resistance Archives

Writing Resistance

In 1884, the first of 68 prisoners convicted of terrorism and revolutionary activity were transferred to a new maximum security prison at Shlissel´burg Fortress near St Petersburg. The regime of indeterminate sentences in isolation caused severe mental and physical deterioration among the prisoners, over half of whom died. But the survivors fought back to reform the prison and improve the inmates’ living conditions. The memoirs many survivors wrote enshrined their story in revolutionary mythology, and acted as an indictment of the Tsarist autocracy’s loss of moral authority.

Writing Resistance features three of these memoirs, all translated into English for the first time. They show the process of transforming the regime as a collaborative endeavour that resulted in flourishing allotments, workshops and intellectual culture – and in the inmates running many of the prison’s everyday functions. Sarah J. Young’s introductory essay analyses the Shlissel´burg memoirs’ construction of a collective narrative of resilience, resistance and renewal. It uses distant reading techniques to explore the communal values they inscribe, their adoption of a powerful group identity, and emphasis on overcoming the physical and psychological barriers of the prison.

The first extended study of Shlissel´burg’s revolutionary inmates in English, Writing Resistance uncovers an episode in the history of political imprisonment that bears comparison with the inmates of Robben Island in South Africa’s apartheid regime and the Maze Prison in Belfast during the Troubles. It will be of interest to scholars and students of the Russian revolution, carceral history, penal practice and behaviours, and prison and life writing.

Myanmar’s Spring Revolution

On 1 February 2021 Myanmar’s military conducted a coup putting an end to a decade of reforms. Although it was the third coup in Myanmar’s history, it was received as a moral shock by a large part of the population, and the response was an unprecedented resistance movement branded as the Spring Revolution by the young people who are leading it.

Myanmar’s Spring Revolution is about the students and academics who played a key part in the post-coup protests and who are still fighting the Myanmar military, both by taking up arms and by creating their own higher education institutions. It aims to give Myanmar students a place to offer their views on their revolution and the future they are fighting for. In light of wars in Ukraine and Gaza the conflict in Myanmar has largely been forgotten and the youth-led resistance that is fighting the Myanmar military seems to have no witnesses. This book is a way of giving voice to those most affected by the coup, and those who are giving their lives for the future of their country. The protagonists here explain why the resistance is different this time, and how this revolution goes well beyond the protests against a military regime.

The Faces of Authoritarianism and Strategies of Dissent in Contemporary Brazil

Rather than looking back into Brazil’s authoritarian past, the Bolsonaro administration (2019–2022) provides an innovative case study through which to explore Brazil’s manifold and recurring expressions of authoritarianism. This book investigates the ways that authoritarianism most recently emerged and how it was confronted, and, in doing so, the varied ways (and spaces) in which struggles over the meaning and practice of democracy that took place during the period.

The Faces of Authoritarianism and Strategies of Dissent in Contemporary Brazil examines repression and dissent: efforts to dismantle democratic foundations alongside forms of contestation and resistance to authoritarianism. The chapters offer valuable theoretical and ethnographic insights, from interdisciplinary perspectives, into the complex realities that Brazilians experienced in the four years of Bolsonaro’s presidency. The book is organised around four sections, each addressing a core area where democracy, as meaning and practice, was contested, attacked and defended. This is shown not only between Bolsonaro’s government and those who resisted it from within and outside the state, but also between state and non-state actors and between public and private sectors, allowing for a broad view of the country’s polarised political landscape and the impact such struggles have had on civil society.

Revisiting Childhood Resilience Through Marginalised and Displaced Voices

Despite many decades of research into childhood resilience, it remains a contentious area with much still left to be resolved. Key terms are poorly defined, positioning marginalised and displaced children as objects rather than co-producers of knowledge. Research and practice frame resilience through individualised models of health and abnormality. These models emphasise individual responsibility over systemic oppression, ignoring personal marginalised voices and experiences, and the contribution of appropriate needs-based assistance. Resilience needs rethinking.

Revisiting Childhood Resilience Through Marginalised and Displaced Voices uses an interdisciplinary approach to challenge current childhood resilience research and practice. The culmination of ten years of research and publications around childhood resilience, the book draws upon data collected from and co-produced with children, young people and adults from marginalised, disadvantaged and displaced communities. In so doing, it highlights the transformative potential of stories told by marginalised and displaced children, past and present. When these narratives are prioritised, they disrupt, counter and draw critical attention to coping strategies in light of adversity and oppression, to inform creative research and policymaking. Centralising the voices of care leavers, young people who are bullied, members from minority ethnic communities and former migrants/refugees, among others, Wendy Sims-Schouten shines a light on 150 years of marginalised voices and experiences in relation to resilience.

Plantation Crisis

What does the collapse of India’s tea industry mean for Dalit workers who have lived, worked and died on the plantations since the colonial era? Plantation Crisis offers a complex understanding of how processes of social and political alienation unfold in moments of economic rupture. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the Peermade and Munnar tea belts, Jayaseelan Raj – himself a product of the plantation system – offers a unique and richly detailed analysis of the profound, multi-dimensional sense of crisis felt by those who are at the bottom of global plantation capitalism and caste hierarchy.

Tea production in India accounts for 25 per cent of global output. The colonial era planation system – and its two million strong workforce – has, since the mid-1990s, faced a series of ruptures due to neoliberal economic globalisation. In the South Indian state of Kerala, otherwise known for its labour-centric development initiatives, the Tamil speaking Dalit workforce, whose ancestors were brought to the plantations in the 19th century, are at the forefront of this crisis, which has profound impacts on their social identity and economic wellbeing. Out of the colonial history of racial capitalism and indentured migration, Plantation Crisis opens our eyes to the collapse of the plantation system and the rupturing of Dalit lives in India’s tea belt.