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Since 9/11 and the Global War on Terror, the West has fixated policy on the hijab, framing it as oppressive and as a threat to women's rights. This entrenched colonial perspective affects Muslim girl athletes globally. Public discourse on hijabs in sports often overlooks their complex symbolism and the athletes' choices. Drawing on Indigenous, postcolonial, and critical feminist theories, we explore in this article how Muslim girl athletes navigate hijab politics, expressing their agency through refusal and resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2011, during the occupation of Zucotti Park in New York, Occupy Wall Street arranged a public reading of Herman Melville’s novella Bartleby, 1853. The widely discussed choice of this story points to OWS’s own politics: the movement said ”no”, but without forming any more specific demands for reform. This article, taking its theoretical lead from Judith Butler, Marcello Tarì and Michel Foucault, discusses if the self can be re-modelled. Bartleby and his refusal – “I would prefer not to” – is related to one other prominent no-sayer in literature: Stiller. Refusal is also the theme of Max Frisch’s novel Stiller, 1954, in which the protagonist simply refuses to acknowledge the identity that everyone, authorities as well as his wife, forces upon him. That way, he also refuses the society in which he lives, and its political subject in the form of the citizen. Stiller thereby illustrates Foucault’s theses that we must refuse who we are. Bartleby and Stiller can both be understood as examples of the obstinacy that Alexander Kluge and Oskar Negt have emphasized as the basic form of resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the US–Mexico borderlands, coalitions have formed to successfully thwart attempted amplification of militarisation in the region. However, in the borderlands, where migrants are criminalised and the colonisation of Indigenous lands and life is ongoing, coalition building is complicated due to the distinct positionalities of anti‐militarisation activists. This paper analyses solidarity from the perspective of anti‐militarisation organisations and activists in Southern Arizona/on occupied O'odham lands. I contend that desires for solidarity built around the worker, despite the recognition of unique struggles, reveal certain tendencies in activism remain bound to settler colonial ways of relating and understanding. Nonetheless, I argue that ongoing resistance to settler colonial terms of condition may motivate moves to refuse colonial forms of solidarity by reimagining coalition building as transpiring through reciprocal exchange of (hi)stories between differently positioned activists, rather than seeking a struggle that is common to all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article attempts to empirically identify how the concept of Indigenous refusal helps us understand growing Palestinian political discourse and practices. It aims to develop Critical Indigenous Studies' potentialities vis à vis the study of historic Palestine. The article puts a particular emphasis on new visions of Palestinian resistance that take aim at the different ways the Global North has tried to impose specific models and narratives on the Palestinian cause through liberal politics of recognition. Those spatio-political arrangements are enmeshed in the so-called 'Oslo paradigm' but also concern the portrayal of Israel as a liberal multicultural society, as well as the neoliberal dynamics that continuously shape the different fragments of the Palestinian people. In this regard, Indigenous Palestinian refusal also presents an international dimension that has progressively led to the articulation of anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist imaginaries that would contribute to shaping radical Palestinian – and transnational – futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial, academic, activist, and policy research and advocacy movements formed around resisting 'machine bias', promoting 'ethical AI', and 'fair ML' have discursive implications for what constitutes harm, and what resistance to algorithmic influence itself means, and is deeply connected to which actors makes epistemic claims about harm and resistance. We present a loose categorization of kinds of resistance to algorithmic systems: a dominant mode of resistance as 'filtering up' and being translated into design fixes by Big Tech; and advocacy and scholarship which bring a critical frame of lived experiences and scholarship around algorithmic systems as socio-technical entities. Three recent cases delve into how Big Tech responds to harms documented by marginalized groups; these highlight how harms are valued differently. Finally, we identify modes of refusal that recognize the limits of Big Tech's resistance; built on practices of feminist organizing, decoloniality, and New-Luddism, they encourage a rethinking of the place and value of technologies in mediating human social and personal life; and not just how they can deterministically 'improve' social relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do contemporary subjects navigate, withstand and even contest the particular governmental assemblages that define regimes of power today? The article addresses this question by considering 'refusal', which has emerged as an increasingly potent empirico-theoretical anthropological concept by, in part, marking an explicit contrast with the longer-standing concept of 'resistance'. Through analysis of resistance and refusal literatures, and with reference to fieldwork with Burmese grassroots activists and Rohingya civil society actors, the article delineates resistance and refusal as divergent but intertwined tools for engaging different aspects of any given apparatus of power. Where resistance describes opposition to direct domination (sovereign modes of power, following Foucault's schema), refusal describes the disavowals, rejections and manoeuvrings with and