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Life, Power, Resistance

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Life, Power, Resistance offers a clear and accessible framework for understanding this transformation, not as abstract theory, but as lived experience shaped by intersecting identities.
  • 08 December 2026
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Over recent decades, politics has shifted from parliaments and parties into the intimate spaces of everyday life. Life, Power, Resistance: A Critical Introduction to Life Politics offers a clear and accessible framework for understanding this transformation, not as abstract theory, but as lived experience shaped by intersecting identities. It shows how political meaning is increasingly forged through personal practices, relationships, and self-expression rather than solely through formal institutions.

Best explores how race, gender, sexuality, disability, and age converge with lifestyle choices to generate new forms of resistance and self‑realisation. Drawing on key thinkers and social movements - from feminist and queer theory to Black Lives Matter and environmental activism - the analysis reveals how personal struggles are embedded within broader structures of power and collective social change.

Through vivid examples and critical analysis, the book demonstrates how ordinary acts - what we eat, how we love, the identities we claim - become political interventions. Examining the decline of class‑based politics and the rise of identity‑driven activism, it highlights how everyday life has become a battleground for inclusion, autonomy, and justice, making the book essential reading for understanding the forces reshaping democracy and social relations in the 21st century.

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Price: $110.00
Pages: 300
Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
Imprint: Emerald Publishing Limited
Publication Date: 08 December 2026
ISBN: 9781837426492
Format: Hardcover
BISACs: POLITICAL SCIENCE / Comparative Politics, Political science and theory, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Freedom, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Ideologies / General, Comparative politics, Political ideologies and movements
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Shaun Best recently retired from his teaching position at the University of Winchester, UK. He previously taught at the University of Manchester and Nottingham Trent University. In addition to publishing widely on the work of Zygmunt Bauman, he also writes about issues in relation to social inclusion and exclusion within an educational context.

Introduction: Life Politics, Resistance and Respect for the Person
Chapter 1. Erving Goffman, Everyday Life and Everyday Resistance
Chapter 2. Infrapolitics, Race and Everyday Resistance
Chapter 3. Counter Hegemony and Reimaging Everyday Life
Chapter 4. Everyday Resistance and Grassroots Environmental Activism
Chapter 5. Anthony Giddens: Reflexive Modernisation and the Politics of Everyday Life
Chapter 6. Michel de Certeau: Neoliberal Governmentality and Cultural Resistance
Chapter 7. Karl Polanyi: Economic and Political Movement and Counter Movement
Chapter 8. Jürgen Habermas Countering the Colonisation of the Lifeworld
Conclusion