Resistance, Geographies of

Geographers’ use of the term resistance refers to three different, but interrelated, arenas of research: (1) social movements, (2) social protest, and (3) everyday and psychic forms of resistance. Thus, while the word resistance is something of a catch-all 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 all geographies are forged by a negotiation between methods of control and modes of contestation. In other words, geography is ...