About the Project
The world’s democracies are under strain. Rights long taken for granted are eroding; trust in public institutions is faltering; and polarisation and division are deepening. However we describe the current moment: authoritarian, populist, autocratic, fascistic, it is increasingly clear that we are witnessing a sharp rise in hateful and divisive rhetoric, and the scapegoating of vulnerable groups. Alongside the fuelling of fear, division, and mistrust, power is consolidating in the hands of a small group of political and economic elites.
At the same time, the space for relational dialogue is shrinking. We operate more and more within our professional, social, and affinity-group echo chambers, as social media algorithms reward us with the comfort of familiar opinions and like-minded voices. Outside of these bubbles, where can we turn to have real conversations? To encounter nuance and contradiction? To meet others who see the world differently? Encountering difference is becoming not only rarer, but also more daunting, as the spaces for meaningful dialogue and common action slip further from reach.
Yet against this gloomy global backdrop, there are – as there always have been – people, groups and communities offering resistance to these anti-democratic conditions through maintaining and opening new spaces for dialogue, solidarity, togetherness, and care.
In the Italian town of Lecco, a small group of mediators facilitates dialogue between pro- and anti-vaccine groups. In Amsterdam, the municipality supports a project bringing Palestinians and Jewish Israelis together in conversation. In the United States, a national de-polarisation network creates safe and respectful spaces for “red” and “blue” voters to discuss contentious topics.
Restorative Practices as Everyday Democratic Resistance is a two-year research project concerned with researching, understanding, and supporting groups and initiatives such as these. The project seeks to develop a deep understanding of how local, community-based initiatives can operate as quiet yet powerful forms of resistance to uphold democratic principles and protect civic life in an increasingly authoritarian global climate.
What are Restorative Practices?
Originally developed as a paradigm of justice that aspires to change the ways contemporary society reacts to and deals with crime, restorative justice advocates believe that harm is best understood and addressed through relational dialogue that emphasises repair and restoration. They acknowledge the harm that crime causes to those involved and, in many instances, to wider society and aim to empower individuals to work towards restoration rather than punishment: through repairing interpersonal relations, providing reparations, and restoring a sense of trust and safety.
“Restorative justice is an approach of addressing harm or the risk of harm through engaging all those affected in coming to a common understanding and agreement on how the harm or wrongdoing can be repaired and justice achieved.“
The restorative justice paradigm is increasingly recognised for its potential to address a broad spectrum of social challenges. By creating safe spaces for constructive dialogue grounded in voluntariness, responsibility, honesty, and respect, restorative justice offers an alternative vision for engaging with the conflicts and injustices that shape everyday civic life.
In recent years, restorative approaches have expanded beyond the criminal justice field into education, healthcare, environmental governance, urban policy, and community policing. Understanding that conflict, harm, and inequality are inevitably embedded within civic life, the restorative approach offers a pragmatic and inclusive way to empower citizens to come together in dialogue to pursue just and collective solutions. This restorative turn reflects a growing recognition that restorative justice offers a framework for fostering meaningful social dialogue and rebuilding trust within and across communities.
For examples of how restorative justice can be integrated into everyday civic life in different ways, see Leuven Restorative City in Belgium, the Traveller Mediation Service in Ireland, and information on Restorative Schools.
What is Everyday Democratic Resistance?
What comes to mind when thinking of the word ‘resistance’? Perhaps a vision of a large protest or demonstration; a picket line of striking workers; hunger strikers in prison; public boycotts, or peaceful occupations or not so peaceful riots? There are many different manifestations of large-scale, public civil resistance to power. Whilst their tactics and dynamics continue to adapt and evolve over time, social movement scholarship provides us with a rich analysis and understanding of these forms of collective opposition to power.
It is less likely, however, that the word ‘resistance’ brings to mind images of individuals simply going about their daily lives; care workers, artists, parents, mediators, youth workers, teachers, social workers, community leaders.
Large, overt forms of oppositional resistance to power arise even in climates where the freedoms to participate in such acts are under threat. For certain groups and individuals however, the risks of participation are too great. Yet such structures of oppression rarely eliminate the will to resist within individuals. When participation in protests or occupations may not feel possible, everyday life becomes the setting in which incremental acts of resistance are quietly realised.
As a subject of scholarship, the theory of everyday resistance has emerged from feminist and subaltern studies, challenging narrow definitions that focused only on acts by broad-based protest organisations. Scholars started to take interest in how marginalised groups resist domination through subtle practices such us ‘foot-dragging’, refusal of harmful mandates, or care for or solidarity with marginalised groups, especially in contexts where open and direct confrontation is risky or dangerous. Feminist scholars also highlighted how paid and unpaid care work, relational and emotional labour can also have intricate political motivations and consequences, even whilst they are rarely recognised as such. Although those who carry out these acts of everyday resistance may not see them as political, this does not make them any less powerful. In many cases, the subtlety or ‘everyday-ness’ of such actions is what allows them to persist.
We can, therefore, understand everyday acts of resistance as the things people do in their daily lives that serve to undermine exclusionary and harmful manifestations of power. Everyday resistance can be enacted by social workers who quietly disobey harmful mandates, by street level bureaucrats who create inclusive spaces in hostile or exclusionary environments, or by neighbours who carry out small, regular acts of solidarity and care with groups at risk of targeted political scapegoating. While small in scale, these powerful acts can build civic capacity and resilience, restore or protect social relationships and networks, and counter the normalisation of exclusion and polarisation. These practices often involve both moral and emotional labour and carry personal or professional risks, particularly if these forms of resistance and those who carry them out become criminalised or stigmatised.
The researchers and practitioners involved in this project are exploring the dynamics of everyday resistance as it integrates restorative practices, and of restorative practices as they manifest acts of everyday resistance. Countering exclusionary forms of power that seek to deepen social isolation and polarisation means creating spaces for dialogue that include and respect a multitude of viewpoints; resisting regimes that rely on racialised stereotypes to encourage scapegoating and hatred of perceived out-groups; and ignoring artificially imposed social hierarchies to meet one another with respect, care, and solidarity.
Our work aims to shed light on the people, groups, and communities creating democratic spaces and building citizen capacity for surfacing conflicts and repairing harms under increasingly difficult conditions. Opening conversations across academic disciplines and subfields, we also seek to share practical knowledge of tactics, strategies, and lessons learned.