ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the way activists resist by cultivating themselves as 'autonomous' political subjects and organizing a movement considered to be an 'autonomous' counterpower. It argues that autonomy is produced in the process of resisting through particular social practices and that these practices help to create an opposition between power and resistance. The book explores the logic of the activist world and the assumptions and rhetoric that motivate people to construct an activist life for themselves. It lays out the terrain and gives an overview of the place, the people and the activist movement. The book looks at the way the social movement is organized. It explores what it means to engage oneself as an 'activist' in movement and at the way activism is lived in everyday life. The book is concerned with what activists struggle against and describes their conceptions of power.
