Manoj Misra | Western Connecticut State University (original) (raw)
Papers by Manoj Misra
To my parents, wife and son. vi Acknowledgement However clichéd it may sound, the truth is that t... more To my parents, wife and son. vi Acknowledgement However clichéd it may sound, the truth is that this dissertation is a collective product of many people. I have only been able to mention a few names here, and missed out on many. This omission is not deliberate. However, any error that remains in this dissertation is exclusively mine.
Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d'études du développement, 2018
Journal of Contemporary Asia, 2019
Evidence suggests that smallholders are fast becoming one of the largest micro-credit recipient g... more Evidence suggests that smallholders are fast becoming one of the largest micro-credit recipient groups in Bangladesh. However, the literature on the effects of micro-credit use among smallholders is surprisingly deficient. This article seeks to rectify this gap by highlighting the ramifications of micro-credit's foray into the subsistence agriculture sector. It analyses the ostensibly disparate processes of mounting smallholder indebtedness and the phenomenal rise of micro-finance institutions in Bangladesh in light of the country's broader context of agricultural commoditisation, input subsidy reduction and a systematic lessening of the subsidised agricultural credit system. The article uses the concept of "accumulation by dispossession/encroachment" to argue that persistent borrowing from microfinance institutions (MFIs) exposes smallholders to the risks and volatilities of the market. Using qualitative insights from a case study of three villages, it demonstrates how the capital accumulation model of Bangladeshi MFIs marginalises smallholders and ensnares them in a perpetual cycle of debts.
Agriculture and Human Values, 2017
Bangladesh continues to experience stubbornly high levels of rural malnutrition amid steady econo... more Bangladesh continues to experience stubbornly high levels of rural malnutrition amid steady economic growth and poverty reduction. The policy response to tackling malnutrition shows an overwhelmingly technocratic bias, which depoliticizes the broader question of how the agro-food regime is structured. Taking an agrarian and human rights-based approach, this paper argues that rural malnutrition must be analyzed as symptomatic of a deepening agrarian crisis in which the obsession with productivity increases and commercialization overrides people's democratic right to culturally appropriate, good, nutritious food. Using qualitative insights from a case study of three villages, this research illustrates how agricultural modernization and commercialization reproduce rural malnutrition by degrading local biodiversity and the rural poor's access to nutrientrich diets. In so doing, it undermines the official discourse's simplistic and literal reading of malnutrition as a pathological health condition resulting from the mere absence of certain micronutrients in the human body, and thus questions the adequacy of the proposed solutions. Instead, this research suggests that solving malnutrition in large part involves facilitating the rural poor's access to nutritious diets through democratizing and reorganizing the agriculture sector in a manner that is eco-friendly and unconstrained by market imperatives. It cautiously advances agroecology and food sovereignty as possible alternatives, while recognizing that overcoming the challenges agrarian class conflict, gender disparity and urban-rural divide pose would not be easy.
Climate and Development, 2016
This paper offers an in-depth sociological analysis of how the interplay of climatic factors, agr... more This paper offers an in-depth sociological analysis of how the interplay of climatic factors, agricultural technologies and markets shapes smallholder livelihoods in Bangladesh to help sketch the outline for a sustainable agricultural adaptation strategy. It intends to question the technological optimism inherent in mainstream climate change policy discourse by highlighting the multiple sources of vulnerabilities of smallholder peasants in Bangladesh. Using findings from a qualitative study, it demonstrates how smallholders in Bangladesh currently experience climate change through their everyday agricultural practices, and how climate change along with the ecosystem destruction from modern farming technologies adversely affects their livelihoods. Drawing on the recent literature on sustainable adaptation, this paper argues that any agricultural adaptation strategy in Bangladesh must analyse the vulnerabilities of farming communities at the intersection of their geographically specific exposure to climatic threats, the extent of their market participation and the socioecological implications of their technology adoption. It concludes that an eventual departure from the current rice monoculture pivoted on chemical dependence and an excessive use of natural resources is the prerequisite for a sustainable agricultural adaptation.
