Whether the exercise of resistance over power was good or bad is open for debate. This edited collection detailed that in both cases power was deployed. The contributors visually traced the effects and described its operations. In this process, resistance has been viewed as a profound attempt to not be subjugated by a series of intersecting relations of power, as an object of “moral orthopaedics” (Foucault 1995, 10).

It is worth noting what is the intent of this book. Our concern is with how power is figured in different cultural representations, socio-economic relations, forms of political expression, and how practices of resistance unfold in the construction of spaces for common identity and agency. Calling for a revaluation of Foucault’s conception of resistance is not an invitation of triggering a mobilization, but rather to break “the appearance of unanimity which is the greater part of the symbolic force of the dominant discourse” (Bourdieu 1998, viii). And examining such dominance is no less than research “into the inner meaning of specifically modern life and its products, into the soul of the cultural body,” as Georg Simmel (1950, 409) brilliantly suggested us.

(From the book Introduction, pages 7-8).

This volume presents a collection of essays that were first presented in a coauthored panel session organized in 2012 under the conference theme “Visual Activism and Social Justice” at the International Sociological Association (ISA) Forum in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The editor is intellectually indebted and grateful to the session participants for their collaboration and individual efforts over the course of two years. This stimulating venture brought together scholars from the global north and south. I thank Beatriz Nussbaumer, Carlos Cowan Ros, Emiliana Armano, Fabiene Gama, Karen Crinall, Tamara Bellone, and Verónica Devalle for the willingness to share your collective wisdom, individual perspectives, and extensive knowledge. To Enzo Colombo and Timothy Shortell I am especially grateful for your insightful remarks featured at the beginning and end of the volume.

2015, Champaign, Illinois, USA: Common Ground Publishing

ISBN 978-1-61229-640-1

Contents:

Acknowledgements

Preface
Timothy Shortell

Part I: Introduction

“And their struggle becomes visible”: For a Radical Revaluation of Foucault’s Conception of Resistance to Power
Lidia K.C. Manzo

Visual Methods in the Study of Power
Timothy Shortell

Part II: Experiencing Contemporary Spaces of Resistance to Power

Chapter 1
Beyond Foucault’s Subject of Power: Affect and Visual Emergence in Grass-roots Social Activism
Karen Crinall

Chapter 2
Contesting Images in the (Re)construction of Ethnic Identities and Territories: The Case of a Huarpe Community in Argentina
Beatriz Nussbaumer and Carlos Cowan Ros

Chapter 3
Photo-documentation, Culture and Stereotypes: How the Global South is Struggling for Visual Forms of Power
Fabiene Gama

Chapter 4
Design and Craft in Latin America: Images in Tension between the Dominant and the Residual
Verónica Devalle

Chapter 5
Subjectivity and Video-based Studies: Roma Culture, Forms of Expression and Resistance in Dances
Tamara Bellone and Emiliana Armano

Part III: Conclusions

Chapter 6
The Representations of Power and the Power of Representations
Enzo Colombo

About the Contributors

Download the intro of the book here.

More info on the publisher webpage: «Culture and Visual Forms of Power. Experiencing Contemporary Spaces of Resistance».