Dispersed resistance: unpacking the spectrum and properties of glaring and everyday resistance

ABSTRACT

Revisiting James C. Scott’s classification of forms of resistance, this paper argues that (hidden, subtle) everyday resistance is only one of many types of small-scale or individual resistance practices. We propose the concept of ‘dispersed resistance’, which might be ‘everyday’ and subtle, or loud and extraordinary. In addition, drawing on Foucault’s works, we suggest at least two ways of conceptualizing dispersed resistance: as ‘productive’ resistance (related to disciplinary power and biopower) and ‘counter-repressive’ resistance (related to repressive and sovereign power). Finally, since power-relations are often composed by an assemblage of repression, discipline and biopower, resistance practices assemble too.

KEYWORDS:

• Everyday- and dispersed resistance
• James C. Scott
• Michel Foucault
• disciplinary power
• biopower

1. Introduction

Resistance is about forming assemblies, individual protests, manipulations or it can be about desperately opposing one’s precariousness. It involves power relations, violence and our political, physical and social environments. The performances of resistance might be played out by individuals or groups in local, national or transnational spaces. Resistance embraces many different forms of activity that might combine in different ways: organized or non-organized, violent or nonviolent, sometimes constructive and invisible, or it might be grand, hindering or up-scaled. It might challenge, change or even produce power. It involves all that we recognize as culture, material settings and the very conditions of human existence, such a life and death.

Resistance changes societies and individuals. It is connected to formations of the ‘self’, agency and various self-reflective practices. By playing out resistance, humans become ‘resistance subjects’, which might transform self-images and communities of belonging. Thus, for the individual, resistance can characterize the whole of their existence – the body as well as modes of subjectivity (as with revolutionaries or queers). Resisting practices can display people’s understandings of their situation and their comprehension of ‘now’, as well as their future. Thus, resistance must be understood through how it is intertwined with power, affects, agency, temporalities, spaces and other forms of resistance.

This paper will unpack and problematize the concept of resistance, by discussing individual or small-scaled resistance practices, and through developing the power-resistance model suggested by Scott (1992), Scott (1990), p. 198). Research on resistance is varied and moves from organized resistance/social movements to more individual forms of resistance. In the latter case, the concept of everyday resistance is often suggested as a concept complementing the research on organized resistance (Scott 1990, p. 198). Resistance studies are understood as mainly addressing two kinds of resistance: everyday resistance or organized resistance. However, the many scattered, dispersed and small-scale resistance practices that we see today – which are not mass-organized – are more complex and richer than those being covered by the concept of (hidden and subtle) ‘everyday resistance’. Everyday resistance is one of many types of small-scale or individual resistance practices.

In this paper, we propose the concept of ‘dispersed resistance’ in order to cover different kinds of individual resistance or small-scale resistance, which might be ‘everyday’ and subtle, or loud and extraordinary. This resistance might be performed by one (or a few) individuals or appear as an unorganized resistance practice that is performed by many actors in scattered places. In the latter case, dispersed resistance can have a huge impact, and change societies, communities, nations or even whole regions.

Moreover, in the latter part of this paper we draw on the works of Foucault and argue that in social science this dispersed resistance is understood, analysed and represented mainly in two different ways: as counter-repressive resistance (related to sovereign power) or as productive resistance (related to disciplinary power and biopower). The latter is a type of resistance (productive resistance) that negotiates discursive regimes and various claims to ‘the real’, as well as resistance that – through counter conduct and techniques of the self – undermines the production of particular ways of life, desires, subjectivities and institutions via disciplinary and biopower regimes. Productive resistance is played out by repeating things differently, reloading objects/bodies with new meaning or reversing different stereotypes (Foucault 1978, p. 101; Foucault in Butler 1995, p. 236). Furthermore, productive resistance also targets the disciplinary institutions and biopower strategies that produce and structure subjectivities, ways of life, desires and bodies, by destabilizing, displacing or replacing such production. Through the everyday recreation of slightly differently structured subjectivities, ways of life, desires and bodies with other aims, people constructively recreate themselves. This is not the optimistic and fundamental creation of ‘alternative’ ways of life or complete ‘subcultures’ or ‘counter cultures’ that break with existing domination in any full sense. Rather, this dispersed resistance is a matter of created ongoing small-scale differences that might look trivial, but sometimes might become significant. Here we think of the ‘reverse discourses’, ‘counter-conduct’ and ‘care of self’ that Foucault outlined in the later part of his life, in which subjects aim to be governed a little bit less, or in a different way.

Another kind of dispersed resistance (counter-repressive resistance) that prevails in social and political literature is resistance that opposes the ‘one-dimensional’, decision-making or ‘sovereign’ power that is exercised by subaltern groups. This resistance is played out by practices such as foot-dragging, theft or other disobedient practices. It is resistance that targets elites and often embraces class as an analytical category.

Basically, in this article we argue, like James C. Scott (1992), that it makes sense to organize types of individual resistance according to the type of dominance that is being resisted; however, we differ from Scott in how we perceive dominance. Bringing in Foucault, we would like to complicate and expand previous understandings of resistance. Among others, we believe that both ‘counter-repressive’ and ‘productive’ approaches to resistance are legitimate and, as we will discuss below, could in fact be seen as intertwined.

