Resistance

Geography has a rich tradition of engagement with resistance. Long-standing concerns with documenting, analyzing, and attempting to intervene in the many inequalities and injustices of the world mean that attention to resistance can be traced through all of geography's subdisciplines. Yet, resistance defies easy definition; there is no singular “geography of resistance.” The term resistance is closely wedded to theorizations of power and has evolved in accordance with the prevailing ontologies of the wider social sciences: how we come to understand our world(s) shapes; how, why, and through what means we can seek to intervene within them. With this in mind, the entry traces the predominant ways in which resistance has been understood within geography. Resistance has traditionally been framed as oppositional to power. Following the cultural turn, however, resistance has come to be seen as always already entangled with power relations. Underpinning these two approaches are a series of undergirding logics (intention, opposition, and concerns about a romanticizing of the term resistance) that continue to shape how resistance is understood within geography. Therefore the chapter reflects on the continuing political importance of resistance, reaffirming both its multiplicity and its centrality to geographic thought.