46
2
feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage, and so forth’ (Scott 1985: 29). Scott
refers to these everyday acts of resistance as the ‘weapons of the weak’; the ‘weak’
being actors who use a variety of ‘weapons’ to defend their interests against more
powerful and dominating actors. In some cases, resistance can be more effective
when hidden than open, because direct confrontation may provoke a response
from the elite that could lead to further loss to communities.
Scott argues, however, that though the acts of hidden resistance do not openly
‘contest the formal definitions of hierarchy and power’, it is possible to determine
to what degree, and in what ways, marginalized actors accept the social order propagated by elites by studying their behaviour and ‘offstage’ comments and conversations.
The ‘offstage’ presentations, or ‘hidden transcripts’ as Scott (1990) calls them,
are accounts that include critiques of power and practices. Hidden transcripts can
also be disguised in the form of rumours, proverbs, jokes, parodies, gossip, gestures, folktales, and so on. ‘Public transcripts’, on the other hand, are comments
and conversations that the actors (the elite and the inferior) play out in each other’s
presence (Scott 1990). Scott (1990: 2) explains that while public transcripts can
inform us about power, they are ‘unlikely to tell the whole story about power
relations’. Therefore, he recommends examining the divergence between the public
and hidden transcripts as an approach to study structures of domination and patterns of resistance.
While peasants are partially integrated in markets and therefore part of the
capitalist system, a peasant unit is still not a fully capitalist unit of production,
because it operates according to its own complex logic involving both market and
non-market incentives for or drivers of land use change (van der Ploeg 2013).
Peasant labour, for instance, is often derived from family members rather than
provided in exchange for a wage. Similarly, in peasant communities, capital primarily consists of available tools, buildings, livestock and savings rather than necessarily as reinvested surplus-value producing capital as theorized by Marxist scholars.
For these reasons, and linked to what the Russian agricultural economist
Alexander Chayanov (1888–1937) termed ‘self-exploitation’ (Chayanov 1925),
peasant farms tend to be more competitive than capitalist farms. When capitalist
farms go bankrupt, peasants in the same areas may work longer hours and sell at
lower prices (van der Ploeg 2013). Peasants may also be able to use more marginal
land than capitalist farms, and they use land more intensely, adding especially
more labour to each unit of land, which can lead to higher yields.
More recently, and as a consequence of the fact that contemporary agrarian
questions involve more actors than only peasants, critical agrarian studies have
emerged out of peasant studies as a field focusing on how agrarian life and livelihoods shape and are shaped by the politics, economics and social worlds of modernity (Edelman and Wolford 2017). Marginalization, marginality and the impact of
modernity on marginal people constitute key themes in critical agrarian studies
(Edelman and Wolford 2017).
Chapter 2 · Theoretical Influences and Recent Directions
2
feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage, and so forth’ (Scott 1985: 29). Scott
refers to these everyday acts of resistance as the ‘weapons of the weak’; the ‘weak’
being actors who use a variety of ‘weapons’ to defend their interests against more
powerful and dominating actors. In some cases, resistance can be more effective
when hidden than open, because direct confrontation may provoke a response
from the elite that could lead to further loss to communities.
Scott argues, however, that though the acts of hidden resistance do not openly
‘contest the formal definitions of hierarchy and power’, it is possible to determine
to what degree, and in what ways, marginalized actors accept the social order propagated by elites by studying their behaviour and ‘offstage’ comments and conversations.
The ‘offstage’ presentations, or ‘hidden transcripts’ as Scott (1990) calls them,
are accounts that include critiques of power and practices. Hidden transcripts can
also be disguised in the form of rumours, proverbs, jokes, parodies, gossip, gestures, folktales, and so on. ‘Public transcripts’, on the other hand, are comments
and conversations that the actors (the elite and the inferior) play out in each other’s
presence (Scott 1990). Scott (1990: 2) explains that while public transcripts can
inform us about power, they are ‘unlikely to tell the whole story about power
relations’. Therefore, he recommends examining the divergence between the public
and hidden transcripts as an approach to study structures of domination and patterns of resistance.
While peasants are partially integrated in markets and therefore part of the
capitalist system, a peasant unit is still not a fully capitalist unit of production,
because it operates according to its own complex logic involving both market and
non-market incentives for or drivers of land use change (van der Ploeg 2013).
Peasant labour, for instance, is often derived from family members rather than
provided in exchange for a wage. Similarly, in peasant communities, capital primarily consists of available tools, buildings, livestock and savings rather than necessarily as reinvested surplus-value producing capital as theorized by Marxist scholars.
For these reasons, and linked to what the Russian agricultural economist
Alexander Chayanov (1888–1937) termed ‘self-exploitation’ (Chayanov 1925),
peasant farms tend to be more competitive than capitalist farms. When capitalist
farms go bankrupt, peasants in the same areas may work longer hours and sell at
lower prices (van der Ploeg 2013). Peasants may also be able to use more marginal
land than capitalist farms, and they use land more intensely, adding especially
more labour to each unit of land, which can lead to higher yields.
More recently, and as a consequence of the fact that contemporary agrarian
questions involve more actors than only peasants, critical agrarian studies have
emerged out of peasant studies as a field focusing on how agrarian life and livelihoods shape and are shaped by the politics, economics and social worlds of modernity (Edelman and Wolford 2017). Marginalization, marginality and the impact of
modernity on marginal people constitute key themes in critical agrarian studies
(Edelman and Wolford 2017).
Chapter 2 · Theoretical Influences and Recent Directions