''Heavy Transcripts: Exploring the Disobedient Practices of the D.I.Y. musicians in Western Belarus''

Abstract

In the past, there have been different approaches to researching manifestations of human agency in non-democratic political regimes. Contributing both to the development of the concept of infrapolitics and the insufficient qualitative data on contemporary Belarus, this Thesis intends to investigate how do the disobedient practices of the D.I.Y. music scene help to reveal the execution of agency in Western Belarus, in 2018. While the social and political sciences have often found the polarization between the domination and the resistance useful, this work is critical of the analytical value of these terms and proposes a practice theory-based methodology that helps to promote the idea of an agent-structure interdependency. Through the implementation of qualitative data collection techniques - in-depth interviews and participant observation - voice is given to the active agents themselves, providing an insight into the ways of life that are parallel to the hegemonic one. The acquired results speak against the perception of Belarus inhabitants as oppressed and points at the prerequisites and mechanisms of disobedient practice that can further help to advance the analytical tool-kit for contentious political spaces.