away from diffuse and mediated forms of power (governmentality). To the extent that contemporary apparatuses of power typically constitute a hybrid assemblage of sovereign and governmental forces, subjects of population groups draw upon both resistance and refusal tactics in their navigations of these apparatuses, navigations that refigure the collective resisting/refusing subject. Resistance and refusal hence operate in a quasi-dialectical relation, meaning that through a play of recursivity between apparent converse strategies (direct confrontation versus evasion) groups come to fortify stronger positions from which they can persist. Resistance and refusal not only constitute the conditions of each other's possibility, sharpening the particular interventions that each makes, but demonstrate the necessity of a politics of manoeuvre in which subjects—as individuals and part of collective groups—oscillate between direct confrontation and governmental navigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study was conducted to characterize the vaccination practices and challenges of family medicine physicians in Los Angeles County, California. Methods: The Los Angeles Academy of Family Physicians (LA AFP) sent out electronic surveys to all of their active members (N = 1121) between December 2017 and January 2018, and asked them to answer questions about themselves, their practice, their patient population, and their immunization practices and challenges. We then analyzed the results through basic statistical calculations and Pearson’s chi-squared tests. Results: Seventy-four people (6.6%) responded to the survey, and 75% of responders stated that they administer all Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommended vaccines. The lowest vaccine administration rates were for the high-dose influenza vaccine, which 66.2% (n = 49) of respondents reported to administer, followed by the meningococcal B vaccine (68.9%; n = 51). The respondents who belonged to practices with more than 11 providers, were part of a large hospital or healthcare system, had electronic medical records (EMRs), and used the California Immunization Registry (CAIR) were more likely to report to vaccinate. The number one responding physician-reported challenge to vaccination was limited time and resources to address patient resistance followed by vaccine cost and lack of infrastructure to store vaccines. Conclusions: In this pilot study, structural and logistical challenges appeared to make the biggest impact on adult vaccination for the responding family medicine physicians. Solutions addressing these challenges will help improve the adult immunization rates.

Background: The acute hospital setting has become a key site of care for people living with dementia. The Department of Health and Social Care recognises that as many as one in four acute hospital beds in the UK will be occupied by a person living with dementia at any given time. However, people living with dementia are a highly vulnerable group within the hospital setting. Following an acute admission, their functional abilities can deteriorate quickly and significantly. Detailed research is required to understand the role and needs of health-care staff caring for this patient population and to explore what constitutes ‘good care’ for people living with dementia within the acute setting. Objectives: The focus of this study was a common but poorly understood phenomenon within the acute setting: refusal and resistance to care. Our research questions were ‘How do ward staff respond to resistance to everyday care by people living with dementia being cared for on acute hospital wards?’ and ‘What is the perspective of patients and their carers?’. Design: This ethnography was informed by the symbolic interactionist research tradition, focusing on understanding how action and meaning are constructed within a setting. In-depth evidence-based analysis of everyday care enabled us to understand how ward staff responded to the care needs of people living with dementia and to follow the consequences of their actions. Setting: This ethnography was carried out on 155 days (over 18 months) in 10 wards within five hospitals across England and Wales, which were purposefully selected to represent a range of hospital types, geographies and socioeconomic catchments. Participants: In addition to general observations, 155 participants took part directly in this study, contributing to 436 ethnographic interviews. Ten detailed case studies were also undertaken with people living with dementia. Results: We identified high levels of resistance to care among people living with dementia within acute hospital wards. Every person living with dementia observed within an acute hospital ward resisted care at some point during their admission. Limitations: Limitations identified included the potential for the Hawthorne or researcher effect to influence data collection and establishing the generalisability of findings. Conclusions: Ward staff typically interpreted resistance as a feature of a dementia diagnosis, which overshadowed the person. However, resistance to care was typically a response to ward organisation and delivery of care and was typically rational to that person’s present ontology and perceptions. In response, nurses and health-care assistants used multiple interactional approaches that combined highly repetitive language with a focus on completing essential care on the body, which itself had a focus on the containment and restraint of the person in their bed or at their bedside. These approaches to patient care were a response to resistance but also a trigger for resistance, creating cycles of stress for patients, families and ward staff. The findings have informed the development of simple, no-cost innovations at the interactional and organisational level. A further study is examining continence care for people living with dementia in acute hospital settings. Funding: The National Institute for Health Research Health Services and Delivery Research programme.

