Lecture 11 Flashcards
(29 cards)
Create space for the possibility of everyday resistance while keeping material conditions in check
Discus the meaning of infra-politics and connect it to resistance, Scott
Make sense of Mumby’s dialectical relation between control and resistance
Discus examples of how creative and active participants do mitigate difference
Underlying lecture question: how to resist when you feel powerless, how to make your voice heard when you have none
Mutual constitutive, related to each other: impact bigger on interactional levels but still influence structural level
Where there is Power, there is Resistance: Foucault - Why everyday resistance?
Allows actors to retain agency
Pushes for practical action
Opens space for the sub-, quasi- and infra political or below-the-radar-politics
Refocuses from merit or effectiveness to mere capacity of humans to construct meaningful micro-level forms of resistance
Everyday resistance:
Everyday resistance: individual, unorganized, informal, local, every day, meanings, implicit, hidden
Micro-revolutions
nterruptions of social norms, small scale forms of resistance-> unorganized, informal, local, every day, meanings, implicit, hidden and individual
J. C. Scott:
constant grinding conflict over work, food, autonomy and ritual- at every day level-> the ordinary weapons of relatively powerless groups: foot dragging, dissimulation, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage and so forth
Infra-politics
is by definition, beneath the threshold of the ‘political’ and thus the public realm-> it should be seen as the ‘prefiguration of a movement to come’-> individual forms of resistance in relation to larger forms of resistance
Connecting individual to structural level
‘Rituals of resistance’ Gutmann (1993)
There is no clear dichotomy between overt and covert forms of resistance
Ahistorical analysis by Scott- rebellions do occur and resistance does become overt-> fails to explain collective forms of resistance-> people still give their lives for these goals? Why?
Criticized for its material reductionism, Scott reduces complex human live to mere economic relations -> unjust social relations-> can be merely aimed at coping or meaning making
Gutmann is openly critical for falling for ‘microscopic change’ -> Scott not ambitions: not leading to large change
Empirical criticism of the historical success of everyday resistance: where are these examples?
Resurgence of collective forms of actions -> social movements gaining momentum
Example from ‘Jim Crow South’ during American segregation
Accrued political significance by aggregation: black people making fun of white bus driver-> reinforce the community-> no do away of microscopic resistance as unimportant or irrelevant-> the political significance when multiplied
Resistance in organizations: Jing/ Jang of control and resistance
How is resistance constituted in everyday workplace situations
How are they reproduced
The interpretive struggle of workplace actors are prioritized
Sense making and meaning making processes of organisation members-> rational understanding of power and resistance
I. Organizations as sites of control: top-down approach
Empty subject that is seen as mere bearer of dominant ideology -> acting according to management
Capitalism, patriarchy, sexism, heteronormativity, racism etc. -> they are imaged as automatically reproducing itself
II. Organizations as sites of resistance
II. Organizations as sites of resistance
Workers are creative active participants who engage with ideologies, structures, dominant meanings and power relations
Autonomy and agency is placed front and centre
Example: faculty coffee machine-> micro resistance
Discussion: what are your thoughts on these forms of everyday resistance in relation to social change-> do you think they are effective? Why (not)?
