PoReSo - Power, Resistance and Social Change

About us

The research group Power, Resistance and Social Change is a platform for research on the interstices of Political Ecology, Political Science, Geography, Development Studies, and Peace Studies. We are interested in power and resistance, but we realize that these tend not to occur in pure form – they get embroiled with each other. Resistance might challenge, change, or even produce power. 

Our work is therefore focused on exploring how hegemonies and forms of resistance are continuously worked out in actual practice – on the process of struggle and contestation, that is. And as such, our research seeks to scrutinize the political work vested in interpreting a particular phenomenon as power or resistance. After all, social change does not only involve a reconfiguration of power (and new forms of opposition to it), but also a change in the way this is understood.

Our work covers a broad suite of topics, ranging from feminist opposition to gendered violence; to territorial struggles and place-making in an extractive frontier (like northern Sweden); to the contested change towards a less car-dependent society (including in Gothenburg); to contested political order during an after war; to historiographical struggles over interpretations and memorialization of a violent past; to critical interventions towards agrofood systems; and to indigenous mobilization against neoliberal extractivism.  

The research group is a site of learning and creatively and collectively interpreting pressing societal challenges, resistance as an engine of change, and power as both a biopolitical as well as a disciplinary, discursive and sovereign phenomenon. The members pursue many forms of concerted work and the research group provides a collaborative platform for converging, theoretical and empirical, research interests within the field.