Mona Lilja

This article links Foucaultian power forms with its corresponding resistance. If resistance is a reaction to power, then the characteristics of the power strategy/relation affect the kinds of resistance that subsequently prevail. Accordingly, it becomes interesting to discuss what kinds of resistance emanate from what kinds of power. We discuss thi...

This book provides insights into forms of resistance that produce new world views and subject positions. It explores how productive forms of resistance not only works against power, but rather it can be seen as practices that produce new subject positions and realities. In doing so, the book does not only illustrate different forms of resistance, b...

The study of resistance has exploded during recent years and the field has broadened in order to accommodate more issues. The broadened scope of resistance studies is fruitful, yet the embracing of resistance’s complex character has led to a situation where the current research on resistance does not offer the appropriate tools to analyze the multi...

Two significant developments – (1) the rapidly changing world order, and (2) significant gaps in current social science scholarship – call for a further exploration of resistance theories. In this paper, we identify some of the gaps and inconsistencies within the current bulk of research, and seek to contribute to the understanding of resistance, i...

We argue that studies of resistance have suffered from a bifurcation of fields, whereby some focus on organized forms (social movements, civil society or revolutions), while others are concerned with individual types (everyday, local and dispersed) of resistance. This de facto academic division has unwittingly obscured the links, dynamics, hybridit...

Resistance, in Foucault’s texts, is sometimes described as resistance against authorities (sometimes the state and other governing units, and sometimes local authorities; Foucault 2009, 201; Foucault 1982, 329–331; Foucault 1991, 149). In other texts, however, he describes resistance as a discursive phenomenon. Discursive resistance, which appears...

The neoliberal globalization characterizing this century has unleashed new strategies of governing. This paper elaborates on a growing form of governing; that is, governing that extorts subjects’ desires for improvement and creativity to control and profit from these subjects. This, what we would like to call, ‘artepolitics’ could be seen as a part...

By merging the concepts of "formations" and "resistance", this paper presents a conceptual map of how to "read" resistance movements, which are composed of individual resistance and collective action. I suggest that reverse discourse could be interpreted as one specific resistance formation, by denoting how subjects (re)articulate and represent the...

This article revolves around the legal and epistemic battles around “homosexuality” in Sweden in 1979, which led to the abolition of homosexuality being classified as a “disease”. Among other things, gay activists “called in sick” to the Social Insurance Agency (SIA) and claimed that they were unable to work because they were homosexuals (read as m...

Recent sex ratio data indicate that the number of “missing” women and girls has reached approximately 200 million. This is a significant increase since 1990, when roughly 100 million women and girls had “disappeared.” What are the contemporary discussions concerning the widespread practice of the elimination of fetuses and bodies with female genita...

This article aims to specifically contribute to debates concerning dissent within the scholarship of International Relations (IR), through elaborating the constructive qualities of resistance. Composite and fruitful stories concerning resistance against power have flourished in studies of the ‘global’. Still, there has been a trend in IR to embrace...

The concept of resistance within the peace-building literature has received considerable attention as well as becoming central to the critique of liberal interventions. Scholars approach to resistance within the 'local turn' literature has resulted in more elaborate studies ; even so, local agency is typically narrowed down and concep-tualised as a...

The concept of resistance within the peace-building literature has received considerable attention as well as becoming central to the critique of liberal interventions. Scholars approach to resistance within the 'local turn' literature has resulted in more elaborate studies ; even so, local agency is typically narrowed down and concep-tualised as a...

This special issue addresses the connections and crossroads between knowledge and resistance. In the current political landscape, such a research endeavour is both topical and needed. Social media platforms, like Facebook, and the development of new technologies have made it possible to spread disinformation through political channels, which has la...

Currently, studies on collectively organized and confrontational resistance tend to dominate the field of resistance studies. In a different vein, this paper argues that the most powerful practice of dissent works as a form of constructive resistance that produce a slow transformation of values. The paper discusses strategies used by civil society...

Borders now seem to be everywhere, just like it is often said in heritage studies that the past is everywhere. In this edited volume a multidisciplinary group of scholars explore what happens, philosophically and in practice, when these two concepts and phenomena, heritage and borders, are combined. The findings show that heritage, as well as borde...

This paper discusses the potential of different Preah Vihear temple replicas to resist “discursive orders” that have been used to legitimate war in the border area between Thailand and Cambodia. The replicas of the Preah Vihear temple are embraced as “repeats” of the “original”; by this, we take off from linguistic theorizing of repetitions. The te...

In this chapter, which is based mainly on various official documents, a number of semi-structured interviews made by the authors in Cambodia between 2012 and 2017, scholarly writings, media reports and op-eds, we will highlight ‘resistance’ that promotes peace and reconciliation – what we would like to call ‘peace-building resistance’ (PBR) – rathe...

This article explores how resistance and power are intertwined within the field of mainstream Swedish feminism, by analyzing some of its more visible expressions and strategies. These feminist resistance strategies could be described as circulating resistance (e.g., the #metoo campaign), public assemblies, the more subtle “disciplinary resistance”,...

