ho, chung - james scott’s resistance-hegemony paradigm (crítica a scott)

Original Article

James Scotts resistance/hegemony paradigmreconsidered

Wing-Chung HoDepartment of Applied Social Sciences, City University of Hong Kong, 83 Tat Chee Avenue,

Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong.

E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract This essay represents a reexamination of the reigning resistance/hegemony paradigm since it was elaborated by James C. Scott in the 1980s. Itargues that the main problem haunting the paradigm is its overemphasis on theactors experience of personal domination. Being deliberately bypassed is theexperience of impersonal domination shaped by values, traditions or the symbolicuniverse when actors are to face and deal with local oppression. Situating theproblem in a wider theoretical context, the author suggests that when actors have toface and deal with an oppressive situation in order that they may resist it or complywith it, they must experience both personal and impersonal domination pertinent tothe social structure.Acta Politica (2011) 46, 4359. doi:10.1057/ap.2010.5

Keywords: resistance; hegemony; domination; social structure; Scott

Introduction

It has been more than two decades since James C. Scott published hisWeaponsof the Weak, it would be too repetitive to provide yet another long list ofliterature on what is commonly known as resistance studies. The outputof nearly 60 items in the Social Science Citation Index with a topic search ofScott AND resistance simply tells the story.1 Being a critique of Gramscianhegemony, Scotts model contends that in situations of relative safety,subordinates display an impressive capacity to understand the larger realitiesof capital accumulation, proletarianization and marginalization (Scott, 1985,p. 304). They avoid direct and open defiance against external domination onlybecause they are aware rationally of their inferior position in the socialhierarchy. Brought under the empirical gaze is a spectrum of subordinatesactions against domination, actions which are largely invisible, individually

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based, and require little or no coordination or planning without an intentionto overthrow and transform a system of domination (Scott, 1985, p. 424).Although Scotts exegesis of resistance has become an influential paradigm inthe social sciences, it has come under increasing attack. Critiques from Sahlinswho deems the concept as translating the apparently trivial into the fate-fully political (Sahlins, 1993); from Ortner who describes resistance studiesas ethnographically thin on the internal politics, cultural richness andsubjectivities of subordinated groups (Ortner, 1995); and from Brown whocalls the paradigm a theoretical hegemony with limited utility, are pervasive inthe literature (Brown, 1996).In this essay, I attempt to argue that many of the critiques which see the

nature of Scotts notion of resistance as a mechanical re-action against theinstitutional authority without any revolutionary concern are somewhatmisguided. I suggest that the real problem haunting the paradigm is itsoveremphasis on the actors experience of personal domination in dyadicpatron-client politics. Being deliberately bypassed is the experience ofimpersonal domination when actors encounter local oppression. Here, imper-sonal domination refers to the (unequal) power relations originating from theunderlying episteme of society governed by values, traditions or the symbolicuniverse.2 The impersonal dimension of domination points to the momentwhen actors experience external constraints that go beyond face-to-facerelationships with their oppressors. It suggests that the exclusive concern of theresistance/hegemony (R/H) paradigm on the personal, patron-client nature ofpolitical experience has marginalized the experience of impersonal forms ofcontrol mediated by pre-predicated values and ideas shared in the subordinatecommunity. Such a skewed view inevitably causes the paradigm to portray anoverly simplistic and untextured view of actors experiences of oppression. Ibelieve that it is this theoretical misstep that prevents one from grasping theirmore complicated selves, and the complexity of the agency.In the following, the general critiques of the R/H paradigm are outlined.

Then, the main problem and the underlying theoretical premise of the R/Hparadigm are examined. Finally, I will discuss my concern on the need to bringback the impersonal element in when attempting to understand the politicalexperience.

General Critiques of the R/H Paradigm: Justified, or Misguided?

Although this essay does not aim to exhaust all attacks against the R/Hparadigm (Fletcher, 2001), three major lines of criticism are outlined because oftheir relevance to my present concern. First, the highly mechanical view ofresistance. It has been said that the paradigm tends to reify the peasant culture

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as fatefully political (Sahlins, 1993) and pits the subordinate towards simplyopposing domination. Such a conception undesirably places the opportunityfor cooperation and reciprocity outside the resistancehegemony formula(Brown, 1996; Kerkvliet, 2002). Consequently, resistance becomes a virtuallymechanical re-action (Ortner, 1995, pp. 176177).3

Second, there is the missing link with collective action. The paradigm has beencriticized because it ostensibly concedes from an important empirical domainthat people do occasionally possess high internal cohesion and feel the need toact collectively for a wider social cause. For instance, Escobar criticized Scottsparadigm for not pushing the question of resistance towards one of its possiblelogical conclusions, namely, that point at which resistance gives way to moreorganized forms of collective action or social movement (Escobar, 1992a,p. 399; Escobar, 1992b; Starn, 1992, Ho, 2006). McAdam, Tarrow and Tillyargued that Scotts concentration on individual resistance provided littlepurchase on the question of when these low-level resentments would lead tomobilization and collective action and when they would remain at the level ofindividual resentment (McAdam et al, 1997) whereas Vandergeest remarkedthat the paradigm failed to explicate a series of phenomena concerning whypeople are willing to give up their lives for their nation (Vandergeest, 1993).Third, there is the tendency toward psychologizing the concept of resistance.

