Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance

by James C. Scott

This sensitive picture of the constant and circumspect struggle waged by peasants materially and ideologically against their oppressors shows that techniques of evasion and resistance may represent the most significant and effective means of class struggle in the long run.


"A major contribution to peasant studies, Malaysian studies, and the literature on revolutions and class consciousness."
--Benedict R. Anderson, Cornell University


"The book is a splendid achievement. Because Scott listens closely to the villagers of Malaysia, he enormously expands our understanding of popular ideology and therefore of popular politics. And because he is also a brilliant analyst, he draws upon this concrete experience to develop a new critique of classical theories of ideology."
—Frances Fox Piven, Graduate Center of the City University of New York


“An impressive work which may well become a classic.”
—Terence J. Byres, Times Literary Supplement


“A highly readable, contextually sensitive, theoretically astute ethnography of a moral system in change…. Weapons of the Weak is a brilliant book, combining a sure feel for the subjective side of struggle with a deft handling of economic and political trends.”
—John R. Bown, Journal of Peasant Studies


“A splendid book, a worthy addition to the classic studies of Malay society and of the peasantry at large…. Combines the readability of Akenfield or Pig Earth with an accessible and illuminating theoretical commentary.”
—A.F. Robertson, Times Higher Education Supplement


“No one who wants to understand peasant society, in or out of Southeast Asia, or theories of change, should fail to read [this book].”
—Daniel S. Lev, Journal of Asian Studies


“A moving account of the poor’s refusal to accept the terms of their subordination…. Disposes of the belief that theoretical sophistication and intelligible prose are somehow at odds.”
—Ramachandra Guha, Economic and Political Weekly


“A seminally important commentary on the state of peasant studies and the global literature…. This enormously rich work in Asian and comparative studies is… an essential contribution to participatory development theory and practice.”—Guy Gran, World Development


James C. Scott is professor of political science at Yale University.

Genres: Anthropology, Politics, History, Nonfiction, Sociology, Academic, Social Science

392 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

James C. Scott was an American political scientist and anthropologist specializing in comparative politics. He was a comparative scholar of agrarian and non-state societies, subaltern politics, and anarchism.

Reviews

[Rifhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scott spent two years (p. xvii) in (fictionally named),Sedaka, Malaysia collecting empirical evidence of “everyday forms of peasant resistance” for this book. While there, he observed the locals experiencing socio-cultural and economic change due to agricultural capitalism; a large-scale irrigation project and mechanization of farming in the form of double-cropping leading to a misdistribution of wealth. While productivity initially improved, as the value of land steadily increased, larger, non-native entrepreneurs started dominating the agrarian landscape. This negatively affected the livelihoods of tenants and landless workers, effectively marginalizing them and denying them access to land and work. The plights of the peasants warranted resistance. However, in Sedaka, their forms of opposition remained characteristically and deliberately subtle, non-confrontational and anonymous. Some examples include: false compliance, feigned ignorance pilfering, slandering, flight and foot-dragging. From time to time, they aggravated to sabotage of machinery and arson, but they never mass-mobilized to a large-scale “peasant-revolution”.

In summary, he presents many reasons why protests had not drastically escalated. Some of the notable ones are: 1) their local “moral economy” (See Scott, 1976) had not been completely eroded and some locals were still persistent in continuing its practice, 2) There was a third “party” where misdistribution of wealth had occurred, and much of the wealth leaked to non-native entrepreneurs, 3) the peasants were not completely exhausted of manners to cope with their increased poverty, 4) the peasants were rational enough to know that feigned compliance and performed subordination to the capitalist class was less risky (while they were still able to benefit from it) than staging a large-scale rebellion and 5) the changes brought about by agricultural capitalism had not been instantaneous but gradual, affecting small monitories at a time. He strongly rejects classic and simplistic hegemonic literature that presents peasants as for example, recipients of “mystification” and “false consciousness“. The peasants to him are no “sacks of potatoes” indeed but capable of recognizing their own disadvantaged position and consciously reacting to it accordingly through their “everyday forms of resistance”.

While much of the writing was done through the lens of “moral economy”, he also expanded his analyses by factoring in political actors that also contributed to Sedaka’s changing economic and socio-cultural landscape. Interference by UMNO, Malaysia’s ruling political party shaped inter and intra social class relations too. It further stratified the community between PAS and UMNO supporters, with UMNO supporters receiving preferential treatment, giving them greater access to credit and patronage, furthering the economic gap within both the peasant and landowner classes.

The collaborative contributions of opinions and voices of the peasants presented in this book is crucial in helping readers understand the socio-politico-economic changes that agricultural capitalism had caused them. This is precious because typically scholars are presented with literature that renders them “voiceless”, analyzing them instead from a “top-down” approach, unjustifiably linking them to larger-scale violence, thus misrepresenting them. Unfortunately, here, their opinions and experiences will only remain with just a single academic alone: Scott. Readers are left to their own agencies, whether or not take interest in this “bottom-up” approach that Scott adopts in order to dispel those “mega-theories” that peasant are frequently subjected to in much academia. His case study, Sedaka also brings to light, “passive resistance” that does not fit “mega-narratives” because their resistance does not “make the news”. These peasants do not experience monopoly capitalism in great extent, but readers will have to decide for themselves if the Sedaka natives can really be seen as “rebels”, even though no blatant, open revolt has occurred.

Much of Scott’s sources for this book consist of interviews, including gossip, jokes, name-calling, etc. in the vernacular, thus “unofficial”, un-archived, and to many: “un-academic”. Even so, in my opinion, questions as to whether his sources are reliable, can be addressed in the manner he writes them: coherently (either between or within the classes, thus not producing a messy “web” of varied accounts), unlike other literature that attempt to present their work using secondary resources, but fail to consolidate secondary sources that are understandably more fragmented and inconsistent (for e.g., see Stoler, 1992), thus making an easier case for unreliability. Furthermore, the contributors of the gossip, jokes, name-calling, etc. in the vernacular, as mentioned above, do not remain anonymous. He identifies most of the locals he interacted with (for e.g. see Scott, 1985, pp. 92-94), and this helps to a certain extent, reduce questions of authenticity and unreliability in the remarks, opinions and grievances that he had quoted in the book (for an e.g. for comparison, see Pandey, 1997).

In a way, Scott can be seen as the “champion” of the voiceless peasants, who have suffered the dominating and unkind hegemonic models and “grand scale” theories that present them as passive and without agency. Even as a political scientist, he has gutsily gone against dominant and revered classic models and theories by producing opposing theories and ideas that have been conjured “from below”, with great effort not to objectify them like classic political science writings typically do. While discussing this book, it is very hard not to mention his previous book, The Moral Economy of the Peasant of which claims can be made that this book was written to empirically justify and support the claims he made in it. At first glance it can be easily wondered if its contents are just “The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Part 2”. Some segments are actually quite repetitive.

Having been heavily criticized as over-romanticizing peasants in The Moral Economy of the Peasant, Scott had tried to express more “objectivity” in this book by avoiding sensitive issues like for example, racial politics and stratification which otherwise could have given his analyses more depth. For example, he only briefly mentioned that the wealthiest landowners are ethnically Chinese, with predominantly, the poor peasants being Malays. However, an elaboration on this (sensitively) could also have shown further dimension and depth when illustrating how the locals are not just divided economically but racially too, and how they affect their moral economy as well. He also was very focused on just Sedaka alone, even though, increasingly non-native landowners had taken over much land previously owned by Sedaka locals, adding on to the its changing economic landscape.

This a vivid and engaging book filled with carefully recorded details of accounts from the Sedaka community from the different social and economic classes. Scott manages to illustrate Sedaka’s genuine sense of community and his “undetached” treatment of his respondents is praiseworthy. They were not (scholarly) presented as subjects (or objects), but as individuals with important and meaningful views and concerns. They were just not part of a bigger mass-mobilized violence, thus their grievances were effectively watered down and neglected though other forms of resistance do exist and persist.

References

Pandey, P. (1997). In defense of the fragment: Writing about Hindu-Muslim riots in India today. In R. Guha (Ed.) A Subaltern Studies Reader 1986-1995.Minneapolis: Minneapolis University Press.

Rozenweig,R. (2006). Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past. The Journal of American History, 93(1).

Scott, J. (1976). The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Scott, J. (1985). Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Stoler, A. L. (1992). In cold blood: Hierarchies of credibility and the politics of colonial narratives. Representations, 37, pp. 151-189.

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 3 out of 5]

Weapons of the Weak is a provocatively framed book about peasants survive under systems that would exploit and oppress them, which loses its way in an exhaustively detailed ethnographic case study of a Malaysian village, and a dense mass of Marxist analysis leavened with Gramsci. As Scott argues, peasant rebellions are rare events, but outbreaks of revolt are interspersed with a dense array of survival techniques, most unmarked by histories which are preforce written by elites for other elites. Despite their foundational role in human history, and prominence in the dueling literatures of People’s War/Counter-Insurgency from the 1950s onwards, peasant voices are rarely heard.

Scott’s focuses his study on Sedaka, a rice-farming village in Malaysia which in the years just prior to his case study saw the effects of the Green Revolution. Irrigation meant two rice crops a year, a chance for doubled incomes for all, but in practice the now more capital intensive farming strategies benefited rich farmers, who could most benefit from the combine harvester, fertilizer supplied by partisan corrupt rural development agencies, and most key, could manipulate the basic structure of field rents and leaseholding in their favor.

Against this, the poorer quartiles of Sedaka have few weapons. Derision and scorn are most prominent, as they use tradition and Muslim norms of charity to castigate the rich as stingy and greedy. There are moments of solidarity and sabotage, which fail to stop the combine harvester or their decline in real wages. But the sense that I get is one where in all the terms that matter, the rich farmers of Sedaka have won all the benefits from the Green Revolution, and talk about “counter-hegemonies” is so much air.

I admire Scott most as a synthesist, so seeing this careful case study shows another side of his ability. But unless you specifically care about rural Malaysia circa 1980, this is a tedious work that does not generalize well.

[Rowland Pasaribu · Rating 3 out of 5]

In The Moral Economy of the Peasant, Scott looked at the causes of peasant revolts, focusing on those in Burma and Vietnam in the early 1930s. He argued that peasant rebellions can only be understood in the light of a peasant system of values which is irrevocably linked to their subsistence requirements. In Weapons of the Weak he takes up a similar subject, this time looking at ordinary, everyday peasant resistance and the reasons open revolts are so rare. One of his main goals is to resolve empirically debates within political science over the concepts of false consciousness and hegemony. Scott himself is a political scientist by training, but his study is based on fourteen months anthropological fieldwork carried out in the late 1970s in the small (seventy household) village of Sedaka (Kedah state, Malaysia).

The first chapter introduces us to Sedaka, with a brief description of two individuals at extreme ends of the social spectrum and a look at the roles they (or rather the stories told about them) play in the ideological conflict between rich and poor in the village. The second presents the basic motivation for the study; Scott feels that inordinate attention has been paid to the rare occurrences of open revolt by peasants, and too little to ordinary, everyday forms of resistance and their symbolic and ideological underpinnings. He also stresses the importance of placing individual agents, in their particular settings, at the centre of analysis.

The third and fourth chapters provide the economic and political background to the study. Scott begins with Malaysia, then narrows in on Kedah State, the Muda plain and the village of Sedaka itself. He then recounts its economic and social history over the decade or so preceding, concentrating on such things as land tenure and ownership, income distributions and the effects of the Green Revolution. This is set within the background of national politics.

With the next chapter we move into the ethnography proper; Scott now describes the different interpretations placed by the inhabitants of Sedaka on the history he has just described. While the villagers still share a common universe of discourse and have access to the same cultural materials, class divisions are intensifying, largely as a result of the divergent effects of the Green Revolution on rich and poor; the two groups tell very different histories of the village. Particular changes that are the subject of dissension include a move to rents paid before rather than after the harvest, the introduction of combine harvesters, a decline in the availability of land and the frequency and generosity of zakat peribadi (religious charity) and feast-giving. It is significant that the poor villagers blame their richer neighbours for what is happening, not absentee Chinese landlords or the government; they have no claims of community and obligation on the latter.

The following chapters look at how these interpretations clash in practice. Scott first analyses the language associated with exploitation and the ways in which the truth is distorted to serve class interests. The rich rationalise their exploitation and refusal to abide by the traditional dictates of community feeling and tolong-menolong (mutual help) by such devices as claiming to be poor themselves or denying the morality of the poor; they do not attack the shared norms of the village directly. The poor cling to a disappearing way of life; while not in actual danger of starving, they are fighting a losing battle to retain their status as full members of the community. Several case studies are used to illustrate this: the means landowners use to justify sacking tenants; a dispute over control of the village gate; and drastic bias in the distribution of funds handed out by the national government for a village improvement scheme. Scott then goes on to look at forms of resistance that go beyond words — striking against the introduction of combine harvesters, petty theft, the killing of animals, and so on. The overt mechanisms of physical repression are also described, but it is the need to make a living which is most influential in compelling resistance to be covert.

In short: conformity is calculated, not unthinking, and beneath the surface of symbolic and ritual compliance there is an undercurrent of ideological resistance, just as beneath the surface peace there is continuous material resistance. Scott considers the consequences of all this for definitions of resistance. Four criteria have commonly been required for 'genuine' resistance: it must be collective and organised rather than private and unorganised; it must be principled and selfless rather than opportunistic and selfish; it must have revolutionary consequences; and it must negate rather than accept the basis of domination. None of these requirements make sense when one looks at Sedaka.

In the last chapter Scott presents his main theoretical theses. Material base and normative superstructure in Sedaka are inextricably interwoven. The rich expend effort and material in molding the latter to suit their own ends at the expense of the poor, who oppose them with whatever means are available. And, at least in Sedaka, it is political power that underlies exploitation, not the relations of production. As a result, Scott suggests that the ideological superstructure must always be seen as a product of struggle, not as something preexisting. As for hegemony, Scott argues that: elite values do not really penetrate into the lower classes; inevitability is not seen as implying legitimacy; hegemonic ideas are always the subject of conflict, and are continually being reconstructed; and resistance is rooted in everyday material goals (so called "trade unionism") rather than in a "revolutionary consciousness". If anything, in Sedaka it is the rich who are busy breaking the ideological "hegemony" of the poor. He suggests that this analysis applies to the working class as well as to peasants, and that there is a clear need to rethink concepts of hegemony and ideological domination.

In Weapons of the Weak Scott draws on an impressively wide range of material, both theoretical and comparative. As well as studies of other peasant communities within Malaysia and Southeast Asia, he also uses historical work on European peasants (following historians such as Bloch, Hobsbawm and Thompson) and slaves in the United States. Here, as well as the historians, Scott also draws on sources such as folk songs and novels, managing to quote from Dickens, Balzac, Zola, Disraeli, George Eliot and Brecht. (It might have been interesting to compare these with Malay writers writing about modern Malay peasants, but Scott appears to have left this for a more recent book, Domination and the Arts of Resistance.) The principal theoretical source is, of course, the running debate within Marxism over the concepts of false consciousness and hegemony, following thinkers such as Gramsci, Lukacs, Althusser and Habermas.

Weapons of the Weak is not just a political study, however; it is also an outstanding work of ethnography. Based on thorough research and careful, perceptive fieldwork, it manages to avoid some of the failings of traditional ethnography by its emphasis on the centrality of individual human beings in their particular situations. Whether or not it offers definitive answers to the questions it investigates, it certainly provides some solid ground to stand on in looking for them.

More generally, Weapons of the Weak is an example of how much anthropology has to contribute to history and political science. To historians it offers one way around the problem - almost paradox - of how to reconstruct the unwritten history of the illiterate from written records (something which appears very clearly in a work like Hobsbawm and Rude's Captain Swing). To political scientists it offers the essential corrective of empirical evidence, without which their theorising tends to lose contact with reality. Weapons of the Weak is beautifully written and eloquently argued, and fully deserves its place as a classic alongside The Moral Economy of the Peasant.

[Gill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blows Gramsci's hegemony out of the water while conducting an interesting ethnographic study of the forms of peasant resistance. With this book, Moral Economy, and Domination and the Arts of Resistance Scott changed the way we think about resistance.

Essential.

[Drew Newitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

An utterly unfair and subjective review: this was good, I really don't have a complaint, per se, but it didn't hook me like the other stuff from Scott I've read. I learned a good bit about dispossession and the green revolution in Malaysia, which is always interesting. The respondents are fascinating and complex, which speaks to Scott's capacity as an ethnographer. The most important, I think, thrust of this book is its portrayal of the peasant and subsistence class as remarkably intelligent, diverse, and strategic (which, at the time, was a big intervention vis-a-vis class analysis). Why do capitalism and social domination continue in Malaysia (and in other primary production or peripheral areas)? Well, we can no longer simply assume that the peasants have been duped. They know exactly what's going on, and have their own means of disrupting, slowing, and obstructing social and class domination. We shouldn't evaluate peasant agency/consciousness based on whether or not revolution occurs.

However, it's a LOT of detail and ethnography mostly just for a retheorization of the concept of hegemony, which I am not super interested in. I also felt like Scott's engagement with theory, and with Marxism more specifically, was empirically-driven, but a bit surface-level. This may be an unfair point, given that the book was published in 1985 and therefore suffers for the same reasons that all books engaging with Marxism in 1985 suffer from. All in all, Scott is always enjoyable. The three stars are for my few friends who may consider reading this: choose a different, shorter book by Scott.

[Sowt Alnaas · Rating 5 out of 5]

قراءة في كتاب: أسلحة الضعفاء – أساليب الفلاحين في المقاومة اليومية
فهمي شهابي لصحيفة صوت الناس
https://sowtalnaas.com/posts/187

كتاب أسلحة الضعفاء لبروفيسور العلوم السياسية والأنثروبولوجيا في جامعة يال الأمريكية جايمس سكوت هو كتاب أكاديمي يخدم الباحثين والأكاديميين بشكل خاص، لكنه يقدم أيضا معلومات هامة للقارئ العادي. درس الباحث إحدى القرى الماليزية وأساليب سكانها في مقاومة الظلم الواضح في التوزيع الغير عادل للثروات. الكتاب ثري بالمعلومات و دسم بعض الشيء، حيث استطرد الكاتب في تفاصيل وأحوال سكان القرية، و تحليل انتماءاتهم السياسية، ونسب تملكهم للأراضي، و دخلهم السنوي، وغيرها من العوامل في محاولة منه لفهم تصرفات السكان من كافة الطبقات الاجتماعية.

أمضى جايمس سكوت عامين في إحدى القرى الماليزية المشهورة بزراعة الأرز محاولاً فهم أساليب المقاومة السلمية التي يتخذها الفلاحين في مواجهة التوزيع الغير عادل للثروات والصراع بين الطبقات. قضى جيمس وقته مع جميع الطبقات في القرية محاولاً فهم مختلف وجهات النظر. حدثت نقلة نوعية في القرية مع تطور التقنية المستخدمة في الزراعة، مما نتج عنها إنتاج كميات أكبر من الأرز. تحسن الوضع بشكل ملحوظ في القرية للجميع ولكن مع ذلك اتسعت الفجوة بين الأغنياء والفقراء، وقلت فرص العمل للفقراء بسبب الاعتماد على الآلات في الزراعة.

كان الفقراء يحتجون بمزيج من الطرق السلمية كنشر الإشاعات فيما بينهم، ومحاولات السيطرة على الرأي العام، والتأخير المتعمد عن العمل، وغير ذلك. على الرغم من الفقر الذي يعيشه الفلاحون في القرية والفروقات الطبقية بين الأغنياء والفقراء، لم يكن التصعيد في الاحتجاج محتمل الحصول. أوعز سكوت السبب في استبعاد ارتفاع وتيرة الاحتجاجات إلى أربعة أسباب رئيسية كان أولها أن التحول الأخضر للزراعة كان الحدث المشترك الذي أحدث نقلة نوعية في جودة الحياة لمعظم سكان القرية. ثانيا، أن من لم ينتفع من التحول الأخضر للزراعة وازداد فقراً لم يكن يواجه خطر الموت من الجوع، فالخيارات التي كانت أمامهم من شد الحزام أو الهجرة لم تكن تقارن بالفقر المدقع والمخاطر التي يواجهها نظرائهم في اندونيسيا أو الهند. السبب الثالث يعود إلى وجود المحايدين والمتفرجين من سكان القرية مما يخفض من وتيرة الصراع بين الطبقات. وأخيرا، كان السبب الرابع هيمنة السياسة الماليزية على سكان القرية في وجود مصلحة مشتركة بين جميع سكان القرية، حيث كانت مصلحة جميع الفلاحين في إبقاء أسعار الأرز مرتفعة.

تأقلم أغلب الفلاحين مع الوضع القائم على الرغم من عدم تقبلهم الكامل وكثرة شكاويهم فيما بينهم، ففي نهاية المطاف، الوضع القائم فُرِض عليهم ولم يختاروه، كما أن الظروف المعيشية صعبة وهم بحاجة للعمل للحصول على قوت يومهم. المعارضون المثقفون الذين يبحثون عن حلول جذرية وطويلة الأمد عادة يأتون من طبقات متوسطة وغنية، حيث أنهم يملكون الرفاهية لتخصيص وقت في البحث عن حلول بعكس الطبقات العاملة والفلاحين الذين لا يستطيعون التفريط بالوقت.

استخدم الأقوياء والأثرياء في القرية أسلوب "الإكراه الممل في العلاقات الاقتصادية" حيث أنهم يسيطرون على أجور العمل، وإيجارات السكن، والعلاقات الحكومية، والكثير من الأمور المادية، لذلك صعب على الضعفاء مواجهتهم علناً. فأي مواجهة مفتوحة قد يترتب عليها رفع إيجار المنزل، أو طلب إخلاء عند انتهاء العقد، أو استبدال عمالتهم بعمالة آخرين، وما إلى ذلك.

في الجزء الأخير من الكتاب تحدث البروفيسور سكوت عن مفهوم الهيمنة واستعرض أعمال فردريك أنجلز، وكارل ماركس، وتأثير العالم الإيطالي أنطونيو غرامشي على كتابتهم في الأيديولوجية الألمانية، و كيف أن الطبقة المسيطرة لا تسيطر مادياً فقط بل تفرض سيطرتها أيضاً على الثقافة والدين والتعليم والإعلام لتعزز من سيطرتها المادية، يشرح سكوت:

"إن أفكار الطبقة الحاكمة في كل عصر هي الأفكار السائدة، بمعنى آخر، إن الطبقة التي تملك القوة المادية للمجتمع. هي أيضا الطبقة المهيمنة ثقافيا. فالطبقة التي تمتلك وسائل الإنتاج المادي تملك في ذات الوقت السيطرة على وسائل الإنتاج الذهني (الثقافي). لذلك، وبشكل عام، فإن أفكار أولئك الذين يفتقرون السيطرة على وسائل الإنتاج الذهني تخضع بالضرورة للطبقة الحاكمة. إن الأفكار السائدة ليست أكثر من تعبير مثالي عن العلاقات المادية المهيمنة، أي العلاقات المادية السائدة التي يتم استيعابها كأفكار؛ وهذا هو السبب في كونها العلاقات التي تخلق الطبقة الحاكمة، وبالتالي تفرض أفكارها هيمنتها. يمتلك الأفراد المنتمين للطبقة الحاكمة، بالاضافة الى أشياء أخرى، على الوعي وبالتالي على التفكير. وبقدر ما يحكمون كطبقة و يقومون بتحديد نطاق وبوصلة حقبة ما، فمن الواضح أنهم يفعلون ذلك في نطاق كامل، وبالتالي، من بين أمور أخرى، فإنهم يحكمون أيضًا كمفكرين، ومنتجين للأفكار، فيقومون بإنتاج وتوزيع الأفكار الرائجة في عصرهم؛ وبالتالي فإن أفكارهم هي الأفكار المهيمنة على ذلك العهد."


كما اقتبس الباحث سكوت بحث جوزيف فيميا من جامعة مانشستر التي تقول فحواها أن البسطاء قد يدافعون عن حقوقهم ويرفضون بعض الأمور، لكنها بالعموم تبقى داخل المحيط المفروض عليهم من الطبقات المسيطرة، وهنا تكمن أهمية النشطاء المستقلين حيث بإمكانهم التفكير بشكل أشمل لكسر هذه الهيمنة وإيجاد حلول جذرية. لكن يجد جيمس أن هذه الأفكار لا تنطبق تماماً على سكان القرية التي عاش فيها وأنها مضللة بعض الشيء، وبرر اختلافه في عدة أسباب أولها أن مفهوم الهيمنة يتجاهل قدرة المرؤوسين والرعايا على اختراق وتبديد الأيديولوجية المهيمنة من خلال تجاربهم العملية اليومية. كما أن نظريات الهيمنة تخلط بين ما هو حتمي وما هو عادل، وهذا خطأ لا يرتكبه العوام أبداً. أيضا يرى الكاتب أن الأيدولوجية المهيمنة تمثل نموذجاً مثالياً مما يسفر عن وجود تناقضات في المستقبل يسمح بانتقادها وفقا للضوابط التي حددتها الأيديولوجية مسبقاً. يشير أيضا أنه قبل حدوث أي تغيير جذري تبدأ المطالب بالإصلاح المحدود، ثم تتسع لتشمل مطالب أكبر. فتاريخياً، كسر واستبدال الأيديولوجية المهيمنة يأتي به من لديه بديل، ولذلك الطبقات الكادحة والمشغولة في تدبير أمور معيشتها عادة تنظر للوراء وتقارن وضعها في الماضي والحاضر.

واستعرض سكوت نظرية بارينغتون مور فيما يخص بتصرفات بعض ضحايا جرائم النازية في معسكرات الاعتقال: "من الصعب أن تلبس قناعاً أو تتصرف بطريقة ما باستمرار دون أن تكتسب الشخصية التي أجبرت عليها". بمعنى آخر، ماذا يحصل إذا كان عليك أن تلبس القناع طوال الوقت؟ لا يختلف سكوت مع هذه النظرية، لكنه يجدها لا تنطبق على سكان القرية، حيث أن ظروفهم أقل حدة وخطورة من معسكرات الاعتقال النازية، كما أنهم يستطيعون خلع الأقنعة في مواضع عدة. قدرة سكان القرية في نقض الهيمنة بينهم من خلال الاستهزاء بها واغتيال الشخصية لمن يرونهم جشعين خطوات مهمة لتقوية رمزية المقاومة للهيمنة، و تتوسع لتضم آخرين يجدون أنفسهم يعانون من نفس المعاناة.

بدأت المقاومة في القرية من خلال المطا��ب البسيطة والتي يعاني منها المزارعين في حياتهم اليومية. يقوم الفقراء المنتفعين من الوضع الراهن باستخدام القيم المشتركة التي كانت في صالحهم سابقاً والتي تخلى عنها الأغنياء. حيث يمكن للفقراء الهرب من الواقع من خلال الهجرة، يهاجرون بحثاً عن فرصاً أفضل. وحين تكون مواجهة الأغنياء مكلفة، يتفادون المواجهة. ولكن بين الهروب والمواجهة هناك العديد من الأساليب التي يقوم بها الفقراء دون التأثير على سلامتهم المادية والجسدية يلخصها البروفيسور سكوت كالتالي:

"إن كانت الثورة صعبة الحدوث في القرية، فهذا سبب إضافي في أن نرى الإصرار، السخرية، و الهدوء، وفي التناقضات، وفي الأعمال الصغيرة من عدم الامتثال، وفي تثاقل الخطوات، وفي دعم الآخرين ممن يعانون نفس المعاناة، وفي عدم الإيمان في مواعظ النخبة، والجهود الحثيثة لحمل المرء نفسه ضد الصعاب الساحقة – كل ذلك يدل على معنويات وممارسات تمنع الأسوأ وتَعِد بشيء أفضل."
Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance

[WaldenOgre · Rating 4 out of 5]

就我个人的观感而言，这本书的优点和缺点都比较突出。

优点在于，它提供了一个崭新的弱者视角：弱者以一种幕后的文本表达来抵抗强者的舞台叙事，以拖沓和逃跑等等成千上万地累积起来的消极抵抗的形式使得首都官员制定的政策难以推行。而这种日常抵抗的存在也不会被官方所承认，因为那等同于承认他们的政策并不受欢迎。正是因为这个原因，此类弱者的反抗在绝大部分的历史中都被抹得一干二净了。

而缺点在于，詹姆斯·C. 斯科特对塞达卡这个只有74个家庭的马来西亚小村落所做的田野调查极其细致入微，占了全书很大的一部分篇幅。但他的分析，尤其是最后一章内容的视野和落脚点又极其宏大，两者之间难免会出现一些比较明显的脱节。此外，这些分析又涉及了太多不同的维度，想要一一阐述清楚，绝不是这一本书就能办到的。

不过更重要的事实还在于，哪怕一个强权能把几乎所有忤逆的文本从舞台上尽数驱逐，能把几乎所有积极的反抗行为都扼杀在摇篮之中，但只要它一日无法把“必然性”转变成“合理性”，那么这种顽固、持久的弱者的反抗恐怕就一日不会终止。

[Julian Haigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic book. Despite it being written in the first 10 years of a 'Green Revolution' in northern Malaysia (1964-80, or so) about peasants, it has a strong salience to understandings of current undercurrent behaviour and their expression in protest movements and people seeking to have their voice heard. The resistance has always been there, but the fact that it is so vocal these days does suggest a birth of a movement rather than a flash in the pan. Being a good capitalist myself, this book allowed me to round out my understandings of the world around!

[Nidya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Contentious politics not necessarily happen in an established state, it could happen even in a small village. This book make us to understand the reason why revolution does not happen in some society. Silent non-compliance, gossip, character murder, talking in the back, offensive nicknames, somehow reflecting resistance drawing from the village life. The lesson from this book can be applied in any modern organization.

[Leif · Rating 4 out of 5]

Team Scott: 100%.

[Benjamin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've got a lot of thoughts on this book and it's not clear they will land on the page in a coherent way. More than that, it's not clear they are actually coherent. So be it.

The beginning of Chapter 2, titled "Normal Exploitation, Normal Resistance", outlines the evolution of Scott's main thesis. (As an aside, reading it made me think about Duncan's Revolutions podcast a fair amount.) Scott briefly argues that there are relatively few peasant rebellions or peasant revolutions, and, of those, the vast majority result in more efficient oppression and rulers who are better able to protect their interest; thus, "everyday" resistance is a much more historically important force than active rebellion. It's not clear to me that this setup describes the book that Scott ended up writing. Most of the examples that subsequently follow don't seem like "resistance" so much as individuals trying to do the best they can in a given situation. Scott does acknowledge this fact, but if he addresses it more completely, I missed it.

(During this justification passage, Scott's primary example of the impact of effective everyday resistance was Confederate desertion during the Civil War; he briefly describes an "unlikely coalition of slaves and yeomen" with "no name, no leadership, no organization".)

Nevertheless, the book is an interesting case study. As an aside, it's a a little crazy how devoted the author was to his work; he learned a language and dramatically uprooted his family for multiple years. The case study is is also interesting for highlighting how tightly linked 1970s Malaysian political parties (for which government is just an implementation) were to daily quality of life. There is a brief passage (I did not record a reference to it while reading) describing how Malaysia is relatively protected from abuses compared to much of southeast Asia; the landscape simply makes it easier for people to move on when circumstances become too dire, and this fact has muted some of the worst abuses that might be meted out. One last random thing he describes in passing: even as wealth inequality in Sedaka is increasing, the worst case is getting better (that is, people are increasingly trapped in their poverty, but none of them actually starve to death any more). Despite this claim, the book actually opens by recounting the funeral of the daughter of one of the poorest families; there was no rigorous medical analysis, but the consensus view was that she died of complications of malnutrition.

Chapter 7, titled "Behind the War of Words: Cautious Resistance and Calculated Conformity" has a section titled "The Effort to Stop the Combine Harvester" that uses the phrase "dull compulsion of economic relations", his quotes included, that I found evocative. Writing this summary now, brief googling reveals the quote is from Marx's Capital and I was too much of a rube to recognize a quote that needs no sourcing.

The same chapter closes with a section titled "What is Resistance?"; near the end, Scott writes the following. "One of the key questions that must be asked about any system of domination is the extent to which it succeeds in reducing subordinate classes to purely 'beggar thy neighbor' strategies for survival. Certain combinations of atomization, terror, repression, and pressing material needs can indeed achieve the ultimate dream of domination: to have the dominated exploit each other."

Chapter 8, the final chapter, titled "Hegemony and Consciousness: Everyday Forms of Ideological Struggle" reads more like a long form essay than a part of the broader book. In a section titled "Who Shatters the Hegemony?" Scott explicitly argues for his view that Sedaka provides a window into a society in early stage capitalism. He then explores how these forces undermine social rules that are no longer beneficial to both parties (for example, more well-to-do farmers no longer to engage with poorer farmers for labor and so can forgo traditions that they saw as gifts and recipients saw as part of wages). In particular, changing economic realities "undermined previous understandings about work"; and he explicitly links this to broader trends that could be seen after the advent of steam power, the assembly line, or computer automation.

He then segues into a discussion of changes coincident with capitalism as being both a big-picture move to new economic equilibrium and also as individual choices to upend old social contracts. For individuals in the middle of this transformation, the latter is a more compelling and engaging narrative. Even more compelling than the emotional empathy, it's strategically not possible to sustain effective protest against broad trends or policies; it needs to feel personal or else the entire movement is stagnant. What's more, "capitalist logic is a social creation and not a thing".

my favorite quote: "To see the causes of distress instead as personal, as evil, as a failure of identifiable people in their own community to behave in a seemly way may well be a partial view, but it is not a wrong view."

[Scott Neigh]

A classic from a political scientist of anarchist proclivities doing what amounts to anthropology and studying the fine-grained class relations in a peasant village in Malaysia in the late '70s and early '80s, in the context of the capitalist re-organization of agriculture often referred to as the 'green revolution'. It is a classic because it is generally credited as the entrypoint into academic discourse for the idea of "everyday resistance" (though you can certainly find related ideas, if not always those words, in some anarchist, left communist, and autonomist sources, and perhaps elsewhere, from before this point). I can't comment on how this stacks up in the context of its disciplines, but my sense from its reputation is that it checks the necessary boxes to count as a classic in that regard too.

Even setting aside its political significance, I found it fascinating just in terms of its detailed attention to people's lives and interactions on an everyday level – which is maybe not everyone's cup of tea, but even when it is set in a context completely unlike the one I live in or any that I'm likely to ever write about, it certainly is mine. A lot of the detail of this book is really beyond what I need it for, and before I started reading it I considered doing something I almost never do, which is to only read it partially. But I was just too interested in this aspect of it to do that.

