Journal of Resistance Studies is an international, interdisciplinary and peer- reviewed scientific journal that explores unarmed resistance. The focus is on critical understandings of resistance strategies, discourses, tactics, effects, causes, contexts and experiences. Our aim is to advance an understanding of how resistance might undermine repression, injustices and domination of any kind, as well as how resistance might nurture autonomous subjectivity, as e.g. constructive work, alternative communities, oppositional ways of thinking. We invite journal articles or book reviews and debate contributions.

The core social phenomenon, ‘resistance’, will be covered in a broad sense, focusing on its nonmilitary articulations. The Journal aims to include analysis of all kinds of unarmed resistance, applying diverse means and techniques. Even if we do not invite analysis that primarily focuses on military means, the relationships and tensions between unarmed and armed resistance are of interest. Empirical examples will include those that combine means, and where organized violence occurs sporadically in otherwise nonviolent struggles.

There are other outlets for critical studies of wars and terror, and this journal exists in order to fill a gap and develop a neglected area: resistance by other means. We are, however, interested in critical analysis of hegemonic labeling of resistance as e.g. ‘violent’, ‘armed’ or ‘terror’.

The Journal of Resistance Studies welcomes critical reflections, evaluations, theoretical developments or more empirical based analysis. We encourage a broad and critical discussion on the possibilities, forms, and conditions, as well as problematics of ‘resistance’. We avoid dogmatic agendas and do not favor any particular framework, and encourage a debate on definitions of ‘resistance’.

Our long term ambition is to further the development of a heterodox scientific field of ‘resistance studies’, a field that critically engages with and learns from other relevant fields that discuss similar phenomena while using other key concepts, such as e.g. activism, contention, deconstruction, disengagement, disobedience, disruption, encroachment, identity politics, insurgency, mimicry, multitude, performativity, protest, queering, rebellion, refusal, riot, revolution, social movement, or other relevant concepts.

The Journal of Resistance Studies exists for those interested in how human liberation can be furthered with the help of creative innovations and mobilizations of unarmed ‘resistance’.