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Cultivating Autonomy

Power, Resistance and the French Alterglobalization Movement

Department of Anthropology at the University of Sussex, gwyn.williams{at}cantab.net

This article explores the resistance of alterglobalization activists on the Larzac plateau in southern France to various forms of power. As part of a technique of resistance activists cultivate themselves as `autonomous' political subjects and organize a movement considered to be an `autonomous' counterpower. In addition to being a political goal, autonomy is problematically tangled up in many aspects of their lives and is of frequent concern in their efforts to resist. Autonomy also constitutes a theoretical problem in anthropological discussions of power and resistance. An autonomous space of resistance is often assumed by social movement theorists or denied by those who argue that power and resistance are inseparable. I argue in this article that autonomy, understood as something socially relative rather than absolute, is produced in the process of resisting via particular practices through which power and resistance come to oppose one another.

Key Words: antiglobalization • alterglobalization • autonomy • France • hegemony • Larzac • power • resistance • social movements

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