And of course its argument is pretty politically important, I think: There is this traditional understanding of peasants as politically passive the vast majority of the time – which even on the left has often been interpreted as active buy-in to hegemony – and then given to very, very occasional paroxysms of collective violence against their oppressors that almost never results in any kind of victory. Scott argues that this conclusion, and the everyday life-level observations from many which support it, are at fault because they only observe what peasants do when they are directly interacting with people who have power over them. He, in contrast, pays attention to that and also to what they have to say and do in other situations. From that, it's clear that they do not buy into the ideology of their oppressors, and comply visibly because they have no other choice. But he skillfully identifies the many different ways that they are engaged in a constant, discreet, ostensibly individual but sufficiently widespread and coordinated to be at some level collective struggle using the 'weapons of the weak' signalled in the title – the everyday skirmishes about work, food, land, taxes, and respect waged via "foot dragging, dissimulation, desertion, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage, and so on" (xvi).

Part of this is about little acts that take back or block the expropriation of time, money, food, and so on in small ways. But it is also inevitably a struggle over meaning – conversations in coffee shops and on doorsteps, and interactions that aren't openly conflictual but that shape what gets seen as right and wrong. It is the poorer peasants mobilizing the moral framework they share with those who have power over them to their own advantage. And he argues that class struggle inevitably, and not just in peasant contexts, starts with these kinds of mostly invisible acts done at the level of everyday life where ordinary people do what they can to intervene in situations where they are exploited and oppressed – not necessarily with any grand political vision but just to carve out a bit more space, to retain a bit more dignity, to hold on to a little bit more of the resources we all need to live life.

Scholars and revolutionaries alike have often either ignored this scale of struggle or, sometimes more recently, romanticized it in unhelpful ways. Scott is clear that everyday resistance is just what people do to survive. Recognizing it and taking it seriously and giving respect to what people are already doing to improve their own lives are essential for making whatever collective and overtly political projects you might wish to build stronger, more just, and more effective.

Anyway. A book that is super important politically, and that despite being in some ways an old-school scholarly monograph is actually very entertaining and readable.

Also reviewed on my blog: https://scottneigh.blogspot.com/2019/...

[Grub Street Hack · Rating 5 out of 5]

In brief, James Scott’s Weapons of the Weak in an analysis of class struggle in a small Malaysian village whose economy centers around rice production. Scott’s analysis reveals the emergence of growing inequalities due to the “green revolution,” which includes the development of a double-crop system, and the introduction and use of combine-harvesters—machines that speed up the cultivation of rice while simultaneously decreasing the need for local labor. Scott’s focus is on how methods of resistance to these changing circumstances manifests within the village, and how those with wealth respond in kind. Scott describes the village as experiencing conditions similar to those felt in the early days of capitalism, and believes that by examining the methods of resistance in the village, we can learn more about how societies responded to the onset of capitalism.

The chief argument made in Weapons of the Weak is that resistance rarely materializes as violent revolutions. Instead, “everyday forms of peasant resistance,” as Scott describes it, can manifest as gossip, theft, the slaughter of livestock, sabotage, and boycotts. These small forms of resistance are “the stubborn bedrock upon which other forms of resistance may grow” To borrow a simile from Scott: “Just as millions of anthozoan polyps create, willy-nilly, a coral reef, so do thousands upon thousands of individual acts of insubordination and evasion create a political or economic barrier reef of their own. There is rarely any dramatic confrontation…. And whenever… the ship of state runs aground on such a reef, attention is typically directed to the shipwreck itself and not to the vast aggregation of petty acts that made it possible.” This form of resistance is subtle. When resisting communally, peasants work indirectly. When resisting individually, they are covert.

Scott uses the term “euphemize,” fashioned by Pierre Bourdieu, to describe the disguised relationship between the wealthy and poor in the Malaysian village. The poor villager must publicly acquiesce to the power and authority of the wealthy villager—although what occurs in private is another matter. Scott furthers his argument by illustrating that, at the center of peasant resistance lay not class consciousness or revolutionary ideologies, but basic needs, such as food, water, and sufficient wages. As Scott puts it, “the goal… is not directly to overthrow or transform a system of domination but rather to survive.” Or, as Eric Hobsbawm writes, peasants are “working the system to their minimum disadvantage.” Yet the difficulty for the poor Malaysian villagers was not that their labor was being exploited, but that their labor was being replaced by machines. Ultimately, the forms of resistance used by peasants offered no permanent solution to automation.

[Payne Holt · Rating 3 out of 5]

In weapons of the weak James C Scott analyzes how the rise of capitalism and new technology has affected ideology between classes in a specific Malaysian village. A book I would recommend even though it meanders in mathematical details in the middle chapters and ends with a conclusion I find less then convincing. It's strength lies in its history from below approach and on how well it communicates what different intersecting groups think about the changes and how that affects both their actions and thoughts and how those often contradict. It's weakness comes primarily though not exclusively from one main point its main thesis that Scott tries to form from this interesting ethnography and that is a critique of the idea of cultural hegemony. Scott's argument boils down to the idea that although action makes appearance of cultural hegemony private thoughts often show this is just a practical move to survive within the system. A large section of the book focuses on the used strategy's of passive resistance such as evasion, sabotage and feigned ignorance. Another interesting idea is his argument that the cultural ideas allow room for the lower classes to us the dominant ideology to improve their lot in ways. The problems with this is Scott often overstates his proof and valorizes these passive resistance actions and seems to disdain more open revolt. He also seems to conflate erroneously in my view the way the lower classes can use the presentation of the dominant ideology to improve the reality with the idea that the dominant ideology isn't there to enforce the values that work for the rich. Despite these problems all in all it was an entertaining history from below book that shows well passive resistance though I think it suffers from Scott's thesis not following from the presented ethnography.

[Despina · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Weapons of the Weak, James Scott offers a counter-argument to orthodox Marxist determinism, which typically understands resistance as the domain of the industrial working class or bourgeoisie, leading to large and loud revolutions. Scott challenges this view by emphasizing the agency of subaltern groups (in this case, peasants in rural Malaysia) who engage in everyday forms of resistance. Through concepts like infra-politics and hidden transcripts, he argues how seemingly minor acts such as sabotage, theft, gossip, ignorance and lying can be meaningful expressions of resistance.

