Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance

by James C. Scott

Book Overview

"Splendid . . . Combines the readability of Akenfield or Pig Earth with an accessible and illuminating theoretical commentary."--A.F. Robertson, Times Higher Education Supplement

"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. Bowen, Journal of Peasant Studies

"No one who wants to...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0028IKUIE
• ISBN13: 9780300036411
• Release Date: September 1987
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 392 Pages
• Weight: 1.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Dense is right

Although the true definition of "peasant" has lost its value in modern times, there are some general characteristics that still ring true throughout history. Aside from select groups of minorities , the peasant class usually represents the least paid individuals, the least respected or honored, and the most ignored when it comes to politics and legal rights. Throughout history peasants have existed solely as an afterthought to societal changes, and continue to be repressed and exploited by their affluent counterparts. In Weapons of the Weak, James Scott explores why the struggling peasantry do not openly rise up in candid, united rebellion after years of subjugation. One of the first messages Scott opens with is, "peasant rebellions--let alone peasant revolutions--are few and far between. The vast majority are crushed unceremoniously. When, more rarely, they do succeed, it is a melancholy fact that the consequences are seldom what the peasantry has in mind" (Scott xvi). This excerpt shows one of Scott's explanations for the lack of overt peasant revolution--that even when the peasantry rebel, their poor socioeconomic status will remain intact or pushed farther down the societal food chain. In order to argue his point further, Scott uses a case study of a Malaysian village called "Sedaka" during the time of the Green Revolution. He chooses this particular village to understand the struggle between the rich and the poor as Sedaka applies capitalist methods to their preexisting agricultural methods. He characterizes "the struggle between the rich and the poor in Sedaka" as "not merely a struggle over work, property rights, grain and cash" but also "a struggle over the appropriation of symbols, [a struggle] over how the past and present shall be understood and labeled, [a struggle] to identify causes and assess blame, and a contentious effort to give partisan meaning to local history" (xvii). Specifically Scott uses the stories of two members of Sedaka, Haji Broom and Razak to illustrate the struggle, and the relationship between the rich and the poor. Razak and Haji Broom are on polar spectrums of the socio-economic society. They depict the general way Sedakan society reacts to the exploitive, arrogant, rich farmers, as well as how they react to the the dishonest, poor, and lazy peasant. After Scott establishes the interactions between the rich and poor in Sedaka, he discusses the political and social influence they have on each other. Scott's critical argument here is targeted toward a specific (and popular) Marxian theorist named Antonio Gramsci. Unlike Gramsci's theory about false consciousness and hegemony, Scott argues that the peasants do not comply with the will of the bourgeoisie because they don't know better--but because of a multitude of largely material and some ideological reasons. Scott critiques Gramsci, saying that, "the concept of hegemony ignores the extent to which most subordinate classes are able, on the basis of their

Good work

Through an observation of a peasant community in Malaysia, Scott maintains that traditional and classic theories on forms of resistance and protest are actually wrong. In proving this, he also proves that class-consciousness and labor relations are not universal and are not similar to one another. Scott believes however that these forms of resistance are common in all peasant societies and take the same shaping. Scott supports his main argument by stating that although is widely believed that peasants cannot struggle or resist oppression because of their "false conciseness" the peasants do indeed resist but not through what we have learned to accept and know what traditionally has been defined as resistance. Peasants, Scott argues, have their own forms of resistance which have not until now been looked into. The resistance or protest of peasants in the Malaysian village of Sedaka may not be collective and organized but they certainly exist. Simply because the Sedaka villagers do not protest in what we have come to know as "protest" that does not prove that there is no resistance or opposition to authority, change in labor relations, or social changes. Instead of revolution, the peasants choose what the author calls "the weapons of the poor:" silent non-compliance, gossip, character murder, petty sabotage, small theft and pilferage. The common characteristics in these acts of resistance are almost invisible and non-coordinated. The reasons behind these acts are not straightforward: do the poor steal in order to feed their families or do they do so in order to hurt the rich in the village? Scott goes further into predicting that the weapons of the poor may not directly create a new order, they are effective in mitigating the process of marginalisation and therefore have made impact overtime in social changes and history.

Useful Whever You Go...

I read this book in college and loved it because it was informative and readable, a rare combination. I didn't appreciate the value of its insights until many years later, though, when I became a corporate consultant tasked with driving organizational change. When people talk about getting buy-in, empowerment, and other workplace democracy concepts, they are all about avoiding the negative dynamics that top-down command-and-control micro-management so often elicits. Those dynamics are the same ones documented in this book.

An Important Work for Understanding Real Rebellion

In understanding Chinese political violence in my Master's thesis I tried to show political power as it actually exists and functions in real life. To do this I used Scott's work, whose focus on orthopraxy over orthodoxy, miniture rebellion and slander began in this work and was continued in "Domination and the Arts of Resistance". Scott is insightful, clear and important: he shows how the elite try to raise the stakes of rebellion past what is acceptable to the subordinate and how the subordinate use the lowest risk, yet highly effective, tools of rebellion at their disposal. Required reading for those trying to understand politics without becoming mired in gross oversimplification.