Escape Routes Control and Subversion in the 21st Century

This book shows how individuals can resist the methods of power and control used in advanced Western societies by becoming imperceptible to the political system. The populations of Western countries are highly organized and controlled. Government and society at large categorize people, assigning particular behavioral characteristics to them which delimit their mobility, their labor and their sexuality and reproduction. Behavior outside these accepted norms is punished through judicial or social pressure. This book argues that the most effective form of resistance is for individuals to refuse to accept their position in the system and therefore to become invisible to it. Escape Routescelebrates the illegal migrant who evades detection, the creators of value through the informal nonmonetary economy, and the people who refuse to accept definitive and limited sexual or gender identities. It is through these seemingly insignificant events and moments in everyday life where people cease to occupy formal categories that individuals can effect real social change.