2. The concept of resistance

‘Resistance studies’ combines several theoretical traditions, including the state-oriented, structuralist, and public scope of ‘contentious politics’ (itself a combination of social movement studies, revolution studies, and studies on guerrilla warfare, civil warfare, and terrorism). It also includes informal ‘everyday forms of resistance’ within subaltern studies, the history-from-below movement, and ‘autonomist’ approaches to radical politics within post-Marxist and poststructuralist studies. Resistance studies could, and sometimes does, draw on the many specialist fields that at least tangentially engage with it: gender studies and feminism, queer studies, peace studies, political science, sociology, critical race studies, anthropology, pedagogics, psychology, media and communication studies, critical legal studies, heritage studies, design and crafts, and so on.

These many disciplines, models, theories, and discussions relate because ‘resistance’ challenges all forms of domination – not just the particular territorial configuration of power relations that we call ‘the state’, but the exploitative practices, commodification, fetishism, alienation, and economic injustices of capitalism, the discursive truth-regimes and normative orders of status quo, and the gender, race, status, caste, and taste hierarchies of the sociocultural sector. When activists resist patriarchy, heteronormativity, racism, or any other nexus of intersectional power relations, not only is the state questioned, challenged and undermined, but so is power.

Historically studies of resistance have gone through the same stages as the studies of power; an early focus on the more obvious and dramatic forms of resistance, and later a recognition of subtle and diffused articulations. Early studies focused on the public, collectively organized, confrontational and violent forms of resistance to state power, capitalism and dominance (by people like Tedd Gurr and Charles Tilly). Typical examples are revolution studies with its strong focus on armed revolutionary groups, as well as social movement studies with its attention to massive demonstrations, protests or riots. The contemporary field is more diversified, yet still dominated by a focus on public and collective confrontations.

Considering the dominance of the social movement research, some researchers have tried to display more subtle forms of resistance. According to Scott, for example, the form of resistance depends on the form of power. Those who claim ‘“real resistance” is organized, principled, and has revolutionary implications … overlook entirely the vital role of power relations in constraining forms of resistance’ (Scott 1989, p. 51). If we only care for ‘real resistance’ then ‘all that is being measured may be the level of repression that structures the available options’ (Scott 1989, p. 51). In the tradition of James Scott, Asef Bayat, Michel de Certeau, Judith Butler, and Antonio Negri, ‘resistance’ takes another turn. From their perspectives, resistance might be hidden or disguised, or a subtle change of everyday repetitions, or it might be driven by a desire for escape and survival that is not framed as ‘political’ at all, in which the recognition by others of what one does is not wished for, and might even be something one actively tries to avoid.

As the concept of ‘resistance’ has been broadened, now embracing more social phenomena than public assemblies, it also seems useful to describe its relation to other commonly used and related concepts, such as ‘agency’ or ‘affects.’ We propose that ‘agency’ is a wider concept that captures subjects’ capacity to do things, which might involve resistance but does not have to. Agency reveals processes of self-reflection, and studying these processes demands targeting dominant subject formations from ‘within’. The subject is never decided; i.e. is a product of matter or discourses. Instead the subject is constantly reconstituted, a process that might include an active and reflecting attitude and the possibility of resistance by identifying and questioning the discourses that lead us into certain positions (Lenz Taguchi 2004, p. 16). Thus, even though the prevailing material and discursive contexts of a society frame our room for manoeuvre, the concept of agency displays the possibility of resistance towards the pressure of hegemonic discourses.

Resistance is closely intertwined in subject-positions and affects. Affects and emotions have not been the core of resistance studies. Still, they have played a silent but fundamental role in many theories of resistance (Scott 1977, 1990). Affects become an engine that creates emotions, motivations and various resisting practices. In addition, affects make resistance intensify. Affects are produced as an effect of their circulation and have the tendency to become more intense as they circulate over time. According Ahmed ‘(…) the more they circulate, the more affective they become, and the more they appear to “contain” affect’ (Ahmed, 2004, p. 120). Thus, affects accumulate as they circulate in the gathering and meeting between people. This implies that, in some situations, affects that are forwarded in networks give rise to increased intensity and escalating resistance. Departing from this, one might speculate that when resistance moves from everyday and individual resistance to larger gatherings and assemblies, that this might be due to the affects that are circulating, and build up as they circulate, thereby leading to a more covert, joint and explicit form of resistance. Or in other words, resistance is sometimes being accelerated or ‘up-scaled’ – it is practiced by larger assemblies as the result of an affective intensification (Lilja 2017).

Overall, we understand ‘resistance’ as practices that might be played out by organized larger groups and movements as well as based on individuals, subcultures and everyday relations. It might be directed by power-relations, violent practices or be inspired by other resisters (‘copy-cat resistance’). Resistance is often an act or patterns of actions, which might undermine or negotiate different power-relations, but sometimes ends up reproducing and strengthening relations of dominance. The latter is a pattern often seen as power holders mobilize their forces to suppress resistance, creating an ‘irrationality’ within resistance.

As prevails from the above, resistance is a complex and broad umbrella concept, which needs to be elaborated in specific contexts with specific aims. We therefore must not limit our understanding of resistance to particular forms of resistance – riots, protests, sabotage, strikes, social movements, revolutions, mimicry, ‘talk-back’, slander, work-slow and the like. The still emerging field of resistance studies needs to take on the whole range of resistance articulations. We need to consider the subject in all of its manifestations, mechanisms, actors, techniques and dynamics, and in all of their historical, cultural, and political contexts.

