WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE FRANCE - news journal UPDATE - (en) France, UCL AL #371 - Culture - Read James C. Scott: Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

James C. Scott (1936-2024), professor of political science and anthropology at Yale University, sought to demonstrate that the absence of open conflict or revolt is not an expression of the submission of the oppressed to their condition, nor of their acquiescence to the existing social order. ---- After two years of ethnographic research in Sedaka, a rice-growing village in Malaysia, observing and interviewing both poor and wealthy villagers, he sheds light on the "weapons of the weak" used to mitigate the effects of domination. These acts of "daily resistance," falling under the category of "everyday resistance," fall far short of deliberate acts of collective defiance, taking the form of evasions, petty theft, temporary blockades, and, on a symbolic level, slander, gossip, and nicknames intended to tarnish reputations. Never venturing to challenge the formal boundaries of hierarchy and power, they prove virtually impossible to overcome.

The implementation of double cropping annually, thanks to irrigation and then mechanization (plowing tractors and combine harvesters), has profoundly altered the "natural order of local economic relations" in Sedaka. Consequently, conflicts of interpretation arise regarding the benefits and harms suffered by different parties, and their respective obligations towards one another.

His conclusions contradict the Marxist concept of "false consciousness" and the Gramscian concept of "ideological hegemony," since he argues that the dominated act rationally, fully aware of the limits of their political, economic, and symbolic resources.

Far from being active ideological support, apparent compliance can also stem from a recalcitrant resignation, because capitalism, no more than feudalism, has succeeded in making the subordinate classes internalize the hegemony supposedly guaranteeing social peace without resorting to the coercive apparatus of the state. With this substantial and insightful essay, James C. Scott defends the importance and effectiveness of "everyday resistance."

Ernest London (UCL Le Puy-en-Velay)

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Lire-James-C-Scott-Les-Armes-des-faibles-Formes-quotidiennes-de-la-resistance
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca