Life, Power, Resistance: A Critical Introduction to Life Politics

By Shaun Best

Over recent decades, politics has shifted from parliaments and parties into the intimate spaces of everyday life. Life, Power, Resistance: A Critical Introduction to Life Politics offers a clear and accessible framework for understanding this transformation, not as abstract theory, but as lived experience shaped by intersecting identities. It shows how political meaning is increasingly forged through personal practices, relationships, and self-expression rather than solely through formal institutions.

Best explores how race, gender, sexuality, disability, and age converge with lifestyle choices to generate new forms of resistance and self-realisation. Drawing on key thinkers and social movements - from feminist and queer theory to Black Lives Matter and environmental activism - the analysis reveals how personal struggles are embedded within broader structures of power and collective social change.

Through vivid examples and critical analysis, the book demonstrates how ordinary acts - what we eat, how we love, the identities we claim - become political interventions. Examining the decline of class-based politics and the rise of identity-driven activism, it highlights how everyday life has become a battleground for inclusion, autonomy, and justice, making the book essential reading for understanding the forces reshaping democracy and social relations in the 21st century.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 183742649X
• ISBN13: 9781837426492
• Release Date: December 2026
• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.13 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"