Resistance, Gender, and Bourdieu's Notion of Field

Recent conceptualizations of resistance have tended to privilege intentional and conscious acts of resistance and forms of resistance manifested within relations of power that researchers typically define as asymmetrical, such as the labor—management relation. The author argues that these tendencies lead us to overlook forms of resistance manifest in other relations of power that exist in organizations, as well as set ourselves up as arbitrators of what is to be considered “effective” resistance. Using Bourdieu's concepts of capital and field, the author examines how we can read resistance both to the idea of sex discrimination and to patriarchal power relations from the accounts of female career police officers and offers a more perspectival, relativistic account of resistance.