Journal of Agrarian Change, 2016
This paper focuses on three decades of agrarian reform policies and the resulting peculiarity of ... more This paper focuses on three decades of agrarian reform policies and the resulting peculiarity of the development trajectory in Bangladesh. I interrogate the ways in which the reforms have led to a paradoxical situation consisting of partial protelarianization in attempting to promote a marketbased economy. I contend that the particular positioning of the state is central to understanding this dialectic between proletarianization and the persistence of small peasants amid a huge rush towards the formation of a capitalist market economy. I conclude that the partial nature of agrarian transformation that we now experience in Bangladesh may not be resolved in favour of a complete proletarianization of small peasants in the foreseeable future.
Perspectives on Global Development and Technology, 2012
The specter of food crisis is haunting the world again in 2011. This comes after a short period o... more The specter of food crisis is haunting the world again in 2011. This comes after a short period of decline in food prices since they peaked in the summer of 2008. The addition of seven point five million people during the 2007-08 food crisis with the estimated food insecure population of sixty-five point three million in Bangladesh (FAO/WFP 2008) underlines the magnitude of food insecurity in the country. In this article I trace the volatility in Bangladesh’s rice market since the 2007-8 food crisis in terms of the country’s deregulation of agricultural sector and the gradual elimination of market regulatory mechanisms. I demonstrate that despite Bangladesh’s relatively minor dependence on the international rice market and a steady domestic supply, the lack of strong government regulation and monitoring of the market resulted in irrational rice-price increases. I argue that the alleged connections between the domestic and the international rice markets are largely hypothetical, and ...
Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d'études du développement, 2019
Against Colonization and Rural Dispossession
This paper focuses on three decades of agrarian reform policies and the resulting peculiarity of ... more This paper focuses on three decades of agrarian reform policies and the resulting peculiarity of the development trajectory in Bangladesh. I interrogate the ways in which the reforms have led to a paradoxical situation consisting of partial protelarianization in attempting to promote a market-based economy. I contend that the particular positioning of the state is central to understanding this dialectic between proletarianization and the persistence of small peasants amid a huge rush towards the formation of a capitalist market economy. I conclude that the partial nature of agrarian transformation that we now experience in Bangladesh may not be resolved in favour of a complete proletarianization of small peasants in the foreseeable future.
This paper offers an in-depth sociological analysis of how the interplay of climatic factors, agr... more This paper offers an in-depth sociological analysis of how the interplay of climatic factors, agricultural technologies and
markets shapes smallholder livelihoods in Bangladesh to help sketch the outline for a sustainable agricultural adaptation
strategy. It intends to question the technological optimism inherent in mainstream climate change policy discourse by
highlighting the multiple sources of vulnerabilities of smallholder peasants in Bangladesh. Using findings from a
qualitative study, it demonstrates how smallholders in Bangladesh currently experience climate change through their
everyday agricultural practices, and how climate change along with the ecosystem destruction from modern farming
technologies adversely affects their livelihoods. Drawing on the recent literature on sustainable adaptation, this paper
argues that any agricultural adaptation strategy in Bangladesh must analyse the vulnerabilities of farming communities at
the intersection of their geographically specific exposure to climatic threats, the extent of their market participation and
the socioecological implications of their technology adoption. It concludes that an eventual departure from the current rice
monoculture pivoted on chemical dependence and an excessive use of natural resources is the prerequisite for a
sustainable agricultural adaptation.
Does Government Intervention Matter? Revisiting Recent Rice Price Increases in Bangladesh
Published paper by Manoj Misra
The Conversation, 2024
When student-led, anti-government protests in Bangladesh snowballed into the ouster of Sheikh Has... more When student-led, anti-government protests in Bangladesh snowballed into the ouster of Sheikh Hasina's 15-year-long autocratic rule in August 2024, many in the South Asian nation hoped it signaled better times ahead. Four months on, things are not going to plan. The initial surge of public jubilation has given way to pessimism. The interim government, led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, is grappling with governance problems, political instability, religious extremism and a fragile economy. Moreover, a series of recent events have highlighted and exacerbated Bangladesh's fraught diplomatic relations with neighboring India. The arrest of a Hindu monk in Muslim-majority Bangladesh on Nov. 24, 2024, encapsulates the problems facing Yunus. The detention of Chinmoy Krishna Das (also known as Chandan Dhar) was followed by sectarian violence in which a Muslim lawyer was killed, and anti-Bangladesh protests in India.
Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment, 2023
Green political theorists often highlight local food systems as an exemplar of eco-logical citize... more Green political theorists often highlight local food systems as an exemplar of eco-logical citizenship. Nevertheless, the topic has received scant systematic and critical treatment within green political theory. Although local food initiatives generally tend to be environmentally friendly, not all such initiatives lead to better environmental outcomes, nor can they be essentially characterized as citizenship practices that foster social justice. This article argues that a situated analysis is necessary to understand how a particular local food initiative promotes ecological citizenship. Through a qualitative study of community supported agriculture (CSA) participants in the greater Edmonton region of Canada, this article analyzes the civic virtues nurtured by this community and interrogates the extent to which their everyday practices resemble ecological citizenship. It concludes that discursive and structural limitations prevent the Edmonton CSA community from achieving meaningful diversity and addressing social justice concerns within its realm.
Journal of Contemporary Asia, 2019
Evidence suggests that smallholders are fast becoming one of the largest micro-credit recipient g... more Evidence suggests that smallholders are fast becoming one of the largest micro-credit recipient groups in Bangladesh. However, the literature on the effects of micro-credit use among smallholders is surprisingly deficient. This article seeks to rectify this gap by highlighting the ramifications of micro-credit’s foray into the subsistence agriculture sector. It analyses the ostensibly disparate processes of mounting smallholder indebtedness and the phenomenal rise of micro-finance institutions in Bangladesh in light of the country’s broader context of agricultural commoditisation, input subsidy reduction and a systematic lessening of the subsidised agricultural credit system. The article uses the concept of “accumulation by dispossession/encroachment” to argue that persistent borrowing from micro-finance institutions (MFIs) exposes smallholders to the risks and volatilities of the market. Using qualitative insights from a case study of three villages, it demonstrates how the capital accumulation model of Bangladeshi MFIs marginalises smallholders and ensnares them in a perpetual cycle of debts.
Bangladesh continues to experience stubbornly high levels of rural malnutrition amid steady econo... more Bangladesh continues to experience stubbornly high levels of rural malnutrition amid steady economic growth and poverty reduction. The policy response to tackling malnutrition shows an overwhelmingly technocratic bias, which depoliticizes the broader question of how the agro-food regime is structured. Taking an agrarian and human rights-based approach, this paper argues that rural malnutrition must be analyzed as symptomatic of a deepening agrarian crisis in which the obsession with productivity increases and commercialization overrides people's democratic right to culturally appropriate, good, nutritious food. Using qualitative insights from a case study of three villages, this research illustrates how agricultural modernization and commercialization reproduce rural malnutrition by degrading local biodiversity and the rural poor's access to nutrient-rich diets. In so doing, it undermines the official discourse's simplistic and literal reading of malnutrition as a pathological health condition resulting from the mere absence of certain micronutrients in the human body, and thus questions the adequacy of the proposed solutions. Instead, this research suggests that solving malnutrition in large part involves facilitating the rural poor's access to nutritious diets through democratizing and reorganizing the agriculture sector in a manner that is eco-friendly and unconstrained by market imperatives. It cautiously advances agroecology and food sovereignty as possible alternatives, while recognizing that overcoming the challenges agrarian class conflict, gender disparity and urban–rural divide pose would not be easy.
A G A I N S T C O L O N I Z A T I O N A N D RURAL DISPOSSESSION LOCAL RESISTANCE IN SOUTH AND EAST ASIA, THE PACIFIC AND AFRICA, 2017
Book Reviews by Manoj Misra
To my parents, wife and son. vi Acknowledgement However clichéd it may sound, the truth is that t... more To my parents, wife and son. vi Acknowledgement However clichéd it may sound, the truth is that this dissertation is a collective product of many people. I have only been able to mention a few names here, and missed out on many. This omission is not deliberate. However, any error that remains in this dissertation is exclusively mine.
Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d'études du développement, 2018
Journal of Contemporary Asia, 2019
Evidence suggests that smallholders are fast becoming one of the largest micro-credit recipient g... more Evidence suggests that smallholders are fast becoming one of the largest micro-credit recipient groups in Bangladesh. However, the literature on the effects of micro-credit use among smallholders is surprisingly deficient. This article seeks to rectify this gap by highlighting the ramifications of micro-credit's foray into the subsistence agriculture sector. It analyses the ostensibly disparate processes of mounting smallholder indebtedness and the phenomenal rise of micro-finance institutions in Bangladesh in light of the country's broader context of agricultural commoditisation, input subsidy reduction and a systematic lessening of the subsidised agricultural credit system. The article uses the concept of "accumulation by dispossession/encroachment" to argue that persistent borrowing from microfinance institutions (MFIs) exposes smallholders to the risks and volatilities of the market. Using qualitative insights from a case study of three villages, it demonstrates how the capital accumulation model of Bangladeshi MFIs marginalises smallholders and ensnares them in a perpetual cycle of debts.
Agriculture and Human Values, 2017
Bangladesh continues to experience stubbornly high levels of rural malnutrition amid steady econo... more Bangladesh continues to experience stubbornly high levels of rural malnutrition amid steady economic growth and poverty reduction. The policy response to tackling malnutrition shows an overwhelmingly technocratic bias, which depoliticizes the broader question of how the agro-food regime is structured. Taking an agrarian and human rights-based approach, this paper argues that rural malnutrition must be analyzed as symptomatic of a deepening agrarian crisis in which the obsession with productivity increases and commercialization overrides people's democratic right to culturally appropriate, good, nutritious food. Using qualitative insights from a case study of three villages, this research illustrates how agricultural modernization and commercialization reproduce rural malnutrition by degrading local biodiversity and the rural poor's access to nutrientrich diets. In so doing, it undermines the official discourse's simplistic and literal reading of malnutrition as a pathological health condition resulting from the mere absence of certain micronutrients in the human body, and thus questions the adequacy of the proposed solutions. Instead, this research suggests that solving malnutrition in large part involves facilitating the rural poor's access to nutritious diets through democratizing and reorganizing the agriculture sector in a manner that is eco-friendly and unconstrained by market imperatives. It cautiously advances agroecology and food sovereignty as possible alternatives, while recognizing that overcoming the challenges agrarian class conflict, gender disparity and urban-rural divide pose would not be easy.
Climate and Development, 2016
This paper offers an in-depth sociological analysis of how the interplay of climatic factors, agr... more This paper offers an in-depth sociological analysis of how the interplay of climatic factors, agricultural technologies and markets shapes smallholder livelihoods in Bangladesh to help sketch the outline for a sustainable agricultural adaptation strategy. It intends to question the technological optimism inherent in mainstream climate change policy discourse by highlighting the multiple sources of vulnerabilities of smallholder peasants in Bangladesh. Using findings from a qualitative study, it demonstrates how smallholders in Bangladesh currently experience climate change through their everyday agricultural practices, and how climate change along with the ecosystem destruction from modern farming technologies adversely affects their livelihoods. Drawing on the recent literature on sustainable adaptation, this paper argues that any agricultural adaptation strategy in Bangladesh must analyse the vulnerabilities of farming communities at the intersection of their geographically specific exposure to climatic threats, the extent of their market participation and the socioecological implications of their technology adoption. It concludes that an eventual departure from the current rice monoculture pivoted on chemical dependence and an excessive use of natural resources is the prerequisite for a sustainable agricultural adaptation.
Journal of Agrarian Change, 2016
This paper focuses on three decades of agrarian reform policies and the resulting peculiarity of ... more This paper focuses on three decades of agrarian reform policies and the resulting peculiarity of the development trajectory in Bangladesh. I interrogate the ways in which the reforms have led to a paradoxical situation consisting of partial protelarianization in attempting to promote a marketbased economy. I contend that the particular positioning of the state is central to understanding this dialectic between proletarianization and the persistence of small peasants amid a huge rush towards the formation of a capitalist market economy. I conclude that the partial nature of agrarian transformation that we now experience in Bangladesh may not be resolved in favour of a complete proletarianization of small peasants in the foreseeable future.
