Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts

 

by James C. Scott

"Play fool, to catch wise."—proverb of Jamaican slaves 

Confrontations between the powerless and powerful are laden with deception—the powerless feign deference and the powerful subtly assert their mastery. Peasants, serfs, untouchables, slaves, laborers, and prisoners are not free to speak their minds in the presence of power. These subordinate groups instead create a secret discourse that represents a critique of power spoken behind the backs of the dominant. At the same time, the powerful also develop a private dialogue about practices and goals of their rule that cannot be openly avowed. In this book, renowned social scientist James C. Scott offers a penetrating discussion both of the public roles played by the powerful and powerless and the mocking, vengeful tone they display off stage—what he terms their public and hidden transcripts. Using examples from the literature, history, and politics of cultures around the world, Scott examines the many guises this interaction has taken throughout history and the tensions and contradictions it reflects. 

Weapons of the Weak

James C. Scott provides a perspective on hegemony and ‘invisible power’ that has been both influential and controversial. In his influential book Weapons of the weak: everyday forms of resistance (1985) Scott introduces the idea that oppression and resistance are in constant flux, and that by focusing (as political scientists often do) on visible historic ‘events’ such as organised rebellions or collective action we can easily miss subtle but powerful forms of ‘every day resistance’. Scott looks at peasant and slave societies and their ways of responding to domination, with a focus not on observable acts of rebellion but on forms of cultural resistance and non-cooperation that are employed over time through the course of persistent servitude.

Scott’s research finds that overt peasant rebellions are actually rather uncommon, do not occur when and where expected, and often don’t have much impact.  Rather than seeing ‘resistance as organisation’, Scott looks at less visible, every-day forms of resistance such as ‘foot-dragging, evasion, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander and sabotage’.  He finds these in rural and factory settings, and also among the middle class and elites (e.g. through tax evasion or conscription), but particularly among rural people who are physically dispersed and less politically organised than urban populations (Scott 1985).

The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia

James Scott, recognized worldwide as an eminent authority in Southeast Asian, peasant, and agrarian studies, tells the story of the peoples of Zomia and their unlikely odyssey in search of self-determination. He redefines our views on Asian politics, history, demographics, and even our fundamental ideas about what constitutes civilization, and challenges us with a radically different approach to history that presents events from the perspective of stateless peoples and redefines state-making as a form of “internal colonialism.” This new perspective requires a radical reevaluation of the civilizational narratives of the lowland states.

Scott’s work on Zomia represents a new way to think of area studies that will be applicable to other runaway, fugitive, and marooned communities, be they Gypsies, Cossacks, tribes fleeing slave raiders, Marsh Arabs, or San-Bushmen

Everyday forms of peasant resistance

by James C. Scott, LibCom

"Everyday resistance" is the most common form of opposition to oppression. It consists of footdragging, non-compliance, pilfering, desertion, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage, flight etc... James C. Scott's article is the classic statement on "everyday resistance". 

I. THE UNWRITTEN HISTORY OF RESISTANCE

The argument which follows originated in a growing dissatisfaction with much of the recent work - my own as well as that of others - on the subject of peasant rebellion and revolution. It is only too apparent that the inordinate attention to large-scale peasant insurrection was, in North America at least, stimulated by the Vietnam war and something of a left-wing academic romance with wars of national liberation. In this case interest and source material were mutually reinforcing. For the historical and archival records were richest at precisely those moments when the peasantry came to pose a threat to the state and to the existing international order.[1] At other times, which is to say most of the time, the peasantry appeared in the historical record not so much as historical actors but as more or less anonymous contributors to statistics on conscription, taxes, labour migration, land holdings, and crops production.

Peasants, states and civilisations

Dilip Menon, The Hindu

James C. Scott, who is due to deliver a major lecture in Delhi this month, discusses his shaping influences, his interdisciplinary orientation and his political outlook.

James C. Scott is one of the most distinguished social scientists writing today, with political scientists, historians and anthropologists claiming him for their own. Born in 1936 and educated at Williams College and Yale, he is currently Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale. He is known for his seminal contributions to the study of peasants, power and resistance marked by extensive fieldwork and a sophisticated engagement with social theory in prose characterised by clarity and passion. The trilogy The Moral Economy of the Peasant (1976), Weapons of the Weak (1985) and Domination and the Arts of Resistance (1990) explored issues of patron-client relations, hegemony and the everyday expressions of resistance in peasant societies with literary flair, an ethical commitment and depth of local knowledge. His most recent work, Seeing Like a State (1998), explores forms of state knowledge and what he terms “state simplifications” arising out of the need to govern that run aground on the rocks of the recalcitrance of local facts. Currently, Professor Scott is engaged in fieldwork in Burma (Myanmar) looking at how peoples of the hills evade the reach of states and civilisations. He will deliver the second Indian Economic and Social History Association public lecture on December 19 at the Stein Auditorium, Habitat Centre, New Delhi. Professor Scott responds to questions from Dilip Menon, who teaches history at Delhi University.