''Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance'' is a 1985 book on everyday forms of rural
class conflict
Class conflict, also referred to as class struggle and class warfare, is the political tension and economic antagonism that exists in society because of socio-economic competition among the social classes or between rich and poor.
The forms ...
as illustrated in a Malaysian village, written by anthropologist
James C. Scott
James C. Scott (born December 2, 1936) is an American political scientist and anthropologist specializing in comparative politics. He is a comparative scholar of agrarian society, agrarian and non-state societies, Subaltern (postcolonialism), ...
and published by
Yale University Press
Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous.
, Yale Universi ...
.
In ''Weapons of the Weak'', Scott turns his attention to the daily, subtle forms of resistance employed by villagers, a shift from the traditionally studied grand narratives of revolutions and uprisings. His ethnographic research concentrates on seventy families in a Malaysian village, whose lives are profoundly affected by the introduction of irrigation and double cropping, leading to significant social changes.
The core of Scott's analysis lies in the various passive resistance strategies adopted by the villagers. These include: sabotage, foot-dragging, evasion, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, arson, dissimulation, and slander.
See also
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Everyday Resistance
Everyday resistance is a form of resistance based on the actions of people in their everyday lives. Everyday resistance is perceived to be the most common form of resistance to oppression. This particular form of resistance is a way of undermining ...
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Class struggle
Class conflict, also referred to as class struggle and class warfare, is the political tension and economic antagonism that exists in society because of socio-economic competition among the social classes or between rich and poor.
The forms ...
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Critique of work
Critique of work or critique of labour is the critique of, and wish to abolish, work ''as such'', and to critique what the critics of works deem wage slavery.
Critique of work can be existential, and focus on how labour can be and/or feel meaning ...
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Critique of political economy
Critique of political economy or critique of economy is a form of Social criticism, social critique that rejects the various social categories and structures that constitute the mainstream discourse concerning the forms and modalities of resourc ...
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Symbolic interactionism
Symbolic interactionism is a sociological theory that develops from practical considerations and alludes to particular effects of communication and interaction in people to make images and normal implications, for deduction and correspondence w ...
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Refusal of work
Refusal of work is behavior in which a person refuses regular employment."Refusal of work means quite simply: I don't want to go to work because I prefer to sleep. But this laziness is the source of intelligence, of technology, of progress. Auton ...
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External links
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1986 non-fiction books
American non-fiction books
Anthropology books
Books by James C. Scott
Yale University Press books
Books about Malaysia
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