Weapons of the Weak- Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance

by James C Scott

  It is in this larger context alone that poverty as it is experienced in Sedaka takes on its full meaning. Those with little or no land of their own have always been relegated to a rather marginal ritual position. But as long as tenancies and work were available they managed, if only barely, to achieve the minimal ritual decencies. The burst of feast giving during the first four years of double-cropping when work was plentiful is an indication of the pent-up ritual deficit that was being remedied. In this brief boom, the poor were able to assert a claim to status and ritual dignity formerly available only to middle and rich peasants. Now, with machine-harvesting, broadcasting, and the loss of tenancies, the resources to back those claims are either gone or receding fast.

  The cultural and material consequences of double-cropping are, of course, inseparable here. The modest ritual status to which the poor could lay claim was predicated not only on their earnings but also on the fact that they remained essential to the process of paddy cultivation and hence essential to the large farmers who grew most of that paddy. If they were treated with some consideration, if they were invited to kenduri, if they were given small gifts of zakat after the harvest, if their requests for loans or advance wages were heeded, it [Page 239] was largely because their labor was required. While there is no mechanical relationship between the role of the poor in production (the “base” in Marxist terms) and their role in cultural life (superstructure), it is undeniable that, as the need for their labor has plummeted, they have experienced a corresponding loss in the respect and recognition accorded them. Thus, when the poor speak among themselves, they emphasize far more their loss of standing and recognition than the loss of income per se. How else are we to understand the many comments about the humiliation of idleness at harvest time when, before, they would have been out working? How else are we to understand the bitter comments about not being invited to kenduri, about not being greeted on the village path, about not even being seen, about being treated rudely or “pushed aside” (tolak tepi)? The loss of the simple human considerations to which they feel entitled is at least as infuriating as the drop in their household income. Much of the local furor over the Village Improvement Scheme, and even the gate opening, can be seen in these terms. In each case, what is being resisted by appeal to custom is the attempt to revoke the claim of one group of villagers to what are considered the normal rights of local citizenship.

  Amidst the attention typically devoted by left-wing scholars to the economic privations of low wage rates, unemployment, poor housing, and inadequate nutrition among workers and peasants, more homely matters of ritual decencies and personal respect are frequently lost sight of altogether. And yet, for the victims themselves, these issues appear to be central. One of the major resentments among the historically turbulent rural workers of Andalusia, for example, is the “upper-class practice of social self-removal” called separacion. As Gilmore observes:

  They denounce separadion because they feel it is a reflection of arrogance and contempt…. The bitterness of the working-class response stems partly from a deeply felt moral postulate: the poor people of the community feel that to ignore a man is actively to disparage and insult him, purposefully to treat him as something less than a man.79

  Closer to our own terrain, Wan Zawawi Ibrahim’s fine study of Malay plantation workers recently recruited from east coast villages deals at length with the [Page 240] reaction to what the author terms “status exploitation.”80 Thus, an older Malay worker who would expect to be addressed respectfully as Pak Cik was summoned by the Malay overseer with a rude, “Hey, you come here” (Hai, mu mari sini) and was deeply insulted at having been treated “like trash in the middle of the road.” Many of the complaints of the ex-peasant work force focused as much on such inconsiderate, rude treatment as on the standard issues of pay and working conditions.

  If we are to appreciate the full dimensions of the ideological struggle in Sedaka we must at the same time appreciate the full dimensions of the threat they face. That threat has at least three facets: it is the palpable threat of permanent poverty; it is the no less palpable loss of a meaningful and respected productive role in the community; and it is the related loss of a great part of both the social recognition and cultural dignity that define full membership in this village. To call such matters bread-and-butter issues is largely to miss their significance. When the poor symbolically undermine the self-awarded status of the rich by inventing nicknames, by malicious gossip, by boycotting their feasts, by blaming their greed and stinginess for the current state of affairs, they are simultaneously asserting their own claim to status. Even when, as frequently happens, a poor family holds a feast they can ill afford, it is a small but significant sign of their determination not to accept the cultural marginalization their scant means imply. It is in this sense, especially, that the war of words, the ideological struggle in Sedaka, is a key part of “everyday resistance.” The refusal to accept the definition of the situation as seen from above and the refusal to condone their own social and ritual marginalization, while not sufficient, are surely necessary for any further resistance.

  1. See F G. Bailey, Gifts and Poison.’ The Politics of Reputation (New York: Schocken, 1971).

  2. The term is in use both in left-wing scholarship in the Malay language and occasionally in the speeches of opposition political leaders. The government, wary of the Marxist tone the word has acquired, uses it sparingly and then usually only to condemn Chinese middlemen, who are said to exploit Malay peasants, fishermen, and rubber tappers.

  3. Gabus (pronounced gabuih in Kedah dialect), “to rub or scour,” is also used occasionally in this same sense.

  4. The concept of blood sucking is also in popular use, and an oppressive landlord or moneylender may be called a “land leech” (lintah darat) or be accused of sucking blood (isap darah). The “land” in land leech is to distinguish the real thing, which is to be found in water or wet areas, from its human equivalent on dry land.

  5. The same verb with the same connotation is encountered elsewhere historically in Southeast Asia. A district official in precolonial Burma, for example, was called a myo-sa, the “eater” of a district. The Thai equivalent is kin muang. The Malay official appointed by the Sultan to rule a district was known as the Akan Pemakannya. In most of these permutations, the use of the verb “to eat” also implies that the activity is an alternative to honest work.

  6. Mokhzani bin Abdul Rahim, “Credit in a Malay Peasant Society” (Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1973), 255, emphasis added. See also Kessler’s discussion of the popular condemnation of “rude materialism” and the use of the term kira in Islam and Politics in a Malay State. Kelantan 1838–1969 (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1978), 221.

  7. Kenzo Horii, “The Land Tenure System of Malay Padi Farmers: A Case Study… in the State of Kedah,” Developing Economies 10, no. 1 (1972): 68.

  8. Definitions for kedekut, bakhil, miskin, and segan are drawn from Awang Sudja, Hairul and Yusoff Khan, Kamus Lengkap (Petaling Jaya: Pustaka Zaman, 1977), 449, 55, 701, and 974. The definition for timbang rasa comes from Tenku Iskandar, Kamus Dewan (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1970), 1255.

  9. For an argument that this ethos is relevant in many peasant contexts, see James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Subsistence and Rebellion in Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1976), chaps. 1 and 6.

  10. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971, reprint (first published 1946), 295, emphasis added.

  11. Malay Peasant Society in Jelebu, London School of Economics, Monographs on Social Anthropology, No. 29 (New York: Humanities Press, 1965), 153, emphasis added.

  12. Malay Peasant Society and Leadership (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford Univ. Press, 1975), 76. In this context, see also the same author’s Kemiskinan dan Kelaporan Tanah di Kelantan (Poverty and land hunger in Kelantan) (Petaling Jaya: Karangkraf Sdn. Berhad, 1978).

  13. Masuo Kuchiba, Yoshihiro Tsubouchi, and Narifumi Maeda, eds., Three Malay Villages: A Sociol
ogy of Paddy Growers in West Malaysia, trans. Peter and Stephanie Hawkes (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press, 1979), 278-79.

  14. Fujimoto, “Land Tenure, Rice Production, and Income Sharing among Malay Peasants: Study of Four Villages” (Ph.D. diss., Flinders University, Australia, 1980).

  15. For such transactions the doubled term tolong-menolong is frequently used, thus emphasizing the reciprocity.

  16. Even here, however, folk Islam holds that the recipient of alms is in effect doing a favor for the almsgiver by providing him with the opportunity ito perform an act of religious merit and thus to earn a reward (pahala) from God.

