Political Activism and the Experience of Adversity

Abstract

How do political activists who live and work in high-risk contexts experience adversity? How do they make sense of the diverse institutional obstacles, strategic risks, and situational deprivations surrounding their work and lives? This article introduces the notion of relational adversity to capture how different adversarial factors in the diverse arenas activists inhabit intersect with and co-constitute each other. To validate and develop our framework, we analyze 160 narrative accounts of human rights activists in Colombia, Egypt, Kenya, and Mexico and examine concrete configurations and patterns of adversity found among different types of activists. By considering how structural constraints, institutional deficits, and opponent repression connect with the social location of individual activists, routine practices and personal concerns, and with their bodily and cognitive state, the article advances a relational and experiential treatment of political activism that complements structural and strategic approaches and does better justice to the lived reality of contentious mobilization.