). Dynamic constellations of the individual, society, and nature: Critical theory and environmental sociology. In R. E. Dunlap, F. H. Buttel, & P. Dickens (Eds.), Sociological theory and the environment: Classical foundations, contemporary insights. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Copyright information

© 2017 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Masquelier, C. (2017). Conceptualizing Resistance. In: Critique and Resistance in a Neoliberal Age. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-40194-6_16

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-40194-6_16

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-40193-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-40194-6

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics