Weapons of the Weak- Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance

by James C Scott

  The inroads made by mechanization now mean that much of the paddy gathered by hand comes from low-lying fields that are waterlogged or from fields where wind and rain has caused the heavy panicles to lodge. Such special conditions call, in principle, for special wages; precisely what those special wages should be is an arena of struggle. They way in which this struggle is conducted reveals the same elements of “strike” behavior and circumspection that we encountered in the resistance to combine harvesting. In the case of reaping, for example, the head of a share group, such as Rosni, will typically look over the field in advance. Should the water be particularly deep or the paddy lodged (or both) she will rarely ask the farmer directly for a higher price per relong. Instead she will “let it be known” (cara sembunyi tau) that the reaping will take much longer than usual and that the rate should be considerably more than the standard (1979 main season) of M$35. The farmer may “reply” in several ways: he may [Page 259] “let it be known” that he is willing to consider a higher rate depending on how the work goes, he may remain silent, or he may let it be known that he thinks the standard wage is enough in this case. Unless the farmer’s rate is clearly out of line and alternative work is available, however, the women will show up for work. Should the field conditions be as bad or worse than anticipated, they are likely to grumble openly as they cut the paddy, passing comments such as “Your paddy is hard [work]; [we’re] losing [money].”30 This is a clear signal to the farmer that he is in danger of losing his work force, and he often responds by indicating that he will raise the wage somewhat, though he rarely specifies by how much. If, on the other hand, he believes their claim unwarranted, he may simply remain silent, which is interpreted as a sign of refusal. In this case, the women are faced with a difficult choice; they can continue to work and grumble or they can walk off the job.

  The decision to walk off is not taken lightly, because the farmer may well switch to a different share group next season and because any loss of precious harvest income is a sacrifice. If the farmer has a generally good reputation for paying fair wages in the past, the women will probably continue to work while making their dissatisfaction known.31 But if the farmer has a reputation for stinginess, the women will strike, as they do once or twice a year. The “strike” is not announced, but everyone understands what is happening. Rather than leaving the fields directly, the women are more likely not to return after the midday meal or on the following morning. The farmer will then typically send someone to the share group leader to propose a modest increase in pay to end the strike. More rarely, the farmer may refuse to budge and, if he does, he must recruit outside labor, since no village share group will agree to take the place of another, once the work has begun.

  Disputes over reaping wages have become increasingly common as more farmers have turned to broadcasting. A paddy field that has been broadcast-planted is a good deal harder to reap, owing to both the absence of orderly rows and to the much greater variation in the height of the mature stalks. Women have asked for, and gotten, wages as high as M$60 a relong for reaping such fields, especially during the irrigated season when the fields are wet at harvest time.32 They are also conscious that high reaping wages are a fitting retribution for those farmers who do not hire transplanters. As Rosni said privately when her [Page 260] group had asked for M$50 per relong to reap Abdul Rahman’s broadcast field, “If he takes away our transplanting, we’ll get it back reaping.” The farmers’ riposte to higher reaping costs is to move, when possible, to the kupang system of paying a flat rate (M$3 or M$3.50) to individuals for a morning’s work. This is an option only if the farmer’s fields are out of phase with others, so that there is a surplus of idle labor at the time. Even then, however, many women in the share groups will refuse to transplant or reap for kupang wages, as they understand that is another way of reducing their wage and breaking their rudimentary organization. It is too early to say whether large farmers will succeed in establishing the kupang system as the norm for transplanting and reaping. What is clear, however, is that the resistance of poor women to kupang work is, thus far, a major factor impeding its adoption.

  Conflict over piece-rates for threshing follow much the same pattern as for reaping. Under normal circumstances, those who are threshing paddy can expect to thresh about four gunny sacks in a long morning; at the standard pay of M$2 per sack prevailing in the 1978–79 main season, the laborer would receive at least M$8. But if the paddy is wet or immature and the water deep, it may take an entire morning just to thresh one or two sacks. Open grumbling will inevitably begin, and the farmer understands that an adjustment is called for.33 He is under great pressure to make some concession, for any further delay in gathering and drying his crop will inevitably lead to its spoiling. Again, as with reaping, direct demands are rarely presented, but the farmer is made to understand the implicit threat. If he makes, or promises, an adequate adjustment-as is typically the case-the work continues in an improved atmosphere. If he fails to raise the piece-rate, he may provoke a strike. Unlike the share groups, however, which strike as a unit, threshers walk out as individuals, although pressure is brought to bear on those who would remain to join in the walkout. The irrigated season harvest of 1979 was an exceptional opportunity for village threshers in this respect, since heavy rains had caused widespread lodging at the last moment, and a good part of the harvest had to be gathered by hand or not at all. Farmers were desperate to save their paddy, and two such walkouts by threshers helped to establish a wage of M$3 per sack as the minimum. In each case all the threshers agreed among themselves not to return the following morning and sent word that they were sick or had been called away [Page 261] to other, more pressing, work. Their unanimity helped to shield them against the possibility that the farmer would never invite them back to thresh in subsequent seasons. Neither of the two farmers attempted to hire other villagers for the work, as they knew none would come.34 One (Zaharuddin) thought of recruiting outsiders from his in-laws’ village but quickly thought better of it when he learned they could not come for three days, during which he would lose most of his already cut crop to the moisture. The threshers had thus seized a rather unique opportunity to press their claims. They and the reapers, however, continued to operate with circumspection, avoiding an open confrontation and strikes whenever possible, since they knew that their future earnings depended on retaining a measure of goodwill between them and their employers. Within these decorous limits they nevertheless carried on a struggle to protect their interests as wage earners.35