Perspectives on Global Development and Technology, 2012
The specter of food crisis is haunting the world again in 2011. This comes after a short period o... more The specter of food crisis is haunting the world again in 2011. This comes after a short period of decline in food prices since they peaked in the summer of 2008. The addition of seven point five million people during the 2007-08 food crisis with the estimated food insecure population of sixty-five point three million in Bangladesh (FAO/WFP 2008) underlines the magnitude of food insecurity in the country. In this article I trace the volatility in Bangladesh’s rice market since the 2007-8 food crisis in terms of the country’s deregulation of agricultural sector and the gradual elimination of market regulatory mechanisms. I demonstrate that despite Bangladesh’s relatively minor dependence on the international rice market and a steady domestic supply, the lack of strong government regulation and monitoring of the market resulted in irrational rice-price increases. I argue that the alleged connections between the domestic and the international rice markets are largely hypothetical, and ...
Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d'études du développement, 2019
Against Colonization and Rural Dispossession
This paper focuses on three decades of agrarian reform policies and the resulting peculiarity of ... more This paper focuses on three decades of agrarian reform policies and the resulting peculiarity of the development trajectory in Bangladesh. I interrogate the ways in which the reforms have led to a paradoxical situation consisting of partial protelarianization in attempting to promote a market-based economy. I contend that the particular positioning of the state is central to understanding this dialectic between proletarianization and the persistence of small peasants amid a huge rush towards the formation of a capitalist market economy. I conclude that the partial nature of agrarian transformation that we now experience in Bangladesh may not be resolved in favour of a complete proletarianization of small peasants in the foreseeable future.
This paper offers an in-depth sociological analysis of how the interplay of climatic factors, agr... more This paper offers an in-depth sociological analysis of how the interplay of climatic factors, agricultural technologies and
markets shapes smallholder livelihoods in Bangladesh to help sketch the outline for a sustainable agricultural adaptation
strategy. It intends to question the technological optimism inherent in mainstream climate change policy discourse by
highlighting the multiple sources of vulnerabilities of smallholder peasants in Bangladesh. Using findings from a
qualitative study, it demonstrates how smallholders in Bangladesh currently experience climate change through their
everyday agricultural practices, and how climate change along with the ecosystem destruction from modern farming
technologies adversely affects their livelihoods. Drawing on the recent literature on sustainable adaptation, this paper
argues that any agricultural adaptation strategy in Bangladesh must analyse the vulnerabilities of farming communities at
the intersection of their geographically specific exposure to climatic threats, the extent of their market participation and
the socioecological implications of their technology adoption. It concludes that an eventual departure from the current rice
monoculture pivoted on chemical dependence and an excessive use of natural resources is the prerequisite for a
sustainable agricultural adaptation.
Does Government Intervention Matter? Revisiting Recent Rice Price Increases in Bangladesh
The Conversation, 2024
When student-led, anti-government protests in Bangladesh snowballed into the ouster of Sheikh Has... more When student-led, anti-government protests in Bangladesh snowballed into the ouster of Sheikh Hasina's 15-year-long autocratic rule in August 2024, many in the South Asian nation hoped it signaled better times ahead. Four months on, things are not going to plan. The initial surge of public jubilation has given way to pessimism. The interim government, led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, is grappling with governance problems, political instability, religious extremism and a fragile economy. Moreover, a series of recent events have highlighted and exacerbated Bangladesh's fraught diplomatic relations with neighboring India. The arrest of a Hindu monk in Muslim-majority Bangladesh on Nov. 24, 2024, encapsulates the problems facing Yunus. The detention of Chinmoy Krishna Das (also known as Chandan Dhar) was followed by sectarian violence in which a Muslim lawyer was killed, and anti-Bangladesh protests in India.
Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment, 2023
Green political theorists often highlight local food systems as an exemplar of eco-logical citize... more Green political theorists often highlight local food systems as an exemplar of eco-logical citizenship. Nevertheless, the topic has received scant systematic and critical treatment within green political theory. Although local food initiatives generally tend to be environmentally friendly, not all such initiatives lead to better environmental outcomes, nor can they be essentially characterized as citizenship practices that foster social justice. This article argues that a situated analysis is necessary to understand how a particular local food initiative promotes ecological citizenship. Through a qualitative study of community supported agriculture (CSA) participants in the greater Edmonton region of Canada, this article analyzes the civic virtues nurtured by this community and interrogates the extent to which their everyday practices resemble ecological citizenship. It concludes that discursive and structural limitations prevent the Edmonton CSA community from achieving meaningful diversity and addressing social justice concerns within its realm.