Degrowth is incompatible with modern capitalist socioecological configurations, and in fact requires their 'unmaking' to open space for post-growth and post-capitalist alternatives. The concept of 'decolonization of the imaginary' has captured an element of unmaking in the degrowth debate. However, this concept remains underdeveloped, and falls short of providing an analytical basis to understand the range of interconnected, multi-level, and multidimensional processes that make space for radical alternatives to modern capitalist socioecological configurations. This paper engages with literature from across the social sciences on various forms of deconstruction, destabilization, displacement, or unmaking of the social and socio-ecological order, most of which was previously unexplored in the degrowth debate. By building on that literature, this paper suggests a richer and more insightful approach to conceptualizing the unmaking of modern capitalist socioecological configurations, thus specifying and refining the notion of decolonization of the imaginary. This paper's insights are distilled in five propositions: (i) unmaking is a combination of situated processes; (ii) processes of unmaking involve both symbolic and material deconstruction; (iii) unmaking is a contradictory personal experience; (iv) unmaking is often hidden, but can be used strategically; and (v) unmaking is generative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines ‘character education’ in a school setting. It does so by drawing on ethnographic data collected at Milltown Community Academy, a secondary school in northern England. In this piece I focus on how character education at Milltown materialises and is enacted within the sites and everyday practices of schooling. By analysing the practices of teachers at the school, I show how, on one hand, the character initiative is embedded and complied with, but, on the other hand, teachers’ practice is also littered with instances of ‘refusal’ and non-compliance. Through recent reforms, Milltown Academy now houses an ‘entrepreneurship specialism’. At the school, ‘entrepreneurship’ is embedded in the school’s core ethos and curriculum and as part of this, the ‘entrepreneurial character’ is sold as necessary and progressive and is regularly deployed in narratives of attachment to and detachment from success and failure, respectively. Therefore, I make a claim that not only is a character agenda at place in the school but an ‘entrepreneurial character’ initiative. The analysis in this article is foregrounded in the idea that the Academy’s attempts to instil an ‘entrepreneurial character’ are part of a problematic policy complex that reproduces class-based inequalities, I argue, however, that those tasked with ‘teaching entrepreneurial character’ are indeed part of the process of the socio-cultural reproduction of inequality and dominance, but importantly, they also engage in plural and contradictory practices when it comes to putting the agenda into action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the different forms of disruptive subjectivity that have developed in the context of the post-2008 global and European crises. The article traces developments both before and after 2008, with a specific focus on events in Spain and the UK. These country contexts are chosen due to their considerable differences in terms of the impact that the crisis had; yet we witness notable similarities with regard to the instances of refusal and resistance observed, especially in terms of the motives held and forms adopted, albeit with differences in scale. The paper presents the results of qualitative research, including 65 in-depth interviews, to highlight the way in which disaffection, the search for voice, and the threat of withdrawal from relations of exploitation have each become problematic as means of dissent following 2008. As a result, we have seen a merging of these more conventional forms of dissent with a number of more radical prefigurative practices that had been developing prior to 2008. As a result, the stagnation of neoliberal capitalism from 2008 onwards has witnessed the development of a new form of pragmatically prefigurative disruptive subjectivity, responsible for some of the more important and interesting political developments in contemporary advanced industrial democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a three part series, I present an overview of my approach to relationally based group psychotherapy. Topics introduced in Part I include a brief introduction to relational theory and its historical foundation; the efficacy of combined-individual psychotherapy; the central role of the therapist; and brief descriptions of key foundational concepts. Part III will present models of group leadership.In Part II, I summarise models of group process—different perspectives through which we may think about what is going on and prepare our interventions. These include: nodes, developing nuclear ideas, the ‘3Rs’ (resistance, rebellion, and refusal), reality testing and testing reality, relational variations of the ‘container–contained’, irruptions, nodules, entitlement, polarized thinking/polemic ideas, and inveiglement. The article considers the metaphorical and experiential bases of the concept of group process, and concludes with a discussion of the therapist’s work process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about resistance to digital media in general and to social media in particular—especially beyond the realm of individuals enacting their media preferences. This article addresses that gap through a historical discourse analysis of the emergence of discursive resistance to social media use across multiple U.S. sociocultural realms. I analyze forms of pushback that became widely visible online between 2009 and 2011 and examine indicators of their emergence. Leveraging concerns about the ubiquity and constancy of digital ICTs more generally, I map ways that resistance to social media was framed in regards to work and organizational dynamics, politics, and the military, as well as personal and relational issues—motivated by distinct yet related reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a study of consumer resistance among active abstainers of the Facebook social network site. I analyze the discourses invoked by individuals who consciously choose to abstain from participation on the ubiquitous Facebook platform. This discourse analysis draws from approximately 100 web and print publications from 2006 to early 2012, as well as personal interviews conducted with 20 Facebook abstainers. I conceptualize Facebook abstention as a performative mode of resistance, which must be understood within the context of a neoliberal consumer culture, in which subjects are empowered to act through consumption choices – or in this case non-consumption choices – and through the public display of those choices. I argue that such public displays are always at risk of misinterpretation due to the dominant discursive frameworks through which abstention is given meaning. This paper gives particular attention to the ways in which connotations of taste and distinction are invoked by refusers through their conspicuous displays of non-consumption. This has the effect of framing refusal as a performance of elitism, which may work against observers interpreting conscientious refusal as a persuasive and emulable practice of critique. The implication of this is that refusal is a limited tactic of political engagement where media platforms are concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]