Regardless of type, resistance exists mostly in relation to power, and the type of power affects the type of resistance as well as the effectiveness of various resistance practices: violent or nonviolent, open or hidden, organized or individual, conscious or unconscious, et cetera. Power, however, is not only about the ability to influence a decision in a particular direction but also about agenda setting, determining what can be discussed and about negotiating discourses (Baaz et al. 2017, cf. Hollander and Einwohner 2004).

Taking the above into consideration, we understand resistance as a response to power from below – a practice that might challenge, negotiate, and undermine power, or such a practice performed on behalf of and/or in solidarity with a subaltern (proxy resistance). This means that resistance studies are primarily about studying various responses to power (or violence as an extreme form of power) from below.

3. Dispersed resistance

‘Everyday resistance’ is a theoretical concept introduced by James C. Scott in 1985 in order to cover a kind of resistance that is not as dramatic and visible as rebellion, riots, demonstrations, revolutions, civil war or other such organized, collective or confrontational articulations of resistance (Scott 1985, 1989, 1990). The key characteristic of everyday resistance is the ‘pervasive use of disguise’, through either ‘the concealment of anonymity of the resister’, in which ‘the personal (not the class) identity of the protesters’ is kept secret, or concealment of the act itself (Scott 1989, p. 54). ‘Instead of a clear message delivered by a disguised messenger, an ambiguous message is delivered by clearly identified messengers’ (Scott 1989, 54–55). ‘A practical act of resistance is thus often accompanied by a public discursive affirmation of the very arrangements being resisted’ (Scott 1989, p. 56). And within folk culture we typically find trickster figures, spirituals, metaphors or euphemisms that ‘have a double meaning … so that they cannot be treated as a direct, open challenge’ (Scott 1989, p. 54).

Everyday resistance is, then, resistance that is quiet, dispersed, disguised or otherwise seemingly invisible; something Scott interchangeably calls ‘infrapolitics’. Scott shows how certain common behaviour of subaltern groups (for example, foot-dragging, escape, sarcasm, passivity, laziness, misunderstanding, disloyalty, slander, avoidance or theft) is not always what it seems to be, but instead resistance. Scott argues these activities are tactics that exploited people use in order to both survive and undermine repressive domination; especially in contexts where rebellion is too risky.

Scott fundamentally transformed our understanding of ‘politics’ by making the ordinary life of subaltern subjects part of political affairs. He also directly played an inspirational role for the international establishment of ‘subaltern studies’ as a distinct school that reformulated a ‘history from below’ of India and South Asia (Kelly 1992, n1, p. 297; Ludden 2002, pp. 7–11; Sivaramakrishnan 2005), and he still inspires numerous empirical studies on everyday resistance (Sivaramakrishnan 2005) with general applications (e.g. Smith and Grijns 1997) on how covert resistance transforms into overt forms, (e.g. Adnan 2007) or on effectiveness (e.g. Korovkin 2000). Some deal with specific social spaces, such as the workplace (Huzell 2005), the family (e.g. studies of resistance among women in violent relationships; Hollander and Einwohner 2004) or gay/queer spaces (Myslik 1996, Campbell 2002). Others study everyday resistance and specific categories, often women, low-skilled workers, migrants, gay/queer people, Palestinians, minorities, peasants, but also sometimes ‘new agents’ such as white-power activists (Simi and Futurell 2009, Darweish and Sellick 2017), or white, middle-class singles (Zajicek and Koski 2003). Studies may also cover specific themes, such as resistance and stigma (Buseh and Stevens 2006) or resistance and consumption/shopping (Fiske 1989), et cetera.

Everyday resistance is an illuminating concept; however, it does not cover all forms of individual or small-scale resistance. As will be argued below, dispersed (individual or small-scale) resistance can sometimes be extraordinary, and not ‘everyday’, in its expression. While glaring kinds of resistance call for attention, ‘everyday resistance’ practices, or other forms of evasion or disguised disruption, do not necessarily do so. These extraordinary individual eruptions of activity are not coupled with communicative networks, collective identities or sustained collective actions, as is often the case for definitions of ‘social movements.’ Neither do they fall under the category of subtle, everyday resistance.

One example of individual, dispersed but manifested resistance is Buddhist monks burning themselves to death in Tibet as a protest against Chinese occupation. These deaths have made the Chinese government accuse the Dalai Lama of ‘terrorism in disguise’, since he has led prayers for those who have set fire to themselves.¹ Another example of small-scale, glaring resistance took place as a small Swedish advertising agency, Studio Total, chartered an airplane and illegally entered the Belarusian airspace on 4 July 2012 and parachuted several hundred teddy bears carrying pro-democracy messages.² As a result of the airdrop, the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, sacked two top air force generals. The teddy bears are an example of resistance carried out by a small group of people, and as far as we know, not clearly linked into any larger activist network, thus making it hard to label as a social movement actor. Similarly, individual artists or artistic collectives, who carry out resistance through their works of art, neither belong to any social movement nor is their resistance ‘hidden’ and/or ‘everyday’. Thus, the concept of everyday resistance must be displayed as a form of resistance that sits alongside individually performed ‘extraordinary’ or manifested actions of resistance. Thus, we suggest that dispersed (individual or small-scale) resistance could either be of a subtle and everyday character, or have a more glaring appearance. Dispersed resistance, then, among other things, denotes Scott’s typology of ‘paired forms of resistance’, which construes the difference between everyday resistance and ‘a more direct, open confrontation’ (Scott 1989, p. 34).

