Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance.

The first two chapters of James. C Scott’s book, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, explores the extreme ends of the social classes in the farming village of Sedaka, Malaysia, and the concepts of peasant rebellion in the workplace and how it is viewed and understood by each social class. Scott follows the storyline of a childs death to describe to the reader the father of the child who possess traits of the extreme lower end. Razak, the childs father, is seen as someone who is not capable of getting ahead by the other villagers and this is because they see him as dishonest and lazy. He is noted to take advantage of people that hire him for labour and  selling the charitable gifts for money. Apart from his social status his house highlights how he is of the lowest social class as he is too embarrassed by it to hold his daughters funeral and the villagers refer to it as a chicken house. It is noted, however, that Razak owns a half relong (.35 acre) which he rents out to labourers and causes other villages to question his poverty. The real issue with Razak arises in the time of giving alms, the gift of food or other goods to those in poverty, as the villagers do not want to give food to a dishonest man, they much prefer to donate to people like Hamzah, Razaks brother, who is a hard worker and honest man. The alms, along with Razak having land to use, highlight how he is a lazy and stingy man who does not care to take from others.  

We see a simialr set of traits in Razaks direct opposite, Haji Broom. Haji Broom was one the biggest landowners in the state of Kedah, and as a result one of the most powerful men. This is where the differences between Razak and Haji Broom stop. Like Razak, Haji Broom appears to be a street beggar and lives in a house that is falling down even though he has considerable wealth. Another similarity is how they both make money by being dishonest. Haji Broom made his land empire through the use of ‘padi kunca’, the process of lending money to labourers to farm who would pay it back in fixed quantities of paddy during harvest that would reach nearly 150% interest. He would also take money from Chinese moneylenders at 40% and distripute it to peasants at 80% interest and would take the difference for himself. Not only is this unethical it also goes against the culture of the Malay to take advantage of their community.

Together Razak and Haji Broom became outcasts in their commnites through their shameless behaviour, becoming the symbols “of the greedy rich” and “the symbol of the grasping poor”.  

Scott’s book continues with the discussion of lower class rebellion against the powers they are working for. Scott empathses the method of peasant rebellion as a continuous, day-to-day technique of creating slight inconveniences towards the person or group they are rebelling. Scott lists these inconveniences as “foot dragging, dissimultation, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage, and so forth” things that are do not require mass planning or cooperation, yet they can have a big impact. He uses the example of slaves in the antebellum U.S. south, as the small rebellions where slaves used some of the methods listed above had a much bigger impact than the few heroic rebellions. Although the rebellions that make it through history are the heroic ones as people tend to write about them more, leaving the smaller more effective ones in the past. As these smaller rebellions do not attract the headline stories they are arguably more effective in a long term rebellion, continuing indefinitely until they are caught out. 

Scott sees the reasoning behind the rebellions as a factor stemming from how the peasant and the boss are seen in their social class. He turns back to the village in Malay to describe this claim. When the tenants of landlords are treated badly a collective recognition of this appears and causes the tenants to create stories about such landlord which then is spread throughout the village. This then gives the landlord a bad reputation and thus encourages other villagers to stay away from his land. But this does not account for why the landlord may be bad or why the tenant might be complaining. Each member of the situation has other aspects of their life that can contribute to how their relationship impacts them, such as crop pricing and whether they can find work or not. However, since it is the boss or landlord that is seen in the higher social class they will be seen as the one who is in the wrong. 

The way that individuals see the need for rebellion or the relationship they have with their landlord is so much more than a business matter. It is an account of the individuals position in society and how they view the others position which allows them to see the other persons experience of reality and the situation. Therefore, peasant rebellion is not coming solely from the experience of the work place but from an understanding of the social class each factor is in. 

Quotes: 

• “The ‘war news’ consists almost entirely of words, feints, counterfeints, threats, a skirmish or two, and, above all, propaganda” pg 22 

• “They require little or no coordination or planning; they often represent a form of indiviual self-help; and they typically avoid any direct symbolic confrontation with authority or elite norms” pg 29 

• “The effort of peasants in self-styled socialist states to prevent and then to mitigate or even undo unpopular forms of collective agriculture represent a striking example of the defensive techniques available to a beleaguered peasantry” pg 32 

Questions 

• Does the Malay government recognise the struggles between agriculture class? And if so does it provide any sources to help?  

• Southeast asia has many religions with fundamentals around finding balance, such as Buddhism. Are there any religions that see rebellion, on any scale, as having negative consequences?