Lobbedez, Elise (2023) Absorptive Resisting Work: How the yellow vests deployed resistance to and through violence. Organization Studies, 45 (3). pp. 433-456. DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406231208371
Lobbedez, Elise (2023) Absorptive Resisting Work: How the yellow vests deployed resistance to and through violence. Organization Studies, 45 (3). pp. 433-456. DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406231208371
Lobbedez, Elise (2023) Absorptive Resisting Work: How the yellow vests deployed resistance to and through violence. Organization Studies, 45 (3). pp. 433-456. DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406231208371
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.
Item Type: | Article |
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Uncontrolled Keywords: | ethnography; protests; resistance; social movements; violence; yellow vests |
Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences Faculty of Social Sciences > Essex Business School |
SWORD Depositor: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Depositing User: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Date Deposited: | 13 Dec 2023 13:33 |
Last Modified: | 11 Mar 2024 14:51 |
URI: | http://repository.essex.ac.uk/id/eprint/36594 |
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Filename: lobbedez-2023-absorptive-resisting-work-how-the-yellow-vests-deployed-resistance-to-and-through-violence.pdf
Licence: Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0