Dispersed resistance might occur once, or it might inspire others to carry out similar resistance practices at other places or later on – like the self-immolations by the monks in Tibet – or it might evolve into a sustained and organized communication-network of collective action: a social movement. It is when instances of dispersed resistance spread and inspire followers to imitate or innovate that such individual resistance might have cumulative and large-scale political effects, where one occasion of self-immolation sparked a revolutionary wave of resistance). Here is not the place to explore why some cases of dispersed resistance practices result in collective mobilizations, and others do not (as for example all the other self-immolations in the Arab states that did not inspire mobilizations as in Tunisia). That is a larger discussion that others have conducted for a while, mainly around ‘diffusion’ in social movement theory.

4. Dispersed resistance and power

Contrary to social movement resistance, dispersed resistance – which might be glaring or hidden but carried out by just one or few people – seems to be performed according to different scripts, with different aims and techniques depending on what form of power it is reacting against. According to Scott, the form of resistance depends on the form of power. Those who claim that ‘“real resistance” is organized, principled, and has revolutionary implications … overlook entirely the vital role of power relations in constraining forms of resistance’ (Scott 1989, p. 51). If we only care for ‘real resistance’ then ‘all that is being measured may be the level of repression that structures the available options’ (Scott 1989, p. 51). Foucault similarly argues that we might use resistance as a ‘chemical catalyst so as to bring to light power relations, locate their position, and find out their point of application and the methods used’ (Foucault 1982, p. 780). These lines imply that when resistance is a reaction to power, then the characteristics of the power strategy/relation affect the kinds of resistance that subsequently prevail (Baaz et al. 2017). And in those cases where resistance is a response to power (and not, for example, copy-cat resistance), it becomes interesting to discuss how the objective and techniques of individual resistance are linked to specific kinds of power.

Below, we will discuss this relationship between power and dispersed resistance by highlighting two forms of (individual or small-scale) resistance, which is often emphasised in contemporary social science: (I) counter-repressive resistance and (II) productive resistance. In this, we will discuss how different power techniques need to serve as the corresponding reference point for possible resistance techniques, where the peculiarities of power inform how resistance is conducted. However, it should be made clear from the start that we do not regard the two forms of resistance as mutually excluding – quite the opposite. They are often combined in different ways. For analytical purposes we do divide them here and thus set out to make the distinguishing features more clear.

4.1. Counter-repressive resistance

One form of dispersed resistance, which is addressed by a number of resistance researchers can be understood as counter-repressive resistance, which refers to individual or small-scale resistance against repressive – sometimes sovereign – power. Robert Dahl (1967), Steven Lukes (1974) and Michel Foucault (2001) all touch upon similar forms of power, which can be seen as different forms of direct decision-making, ‘power-over’ or even as violent forms of repression. Power in this understanding is frequently used in liberal forms of analysis where power is defined as a person’s ability to affect the pattern of an outcome against the desires of other actors (Kabeer 1994, pp. 224–229; Haugaard 2012). The keywords that are used in these kinds of analyses are, according to Peterson and Runyan, for example, ‘force’ and ‘coerce’ (Peterson and Runyan 1993, pp. 45). In Foucault’s argumentation, this form of power is displayed with the concept of ‘sovereign power’; i.e. the (often repressive) legal sovereign power, which exists side-by-side with bio-power. Foucault presented the sovereign power as legislative, prohibitive and censoring; a power that primarily makes use of the law and law-like regulations (Dean 1999, pp. 105–106, Foucault 1978, pp. 83–85). He argues: ‘The powers of modern society are exercised through, on the basis of, and by virtue of, this very heterogeneity between a public right of sovereignty and a polymorphous disciplinary mechanism’ (Foucault 2001, p. 74).

We agree with Scott that resistance might take the form of hidden or disguised protests against challenges or the undermining of repressive forms of power. These tactics are used by exploited people in order to both survive and undermine domination; especially when repression makes rebellion too risky. But individual resistance, against repressive power, might also be glaring, extraordinary or concrete, such as when Swedish train conductors and drivers – individually but through the same practice – protested against the dress code of their Swedish railway company in 2013. According to the company, shorts are not an option for staff members at Roslagsbanan, and they must put up with wearing long pants or skirts (even during summer-time). Therefore, 13 male drivers and conductors chose to carry out their work in ‘the only cool option: Skirt’.³

Bayat is another researcher who highlights the dynamic interactions and on-going everyday activities of the most repressed people in the ‘Third World’, but contrary to Scott’s work, Bayat focuses on the urban poor. According to Bayat, the struggle of slum dwellers should not only be understood as hidden, quiet and individualistic; instead, the struggles of the urban poor are also proactive – that is, disenfranchised groups, in their attempts to improve their life chances (in terms of capital, social goods, opportunity, autonomy and thus power) strive to limit the benefits of the dominant groups (Bayat 1997a, pp. 2–6, 12, 1997b, 1997c, 2000, 2009). All things considered, Bayat offers a theory of resistance that not only moves beyond Scott’s but also differs from the majority of existing theories on social movements. By conclusion, he argues that what we see is a different kind of political activism when it is done by the ‘ordinary’ people in Third World cities, or rather the poor and ‘informal’ people that live in unauthorized urban neighbourhoods and engage in the unofficial economy: the street vendors, the squatters, unemployed or underemployed. Their activism is one of the everyday, and it involves resistance – but it is not necessarily ‘hidden’ or ‘disguised’, or non-collective or informally organized, as Scott argues. Instead Bayat claims that this ‘quiet encroachment’ of fluid categories of marginalized and informal groups is flexible and adapts to circumstances, all with the purpose of creating a more self-regulated and dignified life. In the initial stages, resistance is carried out in an individualistic and quiet way; however, it becomes a public and collective struggle as soon as the state or other power elites crack down on the advancements of the informal people. When these atomized individuals – for example, the street vendors – are threatened with removal by the police, they get together and mobilize around each other despite not having a previous organization or movement, often not even knowing one another in advance, despite normally competing against one another on the street market. The threat of the powerful elite against their small subsistence activity brings them together as a result of ‘passive networks’ of dispersed individuals who live in a similar position in a shared public space. These passive networks become activated when they need to make public and collective defensive efforts, and articulate collective claims – demanding their rights against a state that they would otherwise mostly ignore and try to be independent of. In this case, external threats are the main factors behind collective mobilization. Other main factors include sudden increased opportunities to move forward in times of state crisis; crises of legitimacy and capacity due to economic problems, wars, revolutions or other similar major processes of change. Individual resistance against the threat of the power elite against people’s minor subsistence is often individualistic and quiet, but might turn into loose networks or organized resistance. Either way, it is resistance, which is played out against different forms of repressing power. The resistance aims at an improved livelihood and ways of negating repressive forces rather than a discursive change of truth regimes. Overall, the above implies a form of resistance that directs itself from a subaltern position and often from relations of class.

The above-mentioned forms of dispersed resistance – whether glaring, loud or everyday and hidden – address rulers, practitioners of regulations, decision-making bodies and authorities whose actions have the legal force, and within whom the ultimate power resides in order to lay down, modify, and control people and territories. The resistance aims to undermine or avoid rather than meaning-making. This kind of resistance has also been described by other social science researchers who display more or less explicit acts, such as resistance to conservation (Holmes 2007), foot dragging (Nygren 2003), throwing oneself in front of tractors (Carswell 2006) or visiting the toilet (Lindqvist and Olsson 2017). These types of resistance against repressive forms of power are in line with Marta Iñiguez de Heredia’s definition of resistance. In her book from 2017, Everyday resistance, peacebuilding and state-making: insights from ‘Africa’s World War’, Iñiguez de Heredia proposes that resistance is: ‘the pattern of acts undertaken by individuals (…) in a subordinated position to mitigate or deny elite claims and the effects of domination, while advancing their own agenda.’ This definition establishes resistance as a practice directed towards elite claims and the experience of domination (Iñiguez De Heredia 2017). The emphasis on elite claims, agendas and the effects of domination, could be read as an attempt to put repressive forms of power, rather than ‘truth regimes’, in focus. It is dispersed resistance that targets more direct forms of power, which, however, in turn often build on various discursive regimes.

Below, we will show another way of studying individual resistance. Here the resistance is not played out against repressive power, but rather against discursive power, which produces societies, identities and practices.

4.2. Productive resistance

As argued above, some researchers within the field of dispersed resistance focus on specific forms of resistance (such as foot-dragging, theft, etc.), which are played out against different forms of repressive power or ‘power-over’. However, another part of the field of dispersed resistance embraces reverse discourses, meaning-making and the negotiating of ‘truths’, as well as the creation of other ways of life through counter-conduct and techniques of self. Within resistance studies (Baaz et al. 2017) language and symbolism are often regarded as highly relevant in terms of resistance and ‘(…) the most powerful practices of dissent (…) work in discursive ways, that is, by engendering a slow transformation of values’ (Bleiker 2000). The researchers, who belong to this part of resistance studies emphasize ‘’less than tangible’ entities such as texts, signs, symbols, identity and language’ (Törnberg 2013). Overall, within this subfield of resistance studies, there is a focus on cultural processes, ways of life, subjectivity and shared meaning systems and how these can be understood from the concepts of dominant discourses and resistance.

In our understanding, Foucault moved towards this kind of understanding of resistance in his later years (Baaz et al. 2017). Among the key resistance techniques outlined by Foucault one is counter-conducts, in which subjects conduct themselves differently, through other leaders (conducteurs), with other objectives, or procedures/methods (Foucault 2009, pp. 194–195). Examples of such counter-conduct, which Foucault analyses, are Protestantism and peasant revolts at the time of reformation.

Foucault also suggests that power or discourse can be reversed. As such, productive resistance becomes reversed discourse/power (Hartmann 2003, Thompson 2003, Hoy 2004), meaning that resistance, being intertwined with power, always has to utilize the same technologies as power, but must ‘harness power otherwise, in the production of other effects’ (Nealon 2008; p. 24), in order to ‘open up spaces in which people can make their own decisions’ (Pickett 1996; p. 463). Thus, a key way in which resistance towards discipline is possible in a Foucaultian perspective, according to Butler, is through reiteration, rearticulation or repetition of the dominant discourse with a slightly different meaning. Subalterns involve the categories and vocabularies of the dominating force or superior norm, precisely in order to contest them (Butler 1995 p. 236). Foucault exemplifies this, stating that: ‘homosexuality began to speak in its own behalf, to demand that its legitimacy or “naturality” be acknowledged, often in the same vocabulary, using the same categories by which it was medically disqualified’ (Foucault 1978, p. 101; Foucault in Butler 1995, p. 236). This kind of resistance, then, appears as the effect of power, as a part of power itself and reverse discourses are parasitic on the ‘dominant discourse’ they contest (Butler 1995, p. 237; Mills 2003).