  Imposed Mutuality

  It would be apparent that even the modest forms of resistance mounted in Sedaka depend for their effect upon a certain degree of mutuality among the poor. That is, the first, and minimal, requirement of class solidarity is a negative one: that the poor at least refrain from undercutting one another and thereby further magnifying the considerable economic power of their employers and landlords. “Otherwise,” as Marx notes, “they are on hostile terms with each other as competitors”36-surviving at one another’s expense. The mutuality that exists can be seen in the refusal of other share groups or threshers to act as strikebreakers in the village. It exists, as we shall see, in the vital realm of tenancy, where those seeking land are unwilling to undercut their own neighbors. No extravagant claims can be made for this sanctioned self-restraint, inasmuch as it operates only within the confines of the village itself, and even in this context its operation is narrowly circumscribed.37 It does, however, prevent the most [Page 262] damaging excesses of competition between the poor for the few opportunities available.38

  Such minimal solidarity depends, here as elsewhere, not just on a seemly regard for one’s fellows, but on the sanctions that the poor can bring to bear to keep one another in line. Since the temptation to break ranks is always alluring to members of a class that has chronic difficulty making ends meet, these sanctions must be powerful enough to prevent an ever immanent Hobbesian struggle among the poor. The modest level of restraint that has bee
n achieved makes ample use of social sanctions such as gossip, character assassination, and public shunning. There is no surer way for poor men or women to call scorn upon themselves than to work at a lower wage than the prevailing rate or to take a job that “belongs” by custom to others. Nor is it merely a question of reputation, for the offender will find that he or she is shunned in labor exchange (derau), not included in share groups, not told about possibilities of finding work, denied the petty jobs that the poor can occasionally offer, and not invited to join “rotating credit associations” (kut) in their neighborhood. Each of these material sanctions, taken separately, is fairly trivial, but collectively they represent a potential loss of some magnitude. Nor is the threat of violence entirely absent from these sanctions, as we shall see. Thus, the poor man who is tempted to break ranks must measure very carefully his short-term gain against the losses his angry neighbors may be able to impose. By their opinion and by their sanctions, the poor have erected a set of customary prohibitions that symbolize the acceptable limits of self-seeking.

  These limits are best illustrated by examining the values that apply to the never-ending search for land by would-be tenants. Since access to land is so vital to the well-being of the poor, they are under constant temptation to pry land away from other poor families by agreeing to a higher rent. And yet, the sanctions against behaving in this way are such that it happens very rarely. I often had occasion to ask poorer villagers why there were not more attempts to bid away land from local tenants by offering more for the privilege. Their replies are illuminating in their uniformity. They make clear that to do so would be an offense against another tenant. Thus, Yaakub said that such attempts are rare [Page 263] because they would go against local “social opinion” (pandang masyarakat). Karim, who is always looking for land to rent, said that he would not try to bid away land, since he would feel “embarrassed before his friend(s)” (malu sama kawan). “In our society (masyarakat kita), you can’t do that,” he added. Sukur and Jamil each used the identical phrase in explaining why such behavior was contemptible: “You can’t cut (potong) your friends.” When Hamzah explained why it was not done, he focused on his sense of the decorum that should prevail among the poor: “Our friends wouldn’t agree to it; it wouldn’t be seemly (tak elok) to scramble (berebut) like that.” Even wealthier villagers recognize the force of these norms and are wary of breaking them. Amin thus noted that a landlord who promoted such a bidding war or a poor man who tried to displace another tenant in this way would “not be respected (tak hormati). We are all friends; we are one village; he would feel guilty (hati-nya tak ada baik).”

  There are intimations by some villagers that the sanctions that restrain such self-seeeking may go well beyond the matters of shame, reputation, and customary rules. Samad made it clear that any tenant who lost his land in this fashion would be “very angry and might do anything.” Mat “halus” was a bit less cryptic when speaking of the offended tenant: “You can’t do that, he would be angry, he would look for his machete (cari golok).”

  The comments of Rokiah and Samat are especially noteworthy in this respect, not because they add very much to what has already been reported, but because they provide the one unambiguous case in which the injunction against competition among tenants was broken. Samat explained that it was rare for a poor man to try to outbid the current tenant because, if he did, “he would be accursed (jahanam) as far as we were concerned: you and I are finished [we would say].” Rokiah’s opinion was just as forceful: “Someone who steals land like that would be despised (dengki).” As it happens, Rokiah has had a chance to act on her convictions. Until 1975, both Rokiah and Samat rented adjacent paddy fields from the same outside landlord: 4 relong were rented to Rokiah and a single relong to Samat. On the strength of the fact that his mother-in-law had once owned all this land, Samat went to see the landlord before the 1975 off season began and, by offering M$20 more in rent, persuaded him to transfer an additional relong from Rokiah to him. Since that day, no one in Rokiah’s family has spoken to anyone in Samat’s family or to his father, Tok Mahmud. It goes without saying that, although she is known to favor PAS, neither she nor anyone in her family has set foot in Samat’s small store, which is a recognized PAS gathering place. In fact, some villagers claim, although Rokiah denies it, that she has been responsible for an informal boycott of Samat’s store by others, which may explain why it was on the verge of failure during my stay.39 When Rokiah’s daughter was married in 1980, Samat and Tok Mahmud told me that they were [Page 264] the only two families in the village who had not been invited. Rokiah claimed that she had, in fact, invited them but that they were too embarrassed to put in an appearance. One sure way of finding out whether a given norm exists is to observe what happens when it is violated. In this case, the episode involving Rokiah and Samat is the exception that proves the rule.40

  To return to the rule for a moment, it should be made explicit that it does not prevent some forms of competition between tenants. Thus, if a landlord wants to raise the rent paid by his customary tenant to a point where the tenant is unwilling to continue, it is then permissible for others to ask for it under the new terms. It is also permissible-but frowned upon-for a would-be tenant to approach a landlord for land if the tenant he might displace is neither a fellow villager nor a relative. Once again, as with the boycott of the combines, the restrictions of mutuality break down outside the community, and their effect is partly undone by extra-village competition. What is not countenanced within the village, however, is for a poor man to take the initiative and attempt to “steal” a tenancy by proposing a higher rent.41

  What practical effect does the restraint the poor impose upon one another have? To the extent that the market for tenancies is still a rather localized affair, it is likely, along with kinship tenure, to impede slightly the landlord’s efforts to extract the maximum possible rent. A good many agroeconomic studies of the Muda region have, in fact, remarked that rent levels in general, even for non-kinship tenancies, are somewhat lower than a purely economic analysis would predict. The difference, while it is not large, is at least in part attributable to the small degree of local mutuality the poor have managed to create. When it [Page 265] comes to wage rates for transplanting, reaping, and threshing, or the volume of such employment, the impact of this mutuality is probably less pronounced, for the labor market is more regionalized than the market for tenancies. The very localism of the mutuality is thus a more severe handicap in this sphere. Nevertheless, in small but significant ways, the mutuality of the poor represents a form of daily resistance that prevents, or at least delays, the worst consequences of the full “rationalization” of production relations in the countryside.

  Self-Help and/or Enforcement

  Thus far I have dealt largely with attempts at collective action-with “sanctions” that the poor bring to bear on their landlords and employers, as well as on themselves, to prevent a “dog-eat-dog” competition. There is, however, another realm of resistance that is more shadowy and individual; it includes a large variety of thefts and the murder of livestock. Inquiry into this realm is a necessarily delicate affair, inasmuch as the silence of most of the participants is compounded by an understandable desire on the part of the inquirer to avoid danger. Without ever pursuing this matter actively, a pattern of facts nevertheless emerged from casual listening over two years which suggested that such activities had implications for class relations and resistance.

  Rural theft by itself is unremarkable; it is a nearly permanent feature of agrarian life whenever and wherever the state and its agents are insufficient to control it. When such theft takes on the dimensions of a struggle in which property rights are contested, however, it becomes essential to any careful analysis of class relations. Such was certainly the case for parts of England, where poaching was the most common-and the most popular-crime for at least two centuries, and in France, where Zola claimed without undue exaggeration that “Every peasant had a poacher hidden ins
ide him.”42 Here the political and class meaning of poaching was perfectly evident, since the peasantry had never fully accepted the property rights of those who claimed ownership of the forests, streams, “wastes,” and commons that had previously been the joint property of the community. Poaching was not simply a necessary subsistence option but an enactment of what was seen to be a natural right.43

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  Theft was far more common in Kedah before 1950 than it is today. Older residents of Sedaka can recall a time not so very long ago when the rustling of water buffalo was such a common occurrence that every man slept with a rope tied to his wrist that led through the floor to his water buffalo’s nose beneath to alert him in case rustlers approached. They can also remember the names and exploits of the most famous rural bandits, such as Awang Poh, Saleh Tui, and Nayan, who acquired reputations as “social bandits,” robbing from the rich and giving to the poor.44 At that time, settlements were smaller and more scattered, and much uncleared brush and forest remained. This frontier quality of many Kedah districts, the weakness of rural police units, and the poverty and mobility of the peasantry all provided a hospitable environment for banditry and rustling.