Sure, the risk is to overvalue ‘hollow’ and festive forms of resistance
However, the dialectical relationship between control and resistance assumes that the everyday can produce alternatives on material levels
Management discourses may frame workers’ identifications, but there is always space for alternative, counterhegemonic meanings and practices - Example I.: Feigning-> acting as if
Video Keuringsdienst van Waarde: presenter doesn’t eat pork goes on the quest of pancetta-> cook says to pretend
Racial profiling: officer mistrusted because of her ‘group’ alliance-> not objective enough-> traffic stop; Turkish man -> do away with micro aggressions by giving a fine-> pretended to give a fine but was just a warning to go against racism, avoid discussion
Example II.: Humor
Clip: Where are you from? Where are you really from? -> runners person asks these questions-> her greatgrandmother was from Korea-> asks same questions to him ‘American’ (English decent) -> ‘your people’s food is amazing’
Critical race study: micro-aggression-> overvaluing control and dichotomy aggressor and victim-> everyone active agent-> such questions interpreted various ways-> reductive: where are you really from and alternative answer not accepted than racialization’s, asking to roots , forms of belonging -
Example III:
Clip: #Muslimsreportstuff-> presential campaign discussion Trump and Clinton-> Muslims need to report when they see things going on, problems if they don’t do that its difficult for the country-> became sarcastic hashtag
Example IV: postponing
Duram adam: protests against regime of Erdogan in Turkey-> man standing still in the square-> police didn’t know how to respond-> silence resistance-> solidarity actions rest of Turkey -> individuals
Example V: doing nothing-> sabotage or sprout something in its track
Racial profiling: no do something when you see someone without legitimate grounds
Example VI:
# Taking a Knee: against racial profiling kneeling during national anthem
Micro-revolutions: space between individual, local actors of resistance and organized protest which keep the door ajar for social change
Example: Social movements against Black Piet-> anti-racist movement: Dordrecht 2011 T-shirt black Piet is racism-> were arrested for this
Conclusion:
On the one hand, the risk is to be overly romantic about everyday resistance
On the other hand, this risk is to be overly pessimistic about societal change, because of material conditions
However, there is always a dialectical relationship between control and resistance, which can produce unexpected, indeterminate social and political outcomes
Cannot define power without taking resistance into account
J.C. Scott: every day forms of resistance-> peasant resistance-> inevitability not justice
Covert and unorganized forms of resistance
Only viable form of resistance for the exploited and oppressed in the world today
Scott’s theory of resistance
Counterpoints may become institutionalized/ harmless form of symbolic protest that strengthens the existing order or normative focus religious or political movements with insurrectionary potential
Everyday forms of peasant resistance: constant struggle between the peasantry and those who seek to extract labour, food, taxes etc. form them-> stop before collective outright defiance -> constant conflict over work, food, autonomy, rituals: everyday forms of resistance-> overt and covert forms
Overt and covert forms happen together
Too much priority and weight to organized and political resistance -> undermines economic and political struggle-> deterministic economist and pragmatic resignation to the status quo
Local class relations in peasantry without state and such-> only to essentialist: other factors at play
Peasants too smart to risk their proposition-> hegemony ignores extent most subordinate classes are able to penetrate and demystify prevailing ideology
Compare myth of male dominance with myth of subordinate peasants-> need to leave order in tact To be a peasant is to have adequate descriptions of life
Without spontaneity, anonymity and disorganization impromptu action is impossible-> is tautology
Petty acts of resistance has changed and narrowed policy options of the state-> way peasants make themselves felt-> no historical successes
Safety valve (acts of resistance are allowed by state to defuse opposition) underestimates importance of everyday resistance of social change
Runs over differences and specific conditions that other see as essential
Everyday resistance without challenging positions
Hidden and invisible power
Article: Theorizing resistance in organization studies
Either resistance is ineffective or romanticised-> critical research should not focus on ostensible act of obeisance to power nor a covert act of resistance to power but rather ways these intersect in the moment to moment to produce complex and contradictory dynamics of control and resistance
Resistance
Resistance: socially constructed category emerging out of multiple interpretations-> avoid essentializing routine resistance and treating it as an established set of actions or behaviours
Frame of discourse
how organizational stakeholders and interest groups engage with, resist, accommodate, reproduce, and transform the interpretive possibilities and meaning systems that constitute daily organizational life
Dialectical approach:
dynamic interplay and articulation together of opposites-> negative dialectic would explore possibilities that exist in keeping the opposite in tension and play -> dereifying established social patterns and structures points out their arbitrary character, undermines their sense of inevitability, uncovers the contradictions and limits of the present order, and reveals the mechanisms of transformation
Resistance as praxis in context of established social patterns and structures
a dialectical analysis explores the ongoing tensions and contradictions that constitute the process by which organizational actors attempt to shape workplace practices
Dialectical analyses explore how social actors try to fix meanings that resist or reproduce relations of power-> local social production, discursive participation different organization members
the critical focus on organizational control mechanisms at the expense of attention to workplace resistance versus this pessimism as the study of workplace resistance seems to be alive and flourishing-> everyday work resistance interstitially within formal economy of the workplace
In workplace control never absolute: indeterminacy
Marxist:
employee identities shaped by organizational culture and ideology , Foucault: discipline mechanisms in modern organizations docile employees , Neo-Marxist: prevailing workplace hegemony
Resistance framed individual terms, collective worker consciousness subsumed beneath interpersonal forms of conflict
