Book review: scripting defiance: four sociological vignettes

Abstract

Background: Scripting Defiance is vast, notwithstanding the modesty of its subtitle – Four Sociological Vignettes. It comes in at 530 pages. It is fundamentally vast in ambition, with its breadth of empirical examples, and its ‘commitment to [burrowing] the deep historical lineages of the modern’ (p. 5). The title conjures the dramaturgical and performative: the scripted lines that performers learn, rehearse, and enact. The volume principally concerns subaltern groups’ agency in scripting ‘narratives of defiance . . . through [distinct] cultural formations’ (p. 15). These ‘significant scripts’ become the narratives new generations of activists can draw on, improvise, and rehearse in their quests for freedom. This is the core theme of the book.