Doing Research on Resistance: Departing from a Conceptualization in Terms of Social Spaces
(2016) Resistances: Between Theories and the Field — Location: Université libre de Bruxelles (14.December.2016)
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- Authors
Murru, Sarah 
- Abstract
- In this paper, I intend to critically approach epistemologies and methodologies for the study of resistance. In order to do so, I draw on the reflexions brought by my fieldwork among Single Moms in Hanoi. Here, I faced a group of women living multiple subordinations: as women in a patriarchal society; as mothers in a country that considers maternity as a public matter to be regulated since it concerns the upbringing of the next generation of citizens; and as outcasts, the status of Single Mom being down looked and marginalized. Eager to find out how they resisted the various power relations associated to their condition as Single Moms, I however struggled to locate a specific form of resistance, as their practices were located in their private and public lives, as well as in translocal social spaces due to online communication. This contrasts with classic research in Resistance Studies that mainly categorizes works in terms of the social space in which forms of resistance occur – namely, the public space (encompassing social movements, protests, revolutions, nonviolent/civil resistance or people power movements), the private space (everyday resistance, informal networks and economies, quiet encroachements, or infrapolitics) and translocal social spaces (global/international movements, global resistance/activism, or resistance to globalization). Nevertheless, recent works also recognize the need to understand resistance as a diffuse practice that is not limited to the location in which it is observed. Based on similar preoccupations in the field of Gender Studies and Resistance Studies – unveiling and rehabilitating categories of subjects that had been left out of scientific inquiry and targeting complex configurations of domination and power relations in order to understand how subjects can effectively challenge them (Bleiker, 2004; Duncombe, 2002; Scott, 1985, 1991; Schock, 2013; Stephan, Chenoweth, 2008; Vinthagen, 2015; Vinthagen, Johansson, 2013) – this chapter aims at developing a comprehensive epistemological and methodological framework for the study of resistance that is inspired by the feminist one. That is to say, a research framework that acknowledges a militant goal for research, which entails locating power relations that are at play in the production of knowledge, recognizing the subjectivity and situatedness of a research project, conducting research collaboratively with the subjects of inquiry, starting from their lives and experiences of subordination, and finally, building knowledge that intends to be empowering (Haraway, 1988, Harding, 2009, Mohanty, 2003; Ollivier, Tremblay, 2000; Smith, L.T., 1999; Spivak, 2009; Sprague, 2005). In this sense, the framework for doing research on resistance will allow to grasp resistance the way it is experienced by subordinates themselves, in its multiplicity and complexity, as a diffuse social practice and in a dynamic relation with power.
- Affiliations
Université libre de Bruxelles Centre d'Etude de la Coopération Internationale et du Développement
Citations
Murru, S. (2016). Doing Research on Resistance: Departing from a Conceptualization in Terms of Social Spaces. Resistances: Between Theories and the Field, Université libre de Bruxelles. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/268323