This paper revolves around the politics of time and temporality within Michel Foucault's theorisation of resistance. In focus is Foucault's outline of resistance as discursive resistance, reversed discourses, techniques of the self and counter-conducts, and other anti-authoritarian struggles. These forms of resistance are played out across a range...

Human rights-, gender- and environmental-activists struggle hard to get their messages heard. This paper discusses communicative strategies and the establishing of norms, in general, and the impact of repetitions, in particular. It contributes to previous research on meaning-making and discusses how/what patterns of repetition are of central import...

Revisiting James C. Scott’s classification of forms of resistance, this paper argues that (hidden, subtle) everyday resistance is only one of many types of small-scale or individual resistance practices. We propose the concept of ‘dispersed resistance’, which might be ‘everyday’ and subtle, or loud and extraordinary. In addition, drawing on Foucaul...

This article uses the concept of ‘time’ in order to better understand the situation of precarious migrants in Sweden. Through analysing a number of reports and interviews undertaken with newly arrived migrants in Sweden, it displays how different temporal understandings of the migrants are linked to and managed by governing bodies, laws and regulat...

Human rights-, gender-and environmental-activists struggle hard to get their messages heard. This paper discusses communicative strategies and the establishing of norms, in general, and the impact of repetitions, in particular. It contributes to previous research on meaning-making and discusses how/what patterns of repetition are of central importa...

This article explores the meaning of “resistance” and suggests a new path for “resistance studies,” which is an emerging and interdisciplinary field of the social sciences that is still relatively fragmented and heterogeneous. Resistance has often been connected with antisocial attitudes, destructiveness, reactionary or revolutionary ideologies, un...

This article adds to previous research, by connecting the concept of resistance to practices of self-making and the embodying of various gendered images. In this article, I advance that women politicians, activists and NGO workers in Cambodia, who seem to repeat and maintain established gender discourses, actually use these discourses and the exist...

Resistance has often been connected with anti-social attitudes, destructiveness, reactionary or revolutionary ideologies, unusual and sudden explosions of violence and emotional outbursts. This book goes beyond these conventions. Exploring various key questions, ranging from concept definitions of affect and temporality, to complex entanglements of...

Departing from Judith Butler’s ground-breaking book Notes toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, this article will explore why extra cultural meaning is attached to resisting bodies that are involved in demonstrating assemblies. Across the globe resistance is played out by bodies that occupy pavements, streets and squares. The participants in pu...

This paper deals with civil society mobilizations and resistance in relation to a world heritage site—the ninth-century Khmer temple Preah Vihear, which is located in the northern province of Cambodia and borders eastern Thailand. In particular, the paper explores resistance in terms of (re)categorizations from a historical and discursive–materiali...

Resistance is both a common and somewhat unusual concept. It appears often in political debates and the media. Members of various non-governmental organizations and social movements also frequently use resistancewhen they refer to their various activities. In spite of the significant growth regarding the use of resistance during recent years, the d...

Editorial ... all the poetics of the dispersed marginal sexual, ethnic, lifestyle, ‘multitudes’ (...) ‘resisting’ the mysterious central (capitalized) Power. Everyone ‘resists’ – from gays and lesbians to Rightist survivalists – so why not draw the logic conclusion that this discourse of ‘resistance’ is the norm today (...)? (Žižek 2002, p. 66). Fr...

This article traces some of the attempts that have been made to analyse time and emotions in order to gain a broader understanding of how power and resistance entangle in online administrative systems in university spaces. Rising levels of Internet usage in the university sector, and society in general, imply a new era for public administration. On...

This article describes and analyses the tensions, ambivalence, and hybridity that prevail in the nexus between discourses of gender and the legal pluralism of the new, formalized, and customary ways of handling land titles. Based on empirical research in Cambodia, it reveals a number of mechanisms, challenges, and inconsistencies in the practice of...

This article explores the meaning of “resistance” and suggests a new path for “resistance studies,” which is an emerging and interdisciplinary field of the social sciences that is still relatively fragmented and heterogeneous. Resistance has often been connected with antisocial attitudes, destructiveness, reactionary or revolutionary ideologies, un...

Lately, the concept of ‘resistance’ has gained considerable traction as a tool for critically exploring subaltern practices in relation to power. Few researchers, however, have elaborated on the inter-linkage of shifting forms of resistance; and above all, how acts of everyday resistance entangle with more organized and sometimes mass-based resista...

This article deals with questions about the performative power of cultural products that travel the world. The Japanese manga genre Boys' Love and Yaoi has gained a broad readership outside of Japan during recent decades. This has cultivated an image of Japan as sexually radical and 'as more than Japan', something which has produced alternative sub...

Offering a comprehensive overview of the current situation in the country, The Handbook of Contemporary Cambodia provides a broad coverage of social, cultural, political and economic development within both rural and urban contexts during the last decade. A detailed introduction places Cambodia within its global and regional frame, and the handbook...

