Precarious alliances between subaltern resistances and urban civil society

Abstract

In this brief article I try to reintroduce suspiciously forgotten topic of class and more broadly social difference when discussing resistance. I develop three brief arguments drawing on an over a decade long research on various urban and rural resistances to neoliberal marketisation and accompanying authoritarian politics in a small Caucasian state of Georgia. First, I argue that different classes pursue or afford to pursue different forms of resistances. Second, I argue that inquiring into class difference opens empirically and conceptually significant questions about alliances and solidarities across various resistances. Finally, I argue that inquiring into complicated alliances between urban middle-class based resistances and subaltern resistances in and beyond cities, recasts a different light, or perhaps even reveals a darker side of the role of cities in serving as strongholds against authoritarianism.