Resumo

For De Certeau (1984), the economic order would be responsible not only for establishing mass forms of consumption but, more broadly, for establishing specific ways of being in the world. Operating through dominant strategies, the economic order makes available the material and symbolic resources by which consumers develop their practices. However, resistance tactics are notable for escaping the hegemony of their dogmatic structures and principles. They emerge spontaneously from everyday life, assuming the form of a multitude of reflective or pre-reflectively practices.

De Certeau’s (1984) thesis proposes the triumph of resistance tactics in the everyday context of the common people over the market strategies. However, the dynamic character of recent market models raises a question about this delimitation: Can resistance tactics transcend the dominant economic order even in emerging market contexts? Thus, this research aims to analyze how resistance tactics and market strategies are organized in a collaborative consumption model. Specifically, we examine the formation of resistance and identify shared attributes in alternative socio-economic models.

Although the mechanisms of resistance remain the same over time, since the same unequal distribution of forces continues to exist, the practices of resistance that make up such mechanisms need to be constantly renewed. The reason is based on the markets’ need to feed on the production of cultural differences provided by the consumers themselves, as a way to consecrate the offer of new products or services. Thus, not only the marketing strategies are modified over time but also the resistance tactics. This is the case of the upsurging of current new alternative socio-economic models.

Multi-site ethnographic research was carried out over six months. Regarding the methods of collecting information, in addition to systematic observation, relational interviews were carried out, in which the interlocutor is invited to participate in a non-structured dialogue. Altogether, about 16 hours of audio were recorded, which represents only a portion of the dialogues conducted with 12 interviewees and other actors present in the research fields (e.g., Couchsurfing, permaculture farms, cooperatives). The research corpus consisted of 175 single-spaced pages of transcripts and field notes.

Resistance cannot be characterized as casual disturbances with which the social order must deal, but as spontaneous deviations from the attempt to maintain such an order. Although resistance tactics present no central focus, but heterogeneous orientations, some aspects of the market’s hegemony were subverted or at least questioned in interviewees’ practices and speech. However, many practices and models do not seem to completely subvert the dominant economic order. Some of them, on the contrary, try to use market mechanisms as a way to resist.

Practices that escape the purely market spectrum can be developed using a diversified collection of resistance tactics, creating different ways to operate scarcity and economic exchange besides traditional market relations. Resistance tactics are always present in contexts marked by economic conditions, guiding the formation of different socioeconomic initiatives and models. In this process, it is possible to transcend the structures of the traditional market, developing entire alternative economies.

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