Moreover, Foucault suggests the potential of recreating subjectivity through techniques of the self; i.e. where the individual acts upon himself. Techniques of the self involve the practices through which individuals inhabit subject positions and transform existing subjectivities (Foucault 1988a, Foucault et al. 1988b). These practices consist of such things such as diaries, confessions, therapy, diet, daily training schedules, et cetera, in a personalized way that gives another narrative of who you are and that attempts to reconstruct habits and abilities (Foucault et al. 1988b;). Foucault was taking special interest in the Stoic techniques, among them the askesis, a ‘training in thought and training in reality’ (1988b, p. 37), or a ‘kind of permanent self-examination’ (p. 38). Thus, the technologies of self are possible to use both in a norm-confirmative (and neoliberal) project of self-development, and as an attempt by individuals to transform themselves otherwise, counter to existing dominant norms. In the latter case care of self can be understood as a resistance to the subjectivity given by power relations (Thompson 2003). The technologies are the same as applied by discipline, but they are reappropriated and utilized for other ends in a self-reflexive attempt to achieve some level of (limited) ‘autonomy’.

While Scott primarily discusses direct resistance against repressive forms of power, he, also, in fact, distinguishes three types of resistance, where the last two could be seen as more ‘symbolic’. Resistance according to Scott (1989, 1990)) exists in the disguised form (low profile, undisclosed or ‘infrapolitics’) as everyday resistance (e.g. poaching, squatting, desertion, evasion, foot-dragging), in the forms of (1) direct resistance by disguised resisters against material domination; (2) hidden transcripts of anger or disguised discourses of dignity against status domination; or (3) dissident subcultures (e.g. millennial religion, myths of social banditry, class heroes) against ideological domination.

Hidden transcripts and dissident subcultures could remind us of forms of productive resistance. However, Scott’s outline of resistance does not, according to his critics, open up for imagining resistant subaltern subjectivities. This is due to that Scott, as it seems, depart from a specific perspective of power (Butz 2011). Mitchell (1990) explains this, by arguing that Scott relies on an understanding of domination as purely coercive and which targets the bodies of the peasants, who are forced into subalternity. Simultaneously, as Scott illustrates how the outward behaviours of the peasants are dominated, he, according to Mitchell, understands that their minds remain free and, at least to some degree, are unpersuaded by hegemonic arguments. Is it so that Scott, in this regard, assumes a subjectivity that pre-exists and is maintained despite dominating discourses? This would mean that even though Scott, in some places, is conceptualizing resistance through symbols, these symbols are not means of resistance against the discourses, which form subjectivities, truths regimes and realities but rather against more direct forms of power.

The productive resistance we construct in this text departs from a conceptualization of power, where power is believed to function through creating truths, ways of life and subjectivities, rather than limiting people’s options (Butz 2011, Mitchell 1990, pp. 562, 564). Overall, many researchers, who focus on productive forms of resistance, consider resisting subjects as intertwined in different discourses, thus not operating outside discourse. Moreover, research on productive forms of dispersed resistance often focuses on micro-relations of power and resistance that appear as discursive occurrences in everyday conversations (Foucault 1978, Bhabha 1984, Butler 1995, Lilja 2016). Power is primarily addressed in terms of disciplinary power, discursive truth regimes and/or ‘biopower’, which fosters individuals as well as the population as a whole. For example, dominating discourses of gender in Cambodia regard women as non-political. However, individual women state that women are in fact superior to men as politicians, thereby promoting an opposing discourse with the aim of reversing gendered truths. The image of ‘the superior woman politician’ constitutes a new alternative representation that refuses to occupy the lowest rung on the ladder (Lilja 2016).

Scholars that work in this tradition recognize how resistance occurs within dominant discourses and systems, yet simultaneously as acts against domination. Thus, this is resistance that attempts to be governed a little bit less or not quite in the same way by employing techniques of counter conduct, reverse discourse and techniques of the self as outlined by Foucault (Lilja and Vinthagen 2014), in which somewhat other ways of being are carved out from the discursive material and subjectivities that are made available. As such, this form of resistance recreates social institutions, communities, political subjectivity, and subjugated knowledge in ways that utilize and open up cracks and undermine domination, yet without achieving complete liberation. This productive kind of dispersed resistance therefore embodies a position of within-against-and-beyond domination – as is exemplified by the Indigenous Zapatista autonomous communities in Chiapas, Mexico – in which certain self-rule is created through a long process of community empowerment and struggle, while this attempt still remains within world capitalism and the systemic violence of the Mexican state.

Among the researchers who address more productive forms of resistance, postcolonial as well as poststructuralist researchers tend to discuss different claims to truth and how to shift the epistemological authority of some groups over others. For example, Homi Bhabha seeks to describe the construction of cultural authority within conditions of inequity by describing the early dissemination of the Bible in India. According to Bhabha, a hybridized Word of God was created as the Bible was translated into the many languages of India. For example, vegetarian Hindus used notions of cannibalism (eating the flesh of Christ) or vampirism (drinking his blood) to create a new understanding of the Bible while translating it (Bhabha 1984, pp. 102–122; Childs and Williams 1997, p. 135). By re-interpreting the insistent discourse of the colonizers, the colonized were able to resist and shift power, as well as question discursive authority. This process suggests that colonial discourses are never wholly under the control of the colonizer, as long-established classes and categories are conflated in the process of hybridity (Childs and Williams 1997, p. 136).

