The aesthetics of resistance in social protest: Expressive resources in the defense of water

CABRAL XIMENA

Gothemburg, Sweden

Congreso; XVII ISA World Congress of Sociology. Sociology on the move; 2010

ISA

As part of a line of inquiry within the studies on Collective Action and the Sociology of the Bodies and Emotions, this paper suggests an approach from the perspective of qualitative methodology, which takes into account the expressive sphere of collective action along with the analysis of expressive resources in the politics of resistance of the social protest. In this paper we will work specifically arround the identification, selection and description of diferent expresive resources and images produced by the constituted groups of people that work in favour of the Defense of Water in Argentina. Around the recovery of visual data about the protest for the Defense of Water between 2005 and 2009, we will select a micro-cycle from this conflict in the city to investigate about the framing processes and requirements / expectations at play. The expressivity forms are able to turn, thus, into ways of retaking the action when including actors in their relation with the background, at the same time they allow an access to the inside of experiences of life, expressed along with the selection and creation of new expressive resources -as an actualization/puesta en acto (materialización?) of collective actors’ sights/ perceptions/ practices within  the conflict. This process involves also a reading of diverse characteristics: on the one hand interrogations about the expressivity of accounts of social actors’ experiences of life –not restricted only to words and (nor)verbal accounts as the only ways of expressing it.Meanwhile, on the other hand, a reading of the capturing techniques as an estrategy of data collecting that makes possible the re-construction of situations and interactions. In this sense, to recognize and understand the possibilities of the various ways in which aesthetics means hegemonic resistance, in various expressions of challenge and contestation, represent the central work issue from which we will able to approach the expressivity of the studies on collective action and social protest.