Definition: Geographies of resistance: Geographers use of the term resistance refers to three different, but interrelated, arenas of research:

social movements; social protest; and, everyday and psychic forms of resistance. Thus whilst the word resistance is something of a catchall term and carries considerable intellectual baggage, it has come to serve as a useful mechanism by which a variety of different approaches to the study of social conflict, opposition to domination, and the assertion of power can be understood. What unites all such seemingly disparate studies is the key belief that not only is the study of resistance critical to understanding social and cultural change, but also that all geographies are forged by a negotiation between methods of control and modes of contestation. Or in other words, that geography is not a fixed back-drop to social lives but instead is a transformative agent in itself. Thus, the where of resistance is important though this might equally be in a figurative, psychic or virtual space but of equal consequence is the fact that resistance is always mobilised through spaces and is thus shaped and given meaning by geography. Conversely, as the term social movements alludes to, resistances generate reconfigurations of spaces as the actants I use this term deliberately as many resistances enrol not only humans but other non-human things and meanings move. For example, after the revolution of 1789 the Parisian Bastille was no longer understood as a space of oppression but instead as a symbolic place of liberation. This spatiality is often rather more complex and multi-layered with resistances generating multiple and constantly shifting meanings. A capitally intensive factory, say, can be transformed unknowingly to the management into a space of dissent by workers feigning ignorance over quality procedures. In whichever way it is manifest, resistance is a profoundly spatial project. The concept of resistance whilst having a long intellectual history in the broader social sciences and humanities is a relatively new field of study for human geographers. Thus whilst historians and sociologists have long studied the iconic American and French

Revolutions 1775-1783 and 1789 respectively, geographers interest is a more recent intellectual phenomenon. Whilst it is possible to locate traces of interest in geographies of resistance before the 1970s, most notably in the work of the nineteenth-century geographer lise Reclus, the so-called radical turn brought the study of class struggle and urban social movements firmly to the fore of human geographical research. Central to this new enthusiasm were armed struggles in several developing countries, riots in American ghettos in the late 1960s and the student riots in Paris and elsewhere in the late spring of 1968. Against such pressing problems, the abstract mathematical modelling of spatial science seemed extraordinarily socially inert. Meanwhile historians from below, most notably Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm, George Rud and E.P. Thompson, through the application of Marxist theories had blazed a trail in the study of popular movements. Marxisms central acceptance of the Hegelian concept of dialectics positioned social conflict as something central to all societies, and thus by definition to the study of human geographies. Class conflict, so many Marxists would suggest, is not only the inevitable product of dialectical tensions between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat but also the result of the dialectical emergence of antisystems in opposition to the institutionalized state. This understanding that societies are never inert but always volatile due to their composition of competing social groups and diametrically opposed class interests necessarily places a strong degree of emphasis upon revolutionary change and associated social movements. David Harveys Social Justice and the City (1973), the book that blazed a trail in applying Marxist thought to the study of geographical change, offered a rather more nuanced approach. Indeed, the beauty of Harveys book and the key to its huge intellectual influence in the discipline was that whilst it embraced structuralist understandings and believed in the pursuit of one united democratic socialist movement, it offered for the first time a geographical 15 take on Marxist thought. Moreover, its analysis of the North American city highlighted

not potentially revolutionary actions but instead focused upon the resistances offered to the white, upper middle-class political and economic hegemony. Notwithstanding Social Justice and the Citys undoubted importance, there was no sudden surge in studies of resistance. Indeed, few of the possibilities suggested by Harveys analysis were fully explored by geographers at the time. With the arguable exception of the early work of Andrew Charlesworth and David Sibley, most geographers adopted a more straightforwardly Marxian analysis centring upon collective labor organization and class struggle. Thus whilst the rich possibilities for researching geographies of resistance were now well-understood, they were not widely adopted. Moreover, the field was fractured between those engaged in historical research and those working on the there-and-then. Indeed, whilst many radical geographers often sought to open their students minds to the world of resistance by turning for a copy of E.P. Thompsons The Making of the English Working Class (1963) a textual talisman to social historians and historical geographers they more often than not failed to make parallel connections to what their historical geography colleagues were doing. The concurrent emergence of post-colonial studies and feminist geography in the late 1970s and early 1980s helped to renew interest in the less dramatic, more everyday forms of resistance. The shared perspective of the study of the ability of non-dominant groups to survive under and even challenge conditions of domination, placed a greater emphasis upon the ability of repressed individuals and groups to mobilize alternative ideologies in forging new social worlds. Such acts of resistance, so this perspective suggests, can take many forms, not all of which have any visible manifestation, for instance mental resistance to psychic domination. Moreover, whilst some such protests might be recognised by oppressors as deliberate acts of resistance, other acts might either not be recognised (e.g. false compliance) or not be considered believable (e.g. anonymous political placards created by supposedly apolitical slaves). Thus whilst such resistances are necessarily motivated in response to a dominant power,

