Understandings of resistance are often narrow and limited to what can be observed in plain sight, such as marches, protests, boycotts, etc. When I hear the word “resistance,” I think about iconic images of people protesting and marching collectively. Yet, I also think about people that perhaps nobody will ever see on TV or publicly protesting, such as the women in family and Latinx women in my community. The daily actions that I have observed Latinx women take to undermine power (i.e., everyday resistance), is often (mis)understood, unnoticed, or criminalized.
Additionally, everyday acts of resistance are diagnostic of desire (Kelley, Tuck, & Yang, 2014) and reveal what people want and where people are seeing issues with social conditions. These desires and actions are not extraordinary or rare. Both resistance and desire are part of the everyday lives of marginalized groups. For my dissertation, I conducted focus groups (involving discussion, letter writing, and mapping) and interviews with a diverse group of Latinx women living within the Santa Cruz community about their hopes dreams for the future and what daily actions they may take to work toward these dreams. In exploring their repertoires of resistance, I hope to understand the different possible sites of resistance (e.g. home, body) and how those repertoires influence certain dimensions (e.g. space, time, relationships).
Image below is a screenshot of one of the transcribed letters one of the women wrote about their hopes, dreams, and daily resistance.
My methodology includes a member check meeting where all the women who participated in the study will be invited to hear the results of the study and validate their input. In addition, the women will be invited to contribute to a zine booklet where they can include parts of their story they would like to highlight. My hope is to make the results of this study accessible beyond the boundaries of academia, as well as to honor and validate all the small and powerful ways women of color are working to build a more socially just world.
References
Kelley, D.G., Tuck, E., Yang, K. W. (2014). Resistance as revelatory. In E. Tuck & K.W. Yang (Eds.), Youth Resistance and Theories of Change. New York, NY:
Routledge.
