Changes in political dynamics, particularly the advent of globalisation, have transformed the manner in which dissent operates today. Practices of resistance have taken on increasingly transversal dimensions. They ooze into often unrecognized, but nevertheless significant grey zones between domestic and international spheres. They fuse the local and the global.

The first two parts of this book have scrutinised these transformations from a variety of perspectives. The inquiry has focused, in particular, on whether or not a long modern tradition of theorising dissent remains adequate to understand the transversal context within which political dynamics are unfolding today. A reading of the events that led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall has demonstrated how instances of popular dissent, such as street demonstrations and protest migration, transgressed the spatial givenness of East German and international politics. While challenging the authoritarian regime and, ultimately, contributing to the dissolution of the Cold War order, these dissident practices were bound by limits too. A comparative analysis of gender relations before and after German unification served to illustrate this point. Despite active participation in the protest movement of 1989, women as a social group were in some ways worse off after unification. The institutionally and discursively entrenched patriarchal system of exclusion remained unaffected by practices of popular dissent.