Refusal as Act, Refusal as Abstention

Theorizing (Vaccine) Refusal: Through the Looking Glass

“…In some ways, at some times, for some vaccine‐cautious parents—for instance, those who refuse vaccinations as activists—this equals resistance. Yet as Erica Weiss () notes, refusal need not always involve defiance or action‐against . It can entail quiet abstention instead.…”

“…See Weiss regarding how overt action‐against can be slyly co‐opted by the state as, for instance, when refusers are forced to recognize state authority and the default position even when resisting these, and in how refusers willingly make sacrifices in service of the state (i.e., in an effort to change state rules for the good of the nation).…”

Water, power, and refusal: confronting evasive accountability in a Palestinian village

“…As anthropologists have taken up the study of refusals, we have found that they can be powerful political tools. Recent investigations have focused on people's refusals to pay bills (Stout ; von Schnitzler ), abide by governmental rules and regulations (Simpson ; Weiss ), and recognize territorial boundaries (McGranahan 2016 a ; Rosas ). Often, groups use refusals to block state intervention in their affairs, even chipping away at a sovereign's legitimacy by withholding their consent to be governed (Simpson ; Sojoyner ).…”

“…In al‐Auja, there is not one clear state that can be the target of refusal. Instead of a ‘public refusal’ that directly defies a state, when al‐Auja residents toss their bills into wastebaskets or let stacks pile up on a desk, they are engaged in ‘refusal as abstention’, a quiet, often non‐confrontational refusal to engage with a government under its imposed terms (Weiss : 351).…”

Refusal as political practice:

“…In the contemporary United States, for example, refusing children's vaccines can create an affiliative sense of a community among parents who understand themselves as responsible, independent thinkers (Sobo ). In Israel conscientious objectors may seek to refigure national morality by refusing certain aspects of war, including the “ethical objects” of military action (Weiss ). In the Tibetan case, the exile government positions “statelessness as a moral approach,” as a Tibetan man put it in a conversation we had one morning in Washington, DC, as he reflected on the policy of refusing citizenship.…”