Engendering everyday resistance: Gender, patronage and production politics in rural Malaysia

Abstract

Abstract Labour relations, forms of resistance, and class consciousness in the Muda region of Malaysia have become increasingly differentiated along gender lines: women have come to define and prosecute their interests as workers, whereas men continue to adopt a far more deferential stance vis‐à‐vis their employers. To explain these patterns, this article shows how struggles within the labour process intersect with those in the local community and the household, and how gender meanings shape the struggles on these interconnected sites. This gendered analysis of class formation calls for a major rethinking of James Scott's notion of ‘everyday forms of peasant resistance’.