Lecture 11

Question 1

Create space for the possibility of everyday resistance while keeping material conditions in check

Answer 1

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

Question 2

Where there is Power, there is Resistance: Foucault - Why everyday resistance?

Answer 2

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

Question 3

Everyday resistance:

Answer 3

Everyday resistance: individual, unorganized, informal, local, every day, meanings, implicit, hidden

Question 4

Micro-revolutions

Answer 4

nterruptions of social norms, small scale forms of resistance-> unorganized, informal, local, every day, meanings, implicit, hidden and individual

Question 5

J. C. Scott:

Answer 5

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

Question 6

Infra-politics

Answer 6

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

Question 7

‘Rituals of resistance’ Gutmann (1993)

Answer 7

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?

Question 8

Resurgence of collective forms of actions -> social movements gaining momentum

Example from ‘Jim Crow South’ during American segregation

Answer 8

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

Question 9

Resistance in organizations: Jing/ Jang of control and resistance

Answer 9

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

Question 10

I. Organizations as sites of control: top-down approach

Answer 10

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

Question 11

II. Organizations as sites of resistance

Answer 11

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

Question 12

Discussion: what are your thoughts on these forms of everyday resistance in relation to social change-> do you think they are effective? Why (not)?

Answer 12

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

Question 13

Example II.: Humor

Answer 13

 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 -

Question 14

Example III:

Answer 14

 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

Question 15

Example IV: postponing

Answer 15

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

Question 16

Conclusion:

Answer 16

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

Question 17

J.C. Scott: every day forms of resistance-> peasant resistance-> inevitability not justice

Answer 17

Covert and unorganized forms of resistance

Only viable form of resistance for the exploited and oppressed in the world today

Question 18

Scott’s theory of resistance

Answer 18

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

Question 19

Article: Theorizing resistance in organization studies

Answer 19

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

Question 20

Resistance

Answer 20

Resistance: socially constructed category emerging out of multiple interpretations-> avoid essentializing routine resistance and treating it as an established set of actions or behaviours

Question 21

Frame of discourse

Answer 21

how organizational stakeholders and interest groups engage with, resist, accommodate, reproduce, and transform the interpretive possibilities and meaning systems that constitute daily organizational life

Question 22

Dialectical approach:

Answer 22

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

Question 23

Resistance as praxis in context of established social patterns and structures

Answer 23

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

Question 24

Marxist:

Answer 24

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

Question 25

Foucault

Answer 25

Foucault focusses on larger managerial discourses

Although there may be some effort to articulate the possibilities for worker resistance, it remains largely unrealized (perhaps latent at best) in the face of the onward, irresistible march of managerialism and its attendant rationalization processes-> fails to address human agency -> Marxist and Foucault too functionalist

Question 26

“Partial penetration”

Answer 26

that is, while possessing some insight into the processes by which hegemonic systems of meaning are constructed, employees are ultimately unable to fully penetrate the so-called deep structure power relations that are rooted in capitalist relations of production, and which systematically exploit workers through the privatized accumulation of surplus value and capital-> reproduce system

Question 27

Resistance as typologies of behaviour:

Answer 27

resistant to organizational control mechanisms -> limitations:

identifiable resistance, overlooks dynamic of control-resistance relationships (different meanings), overlooks forms of resistance to workplace control efforts: resistance and control coproduced

Question 28

Exploring resistance as a discursive practice:

Answer 28

ocial process, meaning-> discourses of managerialism (joking, irony etc.)-> performance of gender: because of position in organization resistance possible -> resistance as identity work -> actors to engage and adapts discourses -> articulation of discourse-> dichotomize controlresistance relationship

Question 29

Employee workplace resistance too dualistic

Answer 29

either (a) the practice of a wholly coherent, fully self-aware subject operating from a pristine, authentic space of resistance or (b) the activities of social actors that are subsumed within, and ultimately ineffectual against, a larger system of power relations

Dialectic approach: locally produced, discursive process of self-formation-> contingency of organizational life: interdeterminacy of organizational meaning and practices

Need to explore dialectical relationship between discourse and material world: avoid “text positivism”:

just text