Drawing on a comparative study of four world-historical cohorts of resistance movements, and building upon research across the social sciences and humanities, I offer a new theoretical model of resistance movements as a distinctive object of social scientific study, showing how they can be meaningfully differentiated from other contentious political phenomena by their programmatic objectives and processual patterns, and how we can generate useful scholarly knowledge using this differentiation.

Tracing and comparing the African anti-colonial movements of the turn of the 20th century, the anti-Fascist movements of the mid 20th century, and the anti-Soviet movements of the latter 20th century, as well as contemporary resistance to democratic authoritarianism, the I analyse three distinctive structural tendencies which have routinely characterised the ‘modern resistance movements’ of the past century and a half: pervasiveness, irregularity, and volatility.

Please join either in person or online. For in-person attendees, the talk will be preceded by a light lunch at 12.15pm.

Please email comms@sociology.ox.ac.uk with any questions.