Similar to Bhabha, the earlier research of Butler discusses possible contestation of ‘normalities’. According to Butler, it is precisely the fact that gender is repeated, performed and thereby maintained that opens up the possibility of change. If discourses of gender are maintained through repetitions of behaviour and modes of self-representation, these repetitions can be the locus of change and every interval of repetition offers a place to locate and investigate change (Butler 1995, p. 236, 1990/1999). It is constructive resistance but still individual resistance, which produces new meanings, lifestyles and subject positions.

What both Butler and Bhabha address is everyday ‘speakings’ of resistance, where every word might be resistance that represents a (re)interpretation of previous truths. In our own research (Lilja and Baaz 2016), we have delved into practices of dispersed resistance in regard to cultural heritage. Departing from a discursive–materialistic approach, we have displayed how material artefacts and various discursive categories interact and shape different forms of resistance. In particular, we have shown how practices of (re)categorizations – (re)loading artefacts with new meanings – can be interpreted as resistance, where resistance is made possible due to different material aspects. Overall, matter, in its various forms, contributes to the development and transformation of discourses.

What we have discussed above is dispersed but productive resistance, which occurs as a response to different discursive truths, biopolitical technologies and disciplinary norms. It is dispersed resistance, in which the subjects embrace language and symbolism in its (sometimes powerful) practices of dissent.

5. Challenges and possibilities of studying dispersed resistance

Above we have promoted the umbrella concept of dispersed resistance – which embraces the whole scale between individual, hidden and glaring, exploding acts of individual (or small scale) resistance – and which must be understood in relation to power. In particular, we argue that this resistance is often analysed as a practice either against sovereign forms of power or against productive forms of power. Below we will discuss some challenges that must be addressed within the research field of resistance studies and in the study of dispersed resistance.

Resistance studies in general, and particularly studies of dispersed resistance as a sub-field, are still emerging and facing many challenges, both in terms of content and form. People often critique practices of dispersed resistance. They see them as insignificant and pinpoint the insurmountable scientific challenges to capture these informal and dispersed processes. The challenges to developing research methodology, codes of conduct or ethical guidelines, theoretical frameworks and epistemology are still warranted. However, few will doubt that the research area is here to stay, and is a necessary endeavour for students of social change and liberation struggles. Therefore, there are, of course, several remaining research questions that the field needs to deal with in order to develop in scope, contribution, argumentation, recognition and significance.

Several challenges, questions, and problems face us when scientifically investigating ‘resistance’. Among them is: has ‘resistance’ already been adequately studied by other social science fields, where the results have been understood in terms other than those we use or fully comprehend? Can vastly different concepts, models, and theoretical frameworks from other established disciplines be introduced into a new specialist field? How can we successfully unite, gather, and systematize enough research to create a field of resistance studies, yet avoid making the field homogenous and mainstream? Is the focus of ‘resistance studies’ too broad to be tenable (since resistance can exist in all kinds of social relations), or is it actually too narrow (since it is just one part of complex dynamics that shape social relations)? What ethical standards are possible and necessary for resistance research? Is there a need for a special ‘code of conduct’ to keep our knowledge from unwittingly assisting repressive forces, state surveillance, elite interests, or other hostile opponents of resistance mobilizations? Do we need our own version of the Hippocratic Oath?

The questions go on. Can resistance be studied with the same sort of methodology as other forms of social science, or does it demand a particular set of research methodology of its own? Does attachment to ‘emancipation’ put the field at risk of developing a new kind of ideology that blinds us to the necessary critical attitudes and willingness to be open to unexpected and uncomfortable revelations?

A clear problem with the concept of ‘dispersed resistance’ is that it risks labelling too many other expressions as ‘resistance’. All expressions of difference, deviation, or individuality should not, we think, be labelled ‘resistance’. Every concept that is made excessively inclusive becomes less interesting or useful since it is not clear enough what different activities have in common. The challenge for our investigations is to explore if it is possible to limit ‘dispersed resistance’ sufficiently in order for it to be a useful and distinct concept, both for theoretical development and for empirical studies, while simultaneously avoiding limiting it so much that it loses its relation to social life, and becomes an academic externality.

Sometimes what appears as ‘dispersed’ resistance might not be that. An aggregation of individuals who behave seemingly without connection might be part of a connectivity that is submerged, hidden and informal, e.g. through mass media news, the internet, shared stories in small communities, phone or ICT networks, radio, rumours or other informal communication or unorganized information sharing. Something that may begin as dispersed resistance might evolve into loose connectivity over time, and even later into organized communication. Empirical research will be necessary in order to detect if and how dispersed individuals are part of connective action.

There seems to be a mutual constitution and intertwinement of power and resistance in a way we can call the power/resistance nexus. This needs to be explored. We need to be clear on the consequences of the intimate and unavoidable (1) relationship between power and resistance – this relationship is oppositional with repeated actions and reactions and needs to be understood as (2) dynamic interactions played out in history, space and context that produce unexpected results. Furthermore, we argue that since power is not singular but both decentred and intersectional, it means that resistance is also (3) decentred and intersectional; i.e. resistance is always simultaneously related to several forms of power. Lastly, this also means, that (4) power and resistance are interdependent and constitute/affect each other and, as a result, become intertwined. Therefore, what we have is not a dichotomy of separate or ‘clean’ categories; not a choice between accommodation or resistance, but combinations. Dispersed resistance is then a matter of trying to understand how this tanglement is changing within the everyday lives of resisting subjects.

