Situating global resistance: between discipline and dissent

Recent years have seen an upsurge of interest in the activities and significance of the diverse assemblages that oppose and/or promote alternatives to neoliberal globalisation. Much of the scholarly literature is celebratory in tone, and offers little analysis of how these contemporary forms of social organisation are also invested or colonised by power relations, or constrained by dominant ways of thinking about politics and global order. Critical analyses of power in international politics offer a potential corrective, yet this literature suffers from its own weaknesses, most notably a tendency not to embed any analysis of resistance in situated practices of contestation. This collection seeks to redress some of these weaknesses. It explores the ways in which contemporary forms of dissent are disciplined and disciplining. Contributions from different disciplinary backgrounds consider themes such as: the production of particular sorts of resisting subjects, the politics of knowledge, the deployment of visual technologies within and towards oppositional practices, the micropolitics of gender, race and class within spaces of contestation. In doing so, it opens up possibilities for rethinking the global politics of contestation through theoretically nuanced analysis of specific situations, spaces and contexts.