Forms of Resistance & Practices of Hope

Application summary

What can everyday resistance and hope teach us about social change? In the face of increasing authoritarianism and social exclusion, there is an urgent need to understand how people deal with oppressive structures and experiences of violence and exclusion in everyday life. Resistance and hope are central to this, as both are practises and aspirations that influence each other. Although there is already research on hope and resistance as sources of political agency and change, theories on the interrelation between hope and resistance are strikingly absent. Through an ambitious and interdisciplinary research design, FoRE/ HOPE will bring together different empirical contexts to analyse and theorise the interrelation between forms of resistance and practises of hope. We argue that hope and resistance are sources of social change that positively impact the everyday experiences of individuals and communities whose experiences are affected by various oppressive structures. Working with six case studies, including Finland, Palestine, Iran and Mexico, FoRE/ HOPE uses different contexts to explore and map out forms of resistance and practises of hope taking into account temporality, spatiality and the positionality of the person. The strength of the project lies precisely in the combination of different cases to gain nuanced and unprecedented insights into the everyday dimensions of resistance and hope. In this way, we aim to develop a new theoretical understanding of how people live with and challenge negative social conditions. Outcomes include a multilingual website with open access to written and visual material that forms a repository of resistance & hope, an edited book, theatre play,a public event with a photo exhibition and an art performance. By linking feminist peace studies, urban studies, migration and diaspora studies and art-based research, the project promotes critical knowledge for the promotion of social justice relevant to all contemporary so