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market forces. Such economic resistance may be local and/or global, and it may also
be either limited or radical. Smaller enterprises may for instance counteract the hege-
mony of large corporations, while cooperatives or open source networks pose more
general alternatives, and radical anticapitalist movements openly confront the capit-
alist market system as a whole. On the political frontier, minority parties oppose
ruling governments, while alternative social movements work for more radical forms
of democracy. There are finally also symbolic or cultural forms of resistance, subdi-
vided along dimensions partly linked to the identity orders to which people tend to
relate: class, gender, sexuality, age, generation, ethnicity, nationality and so forth. In
the last chapter, we analyse these various forms and dimensions in greater detail,
based on ethnographical examples.
With such an understanding of power-resistance dimensions, it is possible to
deconstruct the romantic idea of resistance as a pure and homogenous counter-bloc
to an equally essentialized power-bloc. It is often thought that in revolutionary situ-
ations, various streams of power and resistance may converge and clash against each
other, but on closer inspection, things are never so simple. There is never any perfect
fit, but only idealized imaginations of such utopian moments. In reality the fragile
alliances that coalesce to tip over balances of power in one historical moment always
contain internal tensions and contradictions that make history continue. In ordi-
nary daily life, resistances shift and intersect in highly contradictory ways, and there
is little point in idealizing resistance as such. It is never possible to praise all forms
of resistance, since resistances often counteract each other, and the success of one
leads to the opposition of another. This implies no total relativism, since each case
of power/resistance front line must be evaluated in relation to the long-term articu-
lated structures in which it is integrated. But these structures are never completely
rigid and cannot be outlined once and for all. For instance, when new topics develop
on the social and political agenda, old front lines may be reduced in relative impor-
tance. Any interpretation of power and resistance thus has to be contextually situ-
ated and contains within it the potential to overturn any ahistorical and universal
model.

THE CROSSROADS OF MEDIA CONSUMPTION
This chapter has argued for more complex tools of understanding of media consump-
tion. In a series of areas, we have problematized closed dualisms and dichotomies,
arguing for more multidimensional and dynamic perspectives, from the basic defini-
tions of media and consumption to the analysis of power and resistance in practices
of communication. We have argued that the processes of media consumption and of
communication overlap, and run in several phases. Both involve encounters between
products and individuals within social frameworks – contextually situated interac-
tions between texts and subjectivities, resulting in the production of meaning, iden-
tity and power. These processes are framed by institutions and structures that have
evolved in modern societies, placing media use in a multidimensional force field of
economic, political and symbolic power.