ABSTRACT
This chapter examines narratives of resistance to law and legal authority. It suggests that resistance is enabled and collectivized, in part, by the circulation of stories narrating moments when taken for granted social structure is exposed and the usual direction of constraint upended, if only for a moment. The chapter shows how the stories—the resistance and also the compliance—were conveyed through common narrative templates. Each story recounts the way in which an aspect of social structure was deployed to achieve a momentary reversal of the more probable relational outcome. The criticisms derive from a conception that social structure and power stand before and apart from the resistant practices that oppose them. Based upon an appreciation of the structural conditions of power and authority, stories of resistance can become instructions about both the sources and the limitations of power.
