Researching Resistance and Social Change

Mikael Baaz is Associate Professor in Peace and Conflict Studies and a Senior Lecturer inInternational Law at the School of Business, Economics and Law, the University ofGothenburg.Mona Lilja is a Professor in Sociology at Karlstad University.Stellan Vinthagen is Endowed Chair in the Study of Nonviolent Direct Action and CivilResistance and Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Amherst.

• 1. Introduction: Resistance Studies as an Academic Pursuit / 2. Defining and Categorising “Resistance” / 3. Sovereign Power, Disciplinary power and Biopower: Resisting what Power with what Resistance / 4. How Resistance Encourages Resistance: Theorising the Nexus between Power, “Organised Resistance” and “Everyday Resistance” / 5. Exploring “Irrational” Resistance /6. Affects and Resistance Studies /. Fighting with and against the Time: The “Queering” of Time as Resistance /8. Moral Compulsions, Everyday Resistance and Ethical Research /9. The Ethical Aspects of the “Strategy of Legal Rupture” as Resistance / 10. Conclusion

This is an important book that fills a needed ‘hole’ in our understandings of power and resistance. One of its strengths is the consistent focus on how resistance itself is productive of further resistance…. I would recommend it to advanced undergraduate classes in globalization because often those classes only tell students about the oppressive and destructive aspects of global power relations; students come out of those classes depressed and cynical. This book is a needed corrective. Upper division political science and sociology classes on social change could use this book as required reading.