Resistance

Cf.

friction
drag
impedance
viscosity
barriers
transaction costs
landscape resistance
path dependence
lock-in
refusal
sabotage
non-compliance

Discourses and Relationships

Resistance as a component of resilience in systems literature (C. S. Holling, Fikret Berkes, Carl Folke, etc.; resistance = difficulty of displacement, resilience = persistence, transformability = regime change; cf. Transformation).
Resistance as a critique of resilience in political literature (refusal, opposition, struggle, counter-sonduct, activism, insurgency, decolonisation, environmental justice).2 3 Theory of resistance emerges from political ecology, critical theory, human social movements, environmental justice.

Definitions

Resistance is a situated, relational practice in which an entity or collective obstructs, redirects, or withdraws from attempts to shape its conduct. Beyond humans, resistance includes intentional acts and non-intentional, emergent, or embodied counter-conduct that arise from capacities, habits, ecologies, and material arrangements. It operates across scales (individual to multispecies assemblage) and modalities (behavioural, spatial, material, infrastructural, ecological, and semiotic), and observers can recognise it by the frictions it produces in regimes of control rather than by inferred mental states.

Human Resistance

On access to privatised nature, especially in England.

Hayes, Nick. The Trespasser’s Companion. London: Bloomsbury, 2022.

Nonhuman Resistance

Resistance might be an automatic fallback that is too narrow a frame as nonhuman beings can be creative, constructive and proactive, not just resisting.

On silence as non-representational action.5

On contribution of domestic animals to democratic processes.6

Cloke, Paul, and Owain Jones. “Turning in the Graveyard: Trees and the Hybrid Geographies of Dwelling, Monitoring and Resistance in a Bristol Cemetery.” Cultural Geographies 11, no. 3 (2004): 313–41. https://doi.org/10.1191/1474474004eu300oa.

Bear, Christopher, and Lewis Holloway. 2019. “Beyond Resistance: Geographies of Divergent More-than-Human Conduct in Robotic Milking.” Geoforum 104: 212–21. https://doi.org/10/g9xgx9.

Molfese, Carlotta. 2023. “Towards a More-than-Human Theory of Resistance: Reflections on Intentionality, Political Collectives and Opposition.” In Critical Geographies of Resistance, edited by Sarah M. Hughes. Edward Elgar.

Oliver, Catherine. 2023. “Resisting beyond the Human: Animals and Their Advocates.” In Critical Geographies of Resistance, edited by Sarah M. Hughes. Edward Elgar.

Proposes a conceptual reframing of floods as “other than human refusal.”

Dang, Tiffany Kaewen. “The Rite of Water: Other-than-Human Refusals in the Bow Valley.” Antipode 58, no. 1 (2026): e70124. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.70124.

In Resilience Theory

Cf. Phase Space

Scheffer, Marten. Critical Transitions in Nature and Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.

Resistance is the ability of a community to remain unchanged during a period of stress or disturbance.1

Cf. Walker/Holling framework:

latitude (basin width)
resistance (basin depth)
precariousness (distance to threshold)

Relevant to design because resistance measures the difficulty of moving a system from its current state to a different state.

A sub-case can be an example in movement ecology: how difficult is it for an animal to navigate the terrain.

road = high resistance
dense habitat = low resistance
fence = very high resistance

Footnotes

MacKinnon, Danny, and Kate Driscoll Derickson. “From Resilience to Resourcefulness: A Critique of Resilience Policy and Activism.” Progress in Human Geography 37, no. 2 (2013): 253–70. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132512454775.˄
Fainstein, Susan. “Resilience and Justice.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 39, no. 1 (2015): 157–67. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12186.˄
Vieira, Mónica Brito. “Silence in Political Theory and Practice.” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 24, no. 3 (2021): 289–95. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2020.1796328.˄
Castelló, Pablo P. “The Fabric of Zoodemocracy: A Systemic Approach to Deliberative Zoodemocracy.” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 2025, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2024.2437870.˄
Radosevich, Steven R., Jodie S. Holt, and Claudio Ghersa. Ecology of Weeds and Invasive Plants: Relationship to Agriculture and Natural Resource Management. 1997. 3rd ed. Hoboken: Wiley-Interscience, 2007.˄

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Discourses and Relationships