Cultural Resistance

From the Diggers seizing St. George Hill in 1649 to Hacktivists staging virtual sit-ins in the 21st century, from the retributive fantasies of Robin Hoods to those of gangsta rappers, culture has long been used as a political weapon. This expansive and carefully crafted reader brings together many of the classic texts that help to define culture as a tool of resistance. With concise, illuminating introductions throughout, it presents a range of theoretical and historical writings that have influenced contemporary debate, and includes a number of new activist authors published here for the first time. Cultural Resistance Reader is both an invaluable scholarly resource and a tool for political activists. But most importantly it will inspire everyday readers to resist.

In everyday life--in relationships, in various institutions, in texts--cultural premises influence and sometimes limit individuals’thoughts, actions, and ideas. Cultural Resistance: Challenging Beliefs About Men, Women, and Therapy analyzes cultural constraints and encourages therapists, individuals, and communities to practice cultural resistance on a daily basis, allowing for the realization of diverse and suppressed knowledges. Cultural Resistance shows general patterns by which some ideas in a culture become accepted and others are marginalized. It proposes ways individuals and communities can resist the hold of limiting ideas on their lives. In the postmodern tradition, Editor Kathy Weingarten brings together authors who ask and offer answers to the question, “What is not present in our thinking?” Each chapter invites therapists to extend their thinking about the scope of their work. Topics covered include: challenging cultural beliefs about mothers transforming masculine identities lesbian and gay parents a narrative approach to anorexia/bulimia perspectives on the Black woman and sexual trauma, focusing on Thomas v. Hill opening therapy to conversations with a personal god new conversations on controversial issues The chapters in Cultural Resistance first describe cultural premises that constrain the lives of women, men, and/or therapists and then develop an approach to resisting these constraints. A response follows each chapter in an effort to promote discourse, extend meanings, and encourage learning between professionals. Cultural Resistance yields new perspectives on the nature of social change and the relationships between individuals and culture. It offers valuable insights to family therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers who want to broaden their thinking and approach. It gives therapists a fresh, new way of thinking about themselves, others, and their conversations through applications which may be professional, personal, or both.

In everyday life--in relationships, in various institutions, in texts--cultural premises influence and sometimes limit individuals’thoughts, actions, and ideas. Cultural Resistance: Challenging Beliefs About Men, Women, and Therapy analyzes cultural constraints and encourages therapists, individuals, and communities to practice cultural resistance on a daily basis, allowing for the realization of diverse and suppressed knowledges. Cultural Resistance shows general patterns by which some ideas in a culture become accepted and others are marginalized. It proposes ways individuals and communities can resist the hold of limiting ideas on their lives. In the postmodern tradition, Editor Kathy Weingarten brings together authors who ask and offer answers to the question, “What is not present in our thinking?” Each chapter invites therapists to extend their thinking about the scope of their work. Topics covered include: challenging cultural beliefs about mothers transforming masculine identities lesbian and gay parents a narrative approach to anorexia/bulimia perspectives on the Black woman and sexual trauma, focusing on Thomas v. Hill opening therapy to conversations with a personal god new conversations on controversial issuesThe chapters in Cultural Resistance first describe cultural premises that constrain the lives of women, men, and/or therapists and then develop an approach to resisting these constraints. A response follows each chapter in an effort to promote discourse, extend meanings, and encourage learning between professionals.Cultural Resistance yields new perspectives on the nature of social change and the relationships between individuals and culture. It offers valuable insights to family therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers who want to broaden their thinking and approach. It gives therapists a fresh, new way of thinking about themselves, others, and their conversations through applications which may be professional, personal, or both.

A collaboration of political activism and participatory culture seeking to upend consumer capitalism, including interviews with The Yes Men, The Guerrilla Girls, among others. Coined in the 1980s, “culture jamming” refers to an array of tactics deployed by activists to critique, subvert, and otherwise “jam” the workings of consumer culture. Ranging from media hoaxes and advertising parodies to flash mobs and street art, these actions seek to interrupt the flow of dominant, capitalistic messages that permeate our daily lives. Employed by Occupy Wall Street protesters and the Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot alike, culture jamming scrambles the signal, injects the unexpected, and spurs audiences to think critically and challenge the status quo. The essays, interviews, and creative work assembled in this unique volume explore the shifting contours of culture jamming by plumbing its history, mapping its transformations, testing its force, and assessing its efficacy. Revealing how culture jamming is at once playful and politically transgressive, this accessible collection explores the degree to which culture jamming has fulfilled its revolutionary aims. Featuring original essays from prominent media scholars discussing Banksy and Shepard Fairey, foundational texts such as Mark Dery’s culture jamming manifesto, and artwork by and interviews with noteworthy culture jammers including the Guerrilla Girls, The Yes Men, and Reverend Billy, Culture Jamming makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of creative resistance and participatory culture.

The first book length study of this genre, Collective Identity and Cultural Resistance in Contemporary Chicana/o Autobiography facilitates new understandings of how people and cultures are displaced and reinvent themselves. Through the examination of visual arts and literature, Juan Velasco analyzes the space for self-expression that gave way to a new paradigm in contemporary Chicana/o autobiography. By bringing together self-representation with complex theoretical work around culture, ethnicity, race, gender, sex, and nationality, this work is at the crossroads of intersectional analysis and engages with scholarship on the creation of cross-border communities, the liberatory dimensions of cultural survival, and the reclaiming of new art fashioned against the mechanisms of violence that Mexican-Americans have endured.

This book seeks to document urban experiences of dissent and emergent resistance against disjunctive global and local flows that converge and intersect in some of Asia's fastest growing cities.

Mining the Media Archive gathers together an exciting collection of essays by writer and cultural theorist Dot Tuer. Ranging from monographs on new media artists to a history of Canada's most controversial artist-run centre, the CEAC, to testimonial writing on cultural politics and post-colonialism in Canada and Argentina, Tuer's writings address issues of global media and local remembrance through a unique blend of storytelling, archival research and cultural analysis.

This book uses the Afro-Brazilian art of capoeira to examine how security has been pursued from below and what significance this has for security analysis and policy. Illegal at the beginning of the twentieth century, capoeira is now a cultural institution and export that is protected by the Brazilian state and recognised by UNESCO, with capoeira players protecting and promoting their interests through the practice and development of their art. The book brings the musical and corporeal narrative from capoeira into conversation with debates on security; these have typically been dominated by northern, white, military voices, and as a result, the perspective of the weaker player is routinely overlooked in security literature and policy making. Bringing the perspective of the weaker party, Cultural Resistance and Security from Below examines the distribution of security from two angles. First, it presents the history of the interaction between capoeira players and the Brazilian society and state that resulted in political and legal acceptance of capoeira. Second, it explores how the practice of capoeira generates knowledge of identities, explanations and values, and how this knowledge empowers communities of players and is communicated to society more broadly. The book then turns to consider how capoeira resists within Brazil's contemporary context of insecurity, and what significance the knowledge and power, along with capoeira's core move of escape, have to security analysis and policy. The book concludes by taking the lessons from capoeira to inform understanding of other cultural activities and ways of life as potential sites and forms of resistance. Conceptually and methodologically original, this book will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of security studies, development studies, political science and international studies. It will also be of interest to those scholars interested in the changing interaction between politics and the arts.