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Counter-Conducts: A Foucauldian Analytics of Popup Civic Actions in Mexico

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Simin DavoudiORCiD, Dr Abigail Schoneboom

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Abstract

This paper draws on Foucault’s concept of counter-conduct to move beyond the binary understandings of civil society and social movement. Using illustrative examples of popup civic actions in the aftermath of a flooding disaster that hit the Mexican state of Guerrero in 2013, we argue that for many grassroots and indigenous people with a longstanding struggle for recovery of communal lands (ejidos) and autonomy, mutuality (perceived as the domain of civil society) and resistance (perceived as the domain of social movement) are co-constitutive and continually invoked in their counter-conducts. That, their ethical desire for ‘being otherwise’ and ‘doing things differently’ is constitutive of their political will ‘not to be governed like that’. Using a Foucauldian analytics of counter-conduct, we discuss how self-organised popup actions in Guerrero both unsettled power relations by creating new fields of visibility, techniques, and knowledge, and imbued critical self-reflections, engendering new political identity

Publication metadata

Author(s): Davoudi S, Schoneboom A, Díaz-Aldret A

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Global Society

Year: 2024

Volume: 39

Issue: 1

Pages: 70-85

Online publication date: 13/08/2024

Acceptance date: 27/07/2024

Date deposited: 14/08/2024

ISSN (print): 1360-0826

ISSN (electronic): 1469-798X

Publisher: Routledge

URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/13600826.2024.2387010

DOI: 10.1080/13600826.2024.2387010

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