Journal of Contemporary Asia, 2019
Evidence suggests that smallholders are fast becoming one of the largest micro-credit recipient g... more Evidence suggests that smallholders are fast becoming one of the largest micro-credit recipient groups in Bangladesh. However, the literature on the effects of micro-credit use among smallholders is surprisingly deficient. This article seeks to rectify this gap by highlighting the ramifications of micro-credit’s foray into the subsistence agriculture sector. It analyses the ostensibly disparate processes of mounting smallholder indebtedness and the phenomenal rise of micro-finance institutions in Bangladesh in light of the country’s broader context of agricultural commoditisation, input subsidy reduction and a systematic lessening of the subsidised agricultural credit system. The article uses the concept of “accumulation by dispossession/encroachment” to argue that persistent borrowing from micro-finance institutions (MFIs) exposes smallholders to the risks and volatilities of the market. Using qualitative insights from a case study of three villages, it demonstrates how the capital accumulation model of Bangladeshi MFIs marginalises smallholders and ensnares them in a perpetual cycle of debts.
Bangladesh continues to experience stubbornly high levels of rural malnutrition amid steady econo... more Bangladesh continues to experience stubbornly high levels of rural malnutrition amid steady economic growth and poverty reduction. The policy response to tackling malnutrition shows an overwhelmingly technocratic bias, which depoliticizes the broader question of how the agro-food regime is structured. Taking an agrarian and human rights-based approach, this paper argues that rural malnutrition must be analyzed as symptomatic of a deepening agrarian crisis in which the obsession with productivity increases and commercialization overrides people's democratic right to culturally appropriate, good, nutritious food. Using qualitative insights from a case study of three villages, this research illustrates how agricultural modernization and commercialization reproduce rural malnutrition by degrading local biodiversity and the rural poor's access to nutrient-rich diets. In so doing, it undermines the official discourse's simplistic and literal reading of malnutrition as a pathological health condition resulting from the mere absence of certain micronutrients in the human body, and thus questions the adequacy of the proposed solutions. Instead, this research suggests that solving malnutrition in large part involves facilitating the rural poor's access to nutritious diets through democratizing and reorganizing the agriculture sector in a manner that is eco-friendly and unconstrained by market imperatives. It cautiously advances agroecology and food sovereignty as possible alternatives, while recognizing that overcoming the challenges agrarian class conflict, gender disparity and urban–rural divide pose would not be easy.
A G A I N S T C O L O N I Z A T I O N A N D RURAL DISPOSSESSION LOCAL RESISTANCE IN SOUTH AND EAST ASIA, THE PACIFIC AND AFRICA, 2017
This chapter examines the politics of resistance to this contradiction and to the convergence of ... more This chapter examines the politics of resistance to this contradiction and to the convergence of social, ecological, political and economic crises in play therein. We retell here the story of the emergence of local resistance to the Rampal power plant project, its articulation with a nation-wide protest movement primarily through organizational efforts of the NCBD, which then brings on board the support of Bangladesh’s more mainstream environmental organizations and ultimately attracts an international campaign opposing the development carried on through the transnational networks of a globalized environmental movement. The chapter focuses on the network form of resistance and interrogates its ideological-political constellation in this instance by contextualizing this development and its resistances both in our current great recessionary conjuncture as well as in the longue durée of the colonial-capitalist world system. Drawing on the work of Anibel Quijano, Silvia Federici and other theorists of colonial modernity we propose a post-Western Marxist and decolonizing critique and re-situate the local resistance to the power-plant project as also resistance against forest destruction and a neocolonial land grab, a local-global networked multitude’s resistance against accumulation by dispossession but resistance limited by neocolonial accumulated violence. Crucial to our interrogation of local resistance here is its inability to invent a politics that would address the problem of landlessness and informalization that is interwoven with this instance of development dispossession but remains invisible to the network of national and transnational politics. This local mode of subalternization holds important movement building lessons for the networked multitude form of social justice environmentalist activism. We take these up in our conclusion. The chapter begins by providing background on the Rampal coal fired power plant project and the criticisms of it. We then sketch our decolonizing post-Western Marxist theoretical framework that informs our subsequent analysis of the neocolonial form of power mobilized in Bangladesh’s energy development strategy and of the local resistance to it. The chapter concludes with our critical engagement with the contradictions of resistance.