ABSTRACT
Chapter 7 introduced the theme of resistance. This chapter will explore in greater detail how ‘ordinary’ people in the Global South resist and manipulate the forces that are arrayed against and around them. As James Scott (1985) writes in the preface to his book Weapons of the weak, rather than focusing on grand-scale, high-profile protests, rebellions and revolutions ‘it seemed to me more important to understand what we might call everyday forms of peasant resistance – the prosaic but constant struggle between the peasantry and those who seek to extract labor, food, taxes, rents, and interest from them’ (Scott 1985: xvi). Scott was writing about resistance in a rural context, drawing on some two years living in a village in the Malaysian state of Kedah between 1978 and 1980. Everyday resistance, however, need not be restricted to the peasantry but extends to all walks of life and arenas of work.
