Everyday Resistance

This book studies those who, in various domains of life, are resisting the increasingly harsh day-to-day pressures of late capitalism, centering mainly on French examples. Far from the global euphoria of the sixties and seventies, everyday people are trying to loosen the grip of injustice in very concrete ways: people experiencing homelessness try to occupy and live in empty buildings; collectives of small farmers and consumers avoid long (and costly) commercial supply chains to defend their common interests; students and teachers organize to prevent the expulsion of undocumented migrants; and activists in the free software movement fight for the common ownership of software and of the Internet. Through civil disobedience in the midst of daily life, people are trying to resist, work against, and change laws that protect the interests of firms and corporations considered socially or ecologically unfair.

Examines the phenomenon of concrete and sustained everyday resilience Ties together sociological, anthropological, and historical observation in ten detailed case studies of everyday resistance Gathers together disparate progressive activisms that could benefit from cross-fertilization

Auteur

Bruno Frère is FNRS Senior Research Associate and Professor at the University of Liege, Belgium, and at Paris I Pantheon Sorbonne, France. He is the author or editor of, among other publications, Epistémologie de la Sociologie (with Marc Jacquemain, 2008), Le Nouvel Esprit Solidaire (2009), Résister au Quotidien (with Marc Jacquemain, 2013), Le Tournant de la Théorie Critique (2015) and Repenser l'émancipation (to be published in 2020, with Jean-Louis Laville).

Marc Jacquemain is Professor of Sociology at the University of Liege, Belgium. He is the author of La raison névrotique (2002) and Le sens du juste (2005). He is co-editor of, among others, Epistémologie de la sociologie (with Bruno Frère, 2008), Résister au Quotidien (with Bruno Frère, 2013) and Engagements actuels, actualité des engagements (with Pascal Delwit, 2010).

Résumé

"Everyday Resistance makes it an especially innovative, interesting, and ultimately useful read for scholars who are otherwise unable to access, let alone assess, current trends in the Francophone literature." (Kai A. Heidemann, Mobilization, Vol. 25 (1), March, 2020)

Contenu

1. Introduction: Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom?.- 2. Undocumented Families and Political Communities: Parents Fighting Deportations.- 3. From Indicting the Law to Conquering Rights: A Case Study of Gay Movements in Switzerland, Spain and Belgium.- 4. Fighting for Poor People's Rights in the French Welfare State.- 5. The Plural Logics of Anti-Capitalist Economic Movements.- 6. The Free Software Community: A Contemporary Space for Reconfiguring Struggles?.- 7. Associations for the Preservation of Small-Scale Farming and Related Organisations.- 8. Ordinary Resistance to Masculine Domination in a Civil Disobedience Movement.- 9. A Zone to Defend: The Utopian Territorial Experiment of Notre Dame des Landes.- 10. Politics Without Politics: Affordances and Limitations of the Solidarity Economy's Libertarian Socialist Grammar.- 11. Is The New Activism Really New?.- 12. Conclusion.