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Mental Health Implications of Abortion Restrictions for Historically Marginalized Populations
Theorising power and resistance among "travellers"
This paper (re-)examines the literature on Traveller communities in the United Kingdom by combining parts of Michel Foucault's and Michel de Certeau's theoretical legacies. Following an ethnographic summary, I demonstrate the relevance of Foucault and Certeau for a critical understanding of the Travellersâ structural predicaments and ideological resistance in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I argue that Foucault's outline of modern power, surveillance and classification sheds new light on the impact of social control agencies and the implementation of legislative changes, such as the 1968 Caravan Sites Act, on (semi-)nomadic and/or self-employed groups. The implications of more recent legal developments are discussed as symptoms of postmodernity and the further ideological marginalisation of ânon-consuming nomadsâ. I then argue that some of Certeau's key concepts, including the âstrategies/tacticsâ distinction, illuminate the Travellersâ modalities of resistance and symbolisms of difference. Completing a two-way dynamic between theory and data, the article also shows that existing empirical material on Travellers highlights some of the weaknesses in Foucault's and Certeau's respective thought. Finally, I turn to Foucault's âanalyticsâ to account for intra-group power and resistance, and hence to challenge the common portrayal of Foucault as a âtheorist of dominationâ in juxtaposition to Certeau as a âtheorist of subversionâ