Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance

P.103

Everyday resistance and dramatic public confrontation share the goal of denying the claims of the ruling class, but everyday forms disavow public/symbolic goals in favor of immediate, de facto gains.

P.103

Success of de facto resistance correlates positively with faked symbolic conformity — you win more by looking like you comply.

P.105

An open strike invites retaliation but also negotiation and a public airing of grievances. A slowdown is harder for capital to sanction, but is "pure resistance" — it may achieve no structural change, even as it's arguably the more radical act since it fully repudiates the legitimacy of the labor relationship.

P.107

Passive resistance suits peasants who are scattered and lack the discipline/leadership for formal opposition: "No formal organization, leaders, manifestoes, dues, no name and no banner."

P.108

Everyday resistance matters because it's been effective at narrowing the policy options available to a state.

P.109

Reef metaphor — everyday resistance is like millions of polyps building a reef; the world only notices and writes about the dramatic "beaching" event, never the slow accretion that made it possible.

Several zetel/ notes on this same book already exist (2026-03-24 and 2026-06-08, e.g. peasant tax avoidance, draft-dodging Confederates, Malayan rubber smuggling, "no binary divide between those who resist and don't"), predating this wiki's watermark and not yet folded in. Worth a deliberate backfill pass if this book keeps generating wiki-inbox notes.