Short Abstract

This panel will discuss resistance economies which represents how marginalised groups – such as indigenous peoples, racialised communities, and refugees – challenge their domination and pursue an alternative vision of development within – and through – production, exchange and distribution.

Description

This panel will discuss resistance economies, which was initially conceptualised in the context of Palestinian economic subjugation (Tartir, Bahour & Abdelnour 2012; Dana 2014), and which represents how marginalised groups – including indigenous peoples, racialised communities, and social/political identities such as refugees – challenge their domination and pursue an alternative vision of development. While much of the scholarship on resistance has focused on legal and political change (such as winning rights or toppling governments) via electoral and contentious politics, there has been comparably little attention paid on its manifestation and consequences within the economic domain. Yet there are various examples across time and place where people have exercised their agency and struggled against their oppression within – and through – production, exchange and distribution. Resistance economies can manifest as “diverse economies” (Graham-Gibson 2008) that serve as non-capitalist alternatives, moral economies disrupting the power dynamics of the status quo, “commoning" (Fournier 2013) of public goods and natural resources, re-embedding of market exchange reflecting social values, de-commodifying care and social reproduction, or the emergence of informal institutions that transform relations of domination. This inter- and multi-disciplinary panel aims to advance scholarship on resistance and (social, political and economic) change, as well as offer policy insights for development policymakers and practitioners working in service of people and communities in the margins.

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