  17. One of the best discussions of this process is to be found in Georg Simmel, “The Poor,” pp. 150-78 in Georg Simmel on Individuality and Social Forms, ed. Donald N. Levine (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1971). Another insightful analysis focusing on similar relations between staff and inmates in prisons may be found in Thomas Mathiesen, The Defenses of the Weak: A Sociological Study of a Norwegian Correctional Institution (London: Tavistock, 1965), 155-64.

  18. Dia datang sindiri minta. Dia mau makan zakat sama kita. Macham mana boleh? Macham kita tolong dia. In effect, of course, Haji Din was after what is called tea money (duit teh), a premium for the privilege of continuing to rent, which he chose to exact in kind and to legitimize as zakat. Such requests, if made at all, would be expected to come indirectly in view of how morally offensive they are.

  19. As a case in point, two teenage women who lived in the village and attended the nearby Sekolah Arab took it into their heads to begin wearing the robe and head covering required for school as their normal dress, even when school was out. They were obviously attempting to show their piety by adopting self-consciously Islamic dress. It was interpreted by villagers, however, as an attempt to place themselves above others religiously. The two braved the resulting storm of quiet abuse and shunning for more than a week before succumbing and resuming the standard sarong without head covering when at home.

  20. Of course, the accusation of arrogance is often directed at outsiders with whom villagers must deal as well. This includes, among others, district officials, clerks in the district office, staff of the Farmers’ Association, clerks at the government rice mill (LPN), nurses and doctors at hospitals and clinics. The difference is that, with such outsiders, arrogance is expected and anything short of arrogance is a welcome exception. Within the village, by contrast, arrogance is an unwelcome exception.

  21. Mokhazani, “Credit,” 71.

  22. I have appropriated this term from Brian Fegan’s excellent dissertation, “FolkCapitalism: Economizing Strategies of Wet Rice Farmers in a Philippine Village” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1979), 317-25.

  23. For an interesting analysis of a French village in which the social ideology of patron and client are treated as symbolic weapons in a continuing conflict, see Alain Morel, “Power and Ideology in the Village Community of Picardy: Past and Present,” pp. 107-25 in Robert Forster and Orest Ranum, eds., Rural Society in France: Selections from the Annales (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1977). As Morel notes, “These two ideologies, that of the ‘deserving worker’ and that of the patron-employer as ‘father of the village,’ are part of a consensus, a framework that permits both parties to develop their strategies, since each can count on certain predictable reactions.” P. 118.

  24. Questions of wealth and income are of course inherently comparative, and to some extent the rich in Sedaka have a standard of comparison different from that of the poor. Compared, say, to really big outside landowners such as Haji Broom, to government clerks with a steady salary, or to Chinese storekeepers and traders, they are, indeed, not so comfortable. Although something of the kind is involved in their modesty, it is, as we shall see, neither the only nor even the main reason for their self-description. One might also imagine that much of this pattern was simply an effort to throw dust in the eyes of a naive outsider regarded with healthy suspicion. Yet the pattern continued long after wealthy villagers knew that I had become familiar with their actual economic circumstances, and it was sustained, especially in any situation in which other villagers were present.

  A small number of wealthy villagers, notably Haji Jaafar and Haji Kadir, would, when talking privately with me, drop the pretense and occasionally boast of their holdings. This I took to be an effort to match or outdistance the stranger, who was paid, it seemed, a princely salary. Whenever the situation was public, however, the guarded financial modesty resumed. The occasional exception to the pattern of minimizing income and property is when the question of paddy yields is involved. Here a man’s reputation as a good cultivator is at war with his desire to minimize his wealth, and the former occasionally wins out.

  25. Women typically manage most of the cash resources of the Malay family. For a fine analysis of the historical pattern of gender-based economic roles in the Malay world, see Marie-Andre Couillard, “A Brief Exploration into the Nature of Men/ Women Relations among Pre-Colonial Malayan People” (Paper presented at Second International Conference of the Canadian Council for Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, June 1982).

