. . . and let there be Resistance!

This week's readings quite explicitly focused on the theme of resistance. At some point in my life I knew of only one meaning of resistance - armed or violent opposition. And now critical studies have given me more knowledge was understanding of what else can be constructed as resistance.

We see resistance in Mallory & Stern's (2008) article Awakening as a Change Process Among Women at Risk for HIV Who Engage in Survival Sex. The authors highlight that one out of every five AIDS patients is a woman, and HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death among African American women. More importantly, such AIDS prevalence seems to be more common among women who are marginalized by poverty drug abuse, and sex trade. The authors implicitly argues how addressing the root causes of such behavior among this population acts as resistance towards further victimization of these women.

We then read about the resistive acts of the low income African American young females in Martyn & Hatchinson's (2001) article titled Low-Income African American Adolescents Who Avoid Pregnancy: Tough Girls Who Rewrite Negative Scripts. We see how social scripting actually derails members of this population into derailment of proper goals. The authors take examples of girls who have resisted the social negatives and have made examples of themselves in terms to not getting pregnant early, trying to pursue higher education, and a proper male influence in their lives. Although statistics seem to support this statement, but I personally feel uneasy thinking about African American teenagers as poster people for teenage pregnancies and drug abuse.

Many of Dutta's essays revolve around the theme of resistance. We have read that in the book, previous articles, and now on the structural barrier and poverty of the Santali people of Western Bengal (2004). He continually promotes the idea that change needs to come from within, and foregrounding the voices of the marginalized creates a fracture to the dominant status que, and that is the primary mode of reconstructing the status que itself. Cultural practices and health beliefs of the Santalis not only establish their identity but also acts as their resistive strategies.

Finally Basu & Dutta's (2008) essay on the sex workers of West Bengal and the SHIP program acts as a clear example of how resistance and action needs to come from within the marginalized groups in order for it to be effective. Yes, the sex workers have still remained poor and still struggle with their every day lives, but the success of such a program has made them more self reliant and stronger than ever before.

The Haka, the Hurt, and the Work We Owe

The Haka, the Hurt, and the Work We Owe An Indian in Aotearoa reflects on resistance, complicity, and the solidarities we have yet to build Mohan Jyoti Dutta I watched the haka. I watched it several times, in fact. Each time, I tried to sit with what I was feeling before reaching for what I was supposed to think. Let me be honest about who I am in this conversation, because that matters. I am an upper caste, upwardly mobile Indian man. I am a professor at a university in Aotearoa. I carry the accumulated privileges of Brahminical socialisation, of English-medium education, of institutional access that was never designed for the communities I now write about and alongside. I say this not as confession but as orientation — because where you stand shapes what you see, and I have learned, through years of working with communities at the margins, that the refusal to name your own location is itself a colonial habit. The haka directed at Parmjeet Parmar did not offend me. It ...

The Suit Walks the Corridor

The Suit Walks the Corridor At ten past nine on a Monday the corridor on the top floor of the administration building fills with the sound of expensive shoes. The carpet up here was laid in the last refurbishment and still gives slightly underfoot, the way a good hotel lobby does, and the doors along it close with the soft, well-engineered thud of a German car. Along this carpet, in the direction of the lift marked Executive, comes the suit. It comes in navy and in charcoal, in the odd daring pinstripe, in the female version too, a tailored jacket over a silk shell, and heels that announce themselves on the tile of the lift lobby a full three seconds before the person arrives. The suit carries a flat white from the good cafe, the one that closed the student cafe to open, and a lanyard that swings with the confidence of a thing that opens doors. The suit passes the framed founding professors, who were photographed in gowns and look, at this distance, like a row of disapproving pe...

The Substack and the Slur: How a Manufactured Crisis Toppled a Wahine Māori Political Editor

The Substack and the Slur: How a Manufactured Crisis Toppled a Wahine Māori Political Editor On the architecture of the Aotearoa culture-war machine, and the danger it poses to a democracy heading into 2026 There is a particular cadence to the afternoon on which the career of a senior Māori journalist at TVNZ is finished. It is unhurried. It begins with a tweet — in this case, a single image of a typed statement, posted by Maiki Sherman, the now-former political editor of TVNZ, on the afternoon of Friday, 8 May 2026, announcing that she had parted ways with the broadcaster. The post was terse, dignified, and final. As RNZ later reported , Sherman wrote that the scrutiny of the previous week had placed enormous pressure on her and rendered her role "untenable." The first wahine Māori to lead a major broadcaster's political team was gone. The story that finished her had not, ten days earlier, existed in any newspaper, on any wire, on any website you would consider mai...

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