Resistance (Social)

Kolokyumdaki  tebliğde vurguladığım gibi sivil hareketler varolan şiddeti yerinden ettiği ölçüde bir medenilik imkanı olarak belirmektedir. Medenilik stratejilerini bu anlamda  yurttaş ve özne olmayı öğrenme halleri olarak algılamak mümkündür. Yoksayılma şiddetine karşın Türkiye'nin bu trajik keşfe ihtiyacı var.

Legitimacy as a ‘full-fledged’ citizen is oftentimes defined through one’s ability to contribute ‘productively’ to society’s advancement and independently to one’s own survival and ‘success,’ most often imagined through ‘gainful employment’ for both men and women and through reproductive labor for women—at least those deemed fit to reproduce. Paul Abberley (2002) has attempted to lay the foundations for a concept of social inclusion that is not based on the ability to physically perform in late capitalist structures of exploitation—in other words, work for wages, a conceptualization of productivity that has its roots in Marx’s ‘industrial reserve army’ and has been theorized by Foucault (1978), Davis (1995; 2002), Hahn (1987), Oliver (1990) and Weeks (2011), among others. Drawing on feminist approaches to social relations and utopian thinking, Abberley criticizes the “social integrationist discourse” dominating most of disability studies and activism, and points out the shortcomings of both conservative viewpoints that see occupational integration as the sine qua non of humanist ideals, and radical positions based on a Marxist understanding of social functions that regards impairment as an inhuman side-product of capitalism’s exploitation. Calling for an organic theory of ‘societal solidarity’ (130), Abberley links his project to European social theory that has called for a basic income based on citizenship irrespective of one’s ‘gainful employment.’ Abberley’s approach not only helps us rethink where Western societies might be headed at the moment but changes our analytical framework in its questioning of the very foundations of what constitutes a society and membership within it. Drawing on the foundational work of postcolonial disability studies scholars such as Tsitsi Chataika, Anita Ghai, and others, as well as a number of socialist feminist scholars (Brown, Fraser, Holmstrom, Marshall, Weeks, Wood) and postmodern/queer/disability theorists (Davis, Halberstam, Kafer, Martin, McRuer, Puar), I will provide a discussion of the various ways of thinking through the question of human worth, interdependence, labor, and ability, focusing especially on the difference between materially-grounded and postmodern approaches. I hope to not only destabilize the Western-centrism and capitalocentrism (Gibson-Graham) of current ways of theorizing employment and citizenship, but, inspired by Alison Kafer’s feminist queer crip perspective, I am especially concerned with the intersection of both able-bodiedness and able-mindedness with current conceptualizations of work, labor, and value.

In November 2013, Celtic Football Club were fined €50,000 for failing to prevent their fans displaying political banners. This can be seen as part of a wider programme of attempting to depoliticise collectively-occupied space such as football stadia or public parks (Istanbul's Taksim Gezi park perhaps being the paradigm). Mark Wallinger's piece 'State Britain' enacts the tension intensified by developments like these.

"Resources of Resistance seeks to address urgent questions surrounding the concept and roles of resources within the postcolonial world and capitalist world-system by drawing new, vital and provocative connections across a range of disciplines.

Read more about the conference on our blog: http://resourcesofresistance.wordpress.com/call-for-papers/

Register to attend via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/resources-of-resistance-production-consumption-transformation-tickets-11184620501"

"From the book jacket:

"In the last thirty years bouncers have emerged as gatekeepers of contemporary urban cool, exclusivity, and social capital. In this ground-breaking empirical study, George Rigakos looks at the relation between consumption, security, and risk and challenges the idea of nightclubs as places of liberation and personal expression.

People go to nightclubs to see and be seen - to view others as aesthetic objects and to present themselves as objects of desire. Rigakos argues that this activity fuses surveillance and aesthetic consumption - it fetishizes bodies and amplifies social capital, producing violence and crises fuelled by alcohol. At closing time, patrons flow out of the insular haze of the nightclub and onto city streets, moving from private spectacle to public nuisance. Bouncers are thus both policing agents in the nighttime economy and the gatekeepers of an urban risk market - a site of circumscribed transgression and consumption that begins at the nightclub door.

This book shows that nightclubs are arenas for risk, whose security agents oversee more violence and danger than the public police, despite being unregulated and unaccountable."""

This chapter describes how Kim Il Sung's intra-party rivals attempted to take advantage of Soviet de-Stalinization to force him to change his ways, or to unseat him if possible. Comparing the DPRK with various other Communist regimes, and analyzing the grievances of the various North Korean social strata (intellectuals, students, workers, and peasants), it seeks to explain why North Korea did not experience such protests in 1956 which rocked East Germany, Poland, Hungary, and North Vietnam in the mid-1950s. 

The article investigates whether certain social and subnational groups that proved able to show resistance against other one-party states might play a similar role in North Korea, too. Comparing the DPRK with various Communist regimes and the Baathist party-states in Syria and Iraq, it examines the following groups as potential factors of resistance: industrial workers; private entrepreneurs; and religious, ethnic, and regional identities. It concludes that resistance has not been wholly absent in North Korean society, but the disaffected groups lacked sufficient bargaining power, while the state occasionally refrained from such steps that triggered protests in other countries.