  26. The reader may reasonably wonder how it was possible, under these difficult circumstances, to establish the facts at all. It was not a simple matter, but the disputes were typically about income at the margin; depending on whose opinion one accepted, the difference was seldom more than 10 percent on either side of an average. Many of the facts could in fact be checked by direct observation, by asking those least likely to have a stake in dissimulating, or by actual records (in the case of owned land or of formal rental agreements for pajak) in order to establish an estimate in which some confidence could be placed. Data bearing on actual cultivation-expenses, yields, area farmed-were the easiest to establish by observation over two years, while income earned outside the village was hardest to pin down precisely, although I made a point of inquiring of outside employers and coworkers to cross-check quite a few figures.

  27. Again, the truth of such matters was not simple to determine, although the differences were small. As I remained through four crop seasons in the village, however, much of this information could be directly or indirectly ascertained. Thus, by observing actual zakat peribadi gifts, I could normally infer the most likely level for a previous season with a given yield and given paddy price. It was, in fact, in the matter of zakat peribadi that the claims of the well-to-do were most inflated, although the inflation declined as they realized I was increasingly familiar with village patterns.

  28. In summarizing these opinions I have looked back over my fieldnotes to verify that these views were in fact held by a substantial majority of rich and poor, respectively. As many as eleven of the poorest thirty-seven households could not be counted as part of the consensus among the poor; among these eleven, seven household heads did not actually disagree but were reserved or silent on many of these issues. Among the wealthiest fifteen households, only four were substantially out of line with the general view.

  29. What might be termed the “middle” peasantry-roughly the twenty households directly below the richest twenty households-is difficult to classify in these terms. Their view of the village stratification is ambiguous or mixed; if there is any tendency at all, it is to see things rather more the way the richer villagers see them.

  30. For a brilliant analysis of the social function of euphemisms by powerful groups, see Murray Edelman, “The Political Language of the Helping Professions,” Politics and Society 4, no. 3 (Fall 1974).

  31. Government of Malaya, Report of the Rice Production Committee, 1953 (Kuala Lumpur: 1953), vol. 1, pp. 45-46.

  32. Lebai Hussein and his son Taha claim that Tok Mah gave the 3 relong they had been farming to Pak Yah without giving them a chance to accept a higher rent. In her defense, Tok Mah claims that she had told them of her intention of raising the rent and took their grumbling as a refusal. The truth of the matter will perhaps never be known but, for my purposes, what is instructive is that
Tok Mah recognizes the custom by claiming that she had given them the right of first refusal and that they had refused.

  33. The rental increases that occurred following the sharp 1973 increase in farmgate paddy prices were generally accepted as legitimate, providing they were modest. The reasoning was that the new profits could be divided equitably between the landowner and the tenant.

  34. The tactic of sembunyi-tau is used to broach delicate matters even between parties who are closely related and see one another constantly. Thus, when Haji Kadir decided that he would like his son-in-law Ghazali to pay his rent before the season rather than after the harvest, he had his wife tell her sister-in-law, who in turn told Ghazali’s wife. Next season, the rent appeared in advance without a word ever having passed directly between the two principals. Had the rent not appeared, Haji Kadir would have had a choice between simply dropping the matter and making a direct suggestion.

  35. Criticism of my frequent social missteps early in my stay was invariably conveyed in this way. Thus, when I unthinkingly would occasionally whistle a tune in the house, Haji Kadir, my co-resident landlord, chose to inform me through his brother-in-law Shahnon that whistling in the house was dangerous, as it was believed to entice snakes into the dwelling.

  36. The fact that, since 1955, this particular tenancy had been covered by a written contract extending for at least two seasons at a time (pajak) perhaps precluded the informal approach, since a new agreement would in any case have to be filed.