I thought the book was a very interesting read, especially considering how our education often centers on grand, iconic revolutions like the French or American ones. Scott’s argument that these quiet, everyday acts of resistance can be just as powerful, if not more prevalent and lasting, offers a refreshing and important perspective on how power is negotiated in daily life!

[IJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

The peasant always exists as a vehicle for statistical indicators and as a sustenance for civilisation.

Where open organised resistance cannot exist, informal resistance such as laziness, playing dumb, deserting, pretending to be submissive, stealing, playing dumb and selling out, slander, arson and covert sabotage are the expressions of the will of the weak. These often interfere with the ultimate achievement of goals.

Intrinsic motivation cannot be instilled. The cyclical peasant movement is also an expression of injustice accumulated to its limits, even though these people do not belong from their labour to their thoughts. Always silent and without more information and knowledge are not human batteries and machines without will; free will is more or less present in human beings, and this alone is a cause for celebration. Even sometimes actions speak louder than thoughts.

[Santi Ruiz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read, although not as flowing as the other Scott I've read (Seeing like a State + Against the Grain). He spent two years in a Malaysian village: the result is an incredibly fine-grained account of the ways peasants push back against the powerful. The long context passages on harvest mechanization and tables of grain prices are perhaps a bit much, but there's no denying he did his research. Scott's takeaway is mostly grim: peasant resistance short of revolt is the historical norm, it's mostly futile, and advances in state capacity/capitalim make it even less likely to succeed in the long run - but we should still recognize and applaud it when it happens.

[Repa Kustipia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Buku etnografi tentang politik kaum subaltern (kelompok orang yang tidak dianggap) dijelaskan sebagai kaum petani miskin berlokasi di Malaysia dengan aktor antagonis Haji Broom sang tuan tanah yang melakukan praktik transaksi licik dan menindas, perlawanan para petani miskin ini adalah gerakan politik untuk melawan ketidakadilan, bahkan ketika kaum petani miskin yang harus terpaksa pura-pura bodoh untuk menghadapi fakta, tapi itulah cara mereka untuk terbebas dari keterpurukan. Buku ini berhasil memotret informasi bahwa masih ada gerakan politik sekalipun dari golongan yang tidak pernah disangka-sangka bisa melawan ketidakadilan dalam aktifitas agraria.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not reviewing this book as an academic, but rather a curious reader that had his umwelt turned upside down by Scott's Seeing Like A State. So from someone that doesn't think daily about resistance or revolution, I found the introduction fascinating in a general sense. The stories of people in Sedeka were interesting, but harder to generalize. The details of economic history were tedious at times, although expected in an academic book. The conclusion was both a return to fascinating and confusing as I hadn't even heard of most of the previous work Scott references.

[Rita · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really interesting [doctoral] study of a small community in Indonesia.
Very well known in anthropology [esp. of SE Asia], recommended to me by one such academic.

Read at least half. Detailed account of each and every time a villager resisted in some way, whether by silence, by giving an excuse [for not doing what was asked by a wealthier villager or a landowner], by not showing up, by stealing materials, by doing a sloppy job..... We can recognize these strategies in ourselves and in any society.

Really well written scholarship.

[Mindy Burroughs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well did this book fuck me the fuck up or what.
This is pure academic study and yet reading it right now is eye opening, Suddenly everything clicks.
Peasant revolts? Easy to crush. Middle-class uprisings? Not so much.
So they’re not failing us in America. The wealth disparity and broken power dynamics, that’s the goal. They’re turning us into peasants.
On purpose. For control.
Not a conspiracy. A strategy.
Anyway! Hope we’re all enjoying our third side hustles, $19 salads, and evaporating health care.

[Malachi]

This is my entry for Leo Tolstoy "How a Peasant Divided The Geese"
Goodreads is impossible to add a book.

From Grok:
“How a Peasant Divided the Geese”
(Russian: «Как мужик гусей делил», 1886)This is one of Tolstoy’s shortest and funniest little moral tales (only 2–3 pages), written for peasant children and adults alike.The storyA poor peasant is walking home from the market carrying five geese he has just bought with his last money. A rich, greedy landowner (bárin) riding in a carriage stops him and says:...

[Logan Streondj · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was alright, mostly a bunch of vignettes of the complaining of rich and poor people in a malaysian village. While certainly the forms of resistance in this one village were covered, it didn't really cover a variety of villages in different contexts, as the title implied.
These malaysian peasants are relatively speaking rather docile example of peasants.
And they are in an islamic context which is different from which many other peasants may find themselves.

[Ari Stillman · Rating 5 out of 5]

While originally published in 1985, this important study of everyday forms of resistance is just as applicable today. While focusing on the Malaysian peasantry, one can easily note the parallels with service and knowledge workers in contemporary America. In this sense, Scott's study is a helpful exposé and analysis for understanding the current labor movement that is far more complex than the trope of "nobody wants to work."

[Gabe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Felt like an excuse to write about Malayan rice farmers from the 1970s for a large majority of the book, but the theory attached to Scott's Malaysian Manual Labor Expedition gave me a lot of food for thought. That's not to say I didn't take interest in Scott's Malayan neighbors' financial woes. I was just expecting more theory less village gossip.

[funcke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly, readable for what it is. For the casual reader, the point of the book is to add the concept of how shirking, sabotaging, etc. can be a serious act of uncoordinated resistance. Though, reading about the particular case in green-revolution rural Malaysia gives the concept more color than expected. Worthwhile.

[Kevin Q · Rating 5 out of 5]

The rationale found in this book can be applied to afro-pessimism's concept of ontological death in support of Vincent Brown's afro-optimism args.

[Daniel Heath · Rating 5 out of 5]

Difficult, but fantastic content.

[Leanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love reading ethnography. Nice balance of stories and interwoven theory. Useful ideas.

[Dylan Grace · Rating 5 out of 5]

plotting the demise of the restaurant industry as i read this ✍🏻✍🏻