Being usually relegated to a spectrum of trivialized reflexes in response tooppression, resistance then becomes difficult to ascertain at the empirical level.The difficulty rests upon the fact that resistance becomes a set of actions soindividualized to an extent that it seems to be recognizable only within thesubjectivity of the actor. For example, are the unlawful acts of the poor, whichinvolve only individualistic self interest (for example, burglars, pickpockets)considered resistance? And, what about subordinates violent acts motivatedby the feeling of resentment toward vendettas (for example, killings, orsabotage in cases of revenge) or subordinates counter-domination actionsprovoked by solipsistic causes (for example, Don Quixotes attack on thewindmill)? Are these individualistic actions which are directed towardsuperordinates considered resistance? Indeed, Scott himself was quickly awareof this problem soon after the Weapons of the Weak was published. He thenfurther qualified his notion of resistance by asserting that at stake is theintention that subordinates have in their act of resistance (Scott, 1985, p. 290;Scott, 1986, p. 2). But this qualification only painted him to the corner as healmost immediately admitted that assessing intention is difficult, and that ithad not been very successful in helping differentiate everyday resistance fromvarious survival methods (Scott, 1986, p. 2).My reading of Scott takes on a slightly different approach from many critics.

I see that his notion of resistance is not purely a consequence of the powerrelations created by class cleavages, and hence, cannot be simply re-action

James Scotts resistance/hegemony paradigm reconsidered

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against oppression. In addition, despite the preoccupation of Scott as well asmany of his readers with the incidental acts that are individualistic, oppor-tunistic, and without any revolutionary consequences, Scotts thesis hasnever lost sight of the linkage to collective revolutionary action. In a belatedclarification, Scott admitted that his The Moral Economy of the Peasantpublished in 1976 (Scott, 1976) had failed to take into account the peasantculture and religion in the context of revolution, and such failure might issue adistorted impression that the peasants resistance is merely a response againstlocal power and politics (Scott, 2005). Scott referred us back to his earlyarticles in Theory and Society published in 1977 called Protest andProfanation: Agrarian Revolt and the Little Tradition (Scott, 1977a, b). It isin this two-part article that he posited the concept of the little tradition (notthe oppressor) as the most important single factor which mediates resistanceand revolution when subordinates encounter local oppression.By little tradition, Scott means the distinctive patterns of belief and

behavior which are valued by the peasantry of an agrarian society andconstitute a pattern of structural, stylistic, and normative opposition to thepolitico-religious tradition of ruling elites (Scott, 1977a). To Scott, the mainreason that the political dimensions of the little tradition merits attention isthat class interests are not the sole elements that pit peasants against the rulingelites. What is more important is that the little tradition being the sharedvalues and goals of the subordinates always contain the elements of radicaldissent which might find expression through rebellion. Since there is always animagined future in the little tradition that is frequently shaped by a religiouscharter towards more far-reaching, revolutionary goals, under certain circum-stances, this folk culture will form the ideational foundation for peasantmovements (Scott, 1977b). Relative to the meticulous discussion of peasantsresistance per se, the role of these folk values in mediating both resistance andcollective defiance was seldom elaborated by other scholars.4 But, taking acloser look at the text, one can still identify in Weapons of the Weak theimportance of the little tradition in provoking various courses of politicalaction, including mass action; he wrote,

It is y no exaggeration to say that much of the folk culture of thepeasant little tradition amounts to a legitimation, or even a celebration,of precisely the kinds of evasive and cunning forms of resistance I haveexamined. [And,]y these [traditional] beliefs [also] triggered mass action[and] hady all the marks of revolutionary crises. (Scott, 1985, pp. 300,330, emphasis original)

Since oppression is necessarily experienced through the lens of the littletradition, to Scott, there is no oppression which is in itself inevitable. It is

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inevitable only when it is perceived as such. His concept of perceivedinevitability is indeed an effective repudiation to the charges pointing at thefatefully political nature of resistance and the lack of concern for sustained,mass action in the paradigm. In fact, Sivaramakrishnan has rightly pointedout that Scott has successfully distilled from notions of custom theelements that endure in providing political energy to peasant aspirations(Sivaramakrishnan, 2005, p. 349). Clearly indicated in Scotts paradigm is thatthe radical aspect of the little tradition provides a cultural basis for movementsof political dissent.5

Inherent Problems in the R/H