ABSTRACT
Resistance theories, emerging in the last several decades from neo-Marxist, neo-Gramscian, post-modern, and post-structural examinations of power struggles, have raised important ideas. The notion of resistance has received considerable attention in the recent literature on surveillance and organization studies (Thompson and Ackroyd, 1995; Webb and Palmer, 1998; Fleming and Sewell, 2002; Mann et al, 2003; Hollander and Einwohner, 2004; Bigo, 2006; Bogard, 2006; Haggerty, 2006; Los, 2006; Sanchez, 2009). From the introspective metaphor of the panopticon and the “Foucauldian turn” to the expansive analogy of Deleuze’s rhizome and the surveillant assemblage (Haggerty and Ericsson, 2000) power, resistance, control, and surveillance have all been entwined and embodied in each other in such an iterative way that they keep reproducing one other. Resistance theorists have attempted to explain why the opposition of some groups to others is politically and morally necessary in social institutions where mainstream ideologies dominate to discipline participants and social norms. Resistance in these theoretical formations is differentiated from mere opposition to authority, however; resistance is understood to contribute, in some way, to the progressive transformation of the environment by attempting to undermine “the reproduction of oppressive social structures and social relations” (Walker, 1985: 65).