An increasing body of literature focuses on negotiations of transitional justice, but not much has been written so far regarding contestations over its practices and the refusal of states and individuals to participate. Given the remaining legalistic dominance, this is particularly true regarding the field of international criminal law. Very little...

This paper explores civil-society mobilisations around the Preah Vihear Temple, today a world heritage site located in Cambodia, on the border with Thailand. More specifically, the paper seeks to increase our understanding of the ‘peace-building’ resistance that is played out by different civil-society actors with regard to the Temple. This case di...

According to Rosi Braidotti, there is a noticeable gap between how we live, our lived experiences, and how we represent ourselves in theoretical terms and discourses. In spite of the complexity of the multiethnic globalized societies that we inhabit, current discourses are marked by what Braidotti terms “an imaginative poverty.” Braidotti argues th...

This paper offers a new interpretation of the 'resistance' carried out by local civil society organisations in Cambodia against intimate partner violence (IPV). In this, the paper explores the nexus between 'rupture', 'resistance' and 'repetition' and concludes that different 'repetitions' can contribute to acts of violence while simultaneously cre...

This article aims to add to the discussion on civil society, resistance, and environmental politics by departing from the concepts of affects, time, and temporality. In essence, the article suggests two things. Firstly, when theorizing civil society, we argue that we should depart from the idea that the present is not a singular, linear moment, but...

This article analyzes the gap between globally promoted definitions of liberal democracy and the different ways in which the concept is interpreted by individual politicians and civil society representatives in Cambodia. By taking as our point of departure the gap between “hegemonic” views of democracy and locally lived democracy experiences and st...

This article argues that the legitimacy of both male and female politicians in Cambodia is partly built on discourses of violence and reconstructed memories of the past. From this standpoint, this article looks at how women’s and men’s rela- tion to violence—and memories of violence—creates and undermines their legitimacy as political leaders. Addi...

This article will examine irrationality in relation to the concept of resistance. Is there such a thing as an irrational resistance? While one tendency has been to irra- tionalise the ‘other’ and their resistance in order to construct a subaltern identity position, within the social sciences, an opposing tendency can also be identified; there is a...

This article links Foucaultian power forms with its corresponding resistance. If resistance is a reaction to power, then the characteristics of the power strategy/ relation affect the kinds of resistance that subsequently prevail. Accordingly, it becomes interesting to discuss what kinds of resistance emanate from what kinds of power. We discuss th...

Traditionally, feminist research has focused more on the content and the supposed effects of gender norms and their relations to power, than how the gendered power relations may change. However, there has been a tenet within feminism and—more recently—masculinity studies, which more specifically discusses how to change these power relations. A furt...

This article analyzes the gap between globally promoted definitions of liberal democracy and the different ways in which the concept is interpreted by individual politicians and civil society representatives in Cambodia. By taking as our point of departure the gap between “hegemonic” views of democracy and locally lived democracy experiences and st...

This article discusses feminist resistance in relation to different concepts of power. In particular, it analyses current debates within Swedish feminism in order to understand what perceptions of power and resistance are being harboured within these discussions. Within the Swedish feminist debate it has been suggested that the equality debate must...

The move to the linguistic has provided significant advantages for feminist scholars, in showing how differences (for example, in regard to sex, class and race) are indebted to discursive productions rather than to material “facts”. However, there are some key issues or areas in which the linguistic turn needs to be further theorized. In order to p...

This article will examine irrationality in relation to the concept of resistance. Is there such a thing as an irrational resistance? While one tendency has been to irrationalise the ‘other’ and their resistance in order to construct a subaltern identity position, within the social sciences, an opposing tendency can also be identified; there is a tr...

Departing from James Scott's idea that oppression and resistance are in constant change, Resisting Gendered Norms provides us with a compelling account on the nexus between gender, resistance and gender-based violence in Cambodia. To illustrate how resistance is often carried out in the tension between, on the one hand, universal/globalised represe...

The article analyses programmes against gender-based violence (GBV) in Cambodia in order to understand what notions of power, agency and resistance reside within these programmes. The text relies on in-depth interviews with four different organisations in Cambodia. The interviews display a number of hands-on practices of resistance against GBV, whi...

Key words: This article analyses local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Cambodia and their programmes against gender-based violence (GBV), in order to understand what notions of power, agency and resistance that reside within these programmes. What theoretical concepts do we need in order to understand the organizations’ attempts to reduce...

When implementing democracy, local discourses of decision-making affect the ways in which the liberal democracy is comprehended, realized and practiced. One problem with the so-called ‘transition paradigm’ is then the neglect of local cultures and institutions and their impact on implemented democratic systems. Given this, the aim of the article is...

The point of departure in this article is that social science researchers have not been able to show how different representations (pictures, statements, images, practices) have different impacts on the practice of negotiating power. However, when alternative resisting discourses are strengthened, it might be due to that people "map" their mental r...

This article argues that the legitimacy of both male and female politicians in Cambodia is partly built on discourses of violence and reconstructed memories of the past. From this standpoint, this article looks at how women's and men's rela- tion to violence—and memories of violence—creates and undermines their legitimacy as political leaders. Addi...