they might not always seek to rebalance power relations. It has not escaped the attention of geographers that this analysis bears a strong resemblance to the work of anthropologist James Scott. The central premise of Scotts seminal Weapons of the Weak is that whilst individual acts of insubordination and evasion make no headlines, just as millions of polyps create a coral reef so thousands of such acts create their own barriers of resistance. The spatiality of such protests inevitably occurs, so the analysis goes, within the realm(s) of domination, which in the case of Scotts thesis were the plantations of north-western Malaysia. This relationship has been called into questioned though on two central counts. Michel DeCerteau has asserted that the tactics of resistance come from a place outside of the practices of domination but seek to insinuate the realm of domination. Resistance thereby occurs in or between the fault lines of power, spaces beyond conventional surveillance. Or as Edward Soja labelled such gaps, thirdspace. It is important to note though that according to Foucault, as we all internalized the systems of surveillance used to assert power against us there are no gaps. Resistances occur therefore when we reject our self surveillance, a shift that is without bounds yet is not aspatial. What does not differ between Scotts and DeCerteaus analyses though are the shared emphases upon the malleability of identity. Individuals can take on multiple personas to suit different situations, for instance faux deferential efficiency in the company of management, foot-dragging resentment at other times. They might also assume an identity as a tool of resistance, for instance vegetarianism in opposition to factory farming, or use their identity as a position from which to protest against societal attitudes. Of course, the assumption of an identity does not necessarily need to occur in response to a local context. Indeed, mass (international) media and forms of electronic communication, not least the internet, have allowed for the distanciation between the event/power that is being resisted and the act of resistance. Being there and being 16

known can be an irrelevance. As the recent worldwide demonstrations over the policies of the Burmese junta have highlighted, the fact that resistances can occur outside of both spatial and experiential contexts. Through such understandings and intellectual positions, resistance became one of the key topics of the so-called cultural turn in human geography. The concept was not, however, without critics. In particular the tacit acknowledgement that signs of resistance could be read in all acts the choice of one brand over another being a protest against a corporation, a raised eyebrow a personal slight has been called into question. The first substantive challenge was raised, albeit implicitly, by Tim Cresswells research upon the spaces of transgressive practices. The conclusion from the case-studies in Cresswells In Place, Out of Place is that whilst to resist is intentional, to transgress is often unintentional, the crossing of a border/line which has no sign or meaning to the perpetrator. The act though still functions as a form of protest, for all transgressions are judged by those who react to the practice. To resist, conversely, requires the actor alone to make a judgement. As such, reading bodily practices as acts resistance or otherwise requires a keen attention to both the socio-legal and spatial contexts in which the practice is performed. Another critique was issued by those who not only queried the worth of such an all-embracing concept if everything could be considered to be an act of resistance, whats left for other human geographers to study? but also by those who found such definitions lacking political meaning. Indeed, political geographers have questioned whether some distinction ought not be made between, on the one hand, political struggles, and on the other hand, cultural politics and personal resistances. This is not to deny the power or importance of such alternative forms of resistance, but instead is an acknowledgement of the increasing political potency and power of social movements in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Indeed, within the past decade there has been a discernible shift to empirically-rich studies of indigenous peoples movements

in the developing world and anti-corporate/globalization protests. Whilst this trend has clear resonances with earlier studies within radical geography, recent research has been sensitive to ways in which current movements often utilise a range of tactics that combine overt protests and political demonstrations with other techniques that are not easily understood as being organised. For instance, Paul Routledge has described the anti-corporate, anti-globalization forum Peoples Global Action not as an organization but instead as a convergence space of other groupings whose primary function is to inspire acts that oppose corporate domination. Such groupings often rely upon the flattened hyperlinked spaces of the internet to allow action to be negotiated in non-hierarchical, democratic ways and thus allow for oppositional tactics to be developed in secret through encrypted e-mails. In a sense therefore if Sojas thirdspace meaningfully exists, a strong argument could be made that it is the internet. Routledges concept of heterogeneous global grassroots networks also acknowledges that, as the introduction to this essay alluded to, resistances invariably rely upon and often directly critique the social enrollment of non-human things. For instance, the so-called Luddite protests of the 1810s primarily attacked job-supplanting machinery rather than the machinery owners. Moreover, Actor [or Actant] Network Theory suggests that as the world can usefully be described as a network of all things animals, machines, plants, buildings, money, people, etc where power and meanings are generated by the relationship between things, then resistances are given form by the nature of the links in the network.