Absorptive Resisting Work: How the yellow vests deployed resistance to and through violence
Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: Organizational research has increasingly recognized violence as an instrument for achieving compliance and maintaining the existing order. However, resisters tend to be portrayed as powerless in the face of this violence or engaging in hopeless acts of resistance. In comparison, by examining the context of violent protests, this paper discusses how activists can endure and use violence as part of their resistance. I build on a 15-month ethnography of the gilets jaunes (yellow vest) movement to illuminate the absorptive resisting work involved in deploying resistance to and through violence. This absorptive resisting work included reducing the repressive effects of violent protests and embracing those effects to generate symbolic and discursive resources against police violence, as well as including violent protest tactics in ways that regenerated those resources. Ultimately, my findings reveal that this absorptive work allowed resisters to withstand violent protests in the short term and reframe them in the long term. This paper thus contributes to studies on resistance to violence by showing how people can effectively and collectively catalyze violence to challenge it.
Source: Organization Studies
Author: Elise Lobbedez
Institution: University of Essex
Language: English
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,500
OpenAlex ID: W4387425876