In examples of how dispersed resistance is interacting with power in complex ways, we can see how resistance techniques such as ‘counter conduct’ or ‘exodus’ can be a means to resist different forms of power at the same time. Counter conduct involves, per definition, a behaviour that deviates from established norms, which in repressive contexts might involve disobeying repressive laws that stipulate certain behaviour. Thus, this resistance then entails a resistance to both discursive and disciplinary norms, as well as resistance to repressive power from sovereign regimes. Such counter conduct also, especially in those circumstances in which it spreads to more people, creates other ways of living. In a similar way, subjects that opt out from certain systems of power through practicing ‘exodus’ (sometimes called exit), i.e. escaping participation through migration, absconding, quitting or otherwise avoiding, will – if they are successful – both counter repression (of the subjects in exodus) and create (the possibility of) new ways of living (Hardt and Negri 2004).

The relationship between resistance and social change is fundamentally unclear. There are immense difficulties in establishing correlations between the diffused and small-scale acts of individuals and the processes of social change. Nevertheless, studies of social change need to take everyday resistance into account since, on an aggregate level, it might have profound effects. If we, as Foucault, view power as dispersed, and in that sense as existing ‘everywhere’, does this also mean that resistance is ‘everywhere’? Or, does resistance only exist as a potential in relations of power?

Another key question concerns the relationship between dispersed forms of resistance and mass-based mobilizations. Do the scattered activities of individuals, when they reach a certain level of intensity and scope, create the kind of resistance culture from which mass-based resistance erupts? To us, it seems clear that there is some important and different quality with the elaborate and intensive resistance culture within, for example, the occupied Palestinian territories or within the Kurdish territories in Turkey and Syria. In these spaces, resistance has become normalized and an integrated part of local cultures, as is organized rebellion in a way that indicates some kind of connection; this needs to be explored further in future research.

A future resistance studies agenda will have to focus on fundamental development of the field, both theoretical frameworks and methodology, as well as its basic epistemology, ethics, and, we think, its infrastructure. There is a need for a concentrated and systematic effort to develop the research on dispersed resistance. One important way forward is to create the infrastructure that facilitates this research.

6. Conclusions

The binary perception of everyday resistance and organized resistance/social movements obscures a whole world of small-scale resistance that we need to recognize and explore more thoroughly. The dispersed, small-scale resistance that we have pointed out – and which is not organized – is broader and more complex than everyday resistance. Everyday resistance – the hidden or disguised forms of resistance to material domination – is only one of many types of small-scale or individual resistance.

As we have tried to demonstrate, small-scale resistance is not necessarily subtle, and public resistance is not necessarily part of sustained collective action, or even organized in connection with others at all. As an alternative, we promote the concept of ‘dispersed resistance’, which might be everyday and subtle, or loud and glaring. It might be performed by one individual or appear as a resistance practice that is performed by many in dispersed places, in which individuals are inspired by each other, yet it is not necessarily organized. In this latter case, dispersed resistance can have a huge impact, and change societies, communities, nations or even whole regions.

The study of dispersed resistance – contrary to social movement resistance – seems to be carried out with different aims and techniques that depend on what form of power the resistance is reacting against. In social science literature, when localized, dispersed resistance is often, we argue, analysed in relation to either repressive or productive forms of power (disciplinary, discursive and/or biopolitical power). Overall, we argue that it is possible to detect two forms of (individual or small-scale) dispersed resistance: (I) counter-repressive resistance and (II) productive resistance. Thus, the peculiarities of power inform how resistance is conducted and how different power techniques need to serve as the corresponding reference point for analysing different resistance techniques. While Dahl saw power as the possession of one individual, Foucault outlines power as something always exercised and circulating (Haugaard 2012, p. 67). In line with this, resistance should be analysed from the perspective of different forms of power.

The above reasoning, however, must be problematized, while the connections between direct decision-making power and discursively created truths must be acknowledged. Different discourses are constructed in regard to who is assigned legitimate, concrete decision-making power. An analysis of concrete and direct decision-making, and the resistance that it provokes, must therefore embrace discursive constructions and hegemonic schemes (see also Hindess 1996, Allen 1998). Since power often combines repression with discipline and biopower (‘productive power’), resistance will also be combined in different ways. These complexities must direct studies of resistance, which must show co-existing or multi-tasking forms of dispersed resistance.

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mona Lilja

Mona Lilja currently serves as the professor in Peace and Development Research at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her area of interest is the linkages between resistance and social change as well as the particularities – the character and emergence – of various forms of resistance. In regard to this, she is currently working on how different articulations of gendered resistance emerge. Some of her papers have appeared in Signs, Global Public Health, Nora, Feminist Review and Journal of Political Power.

Stellan Vinthagen

Stellan Vinthagen is professor of sociology and the endowed Chair in the study of nonviolent direct action and civil resistance at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Vinthagen is also professor at the Department of sociology and work science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden and the author of A Theory of Nonviolent Action: How Civil Resistance Works (Zed Books, 2015).

Notes

1. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/07/20127279351012537.html.

2. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/10/burning-martyrs-tibetan-monks-fire, page visited 5 September 2017.

3. http://www.metro.se/nyheter/chefen-forbjuder-shorts-da-valjer-mannen-kjol-pa-taget/EVHmfg!b8F191VSBtcAs/, page visited 16 October 2016.