Cultures of Resistance In Turbulent Times: Communication, Memes and Knowledge In Global War Contexts

These turbulent times are saturated with war, disinformation and the strategic erosion of shared truth. Yet societies confronted with violence do not only endure: they resist through culture, communication and creativity. This session invites sociological reflection on cultural and communicational resistance to war, propaganda and authoritarianism across the globe.

We understand resistance here as symbolic and discursive practice. Memes, humour, satire, vernacular images and online storytelling work as a counter-discourse “from below” that weakens official narratives and destabilizes propaganda, ridicules aggressors and sustains collective identity under extreme conditions. Far from trivial, such digital artefacts produce situated knowledge and new “folk tales” through which communities recognise themselves and contest the powerful.

The Russian-Ukrainian war offers a striking case, but it is one among many. We especially welcome comparative and non-Western contributions from across Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America — from war zones to authoritarian and contested political contexts — where platforms become theatres of symbolic conflict and gendered repertoires of resistance.

Resonating with the three pillars of RC14, the session examines how communication becomes both weapon and shield in wartime, how popular cultures produce knowledge against disinformation, and how identities, genders and memories are reshaped on digital platforms.

We invite empirical, theoretical and methodological papers — sociological, socio-anthropological, semio-discursive and visual approaches included — that illuminate how culture resists turbulence. Together they can show that, even amid crisis, societies remain sites of creativity, dignity and the pursuit of alternatives.