%0 Journal Article
%T The Oksana Affair: Ambiguous resistance in an Israeli warehouse
%A Matan Kaminer
%J Ethnography
%@ 1741-2714
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/1466138117697745
%X In volatile situations, resistance can often take an ambiguous form which demonstrates the power of the dominated but avoids provoking repression. Such ambiguity cannot be simply dispelled by ethnographers; rather, it must be acknowledged and accounted for through a methodology that is willing to accommodate uncertainty while demonstrating the researcher¡¯s good faith and sufficient knowledge. I show how this can be done by narrating an episode of ambiguous resistance which took place during my fieldwork doing logistical labor in a warehouse in Ashdod, Israel, when the work crew of which I was a part successfully undertook to resist the removal of our popular forewoman, Oksana. Taking into account the precarious nature of warehouse employment and drawing on the ambiguous statements and non-verbal behavior of both workers and management, I probe the tactical advantages, strategic limitations and epistemological corollaries of ambiguous resistance in the struggle against domination
%K resistance
%K work
%K epistemology
%K ambiguity
%K class
%K precarity
%K power
%K Israel
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1466138117697745