Subaltern Political Practices in a Working Class Neighborhood of Tokyo: Forms of Resistance?

Drawing from ethnographic research conducted in a working class neighborhood of Tokyo on subaltern political practices, this article aims to test the relevance of the concept of resistance to describe and analyze such practices. This study sheds light on different types of non-institutionalized political practices that contest, bypass or elude unfavorable power relations. Examples of individual and collective practices include the reversal of power relations, negotiation, bypassing, encroachment, building of autonomous spaces and emancipatory practices. Yet, can these different practices be considered as forms of resistance? In order to suggest the affirmative, it becomes necessary to distinguish between resistance for itself and resistance in itself. This conceptual distinction permits the placement of forms of resistance within a wider dynamic of global power relations, wherein such resistances are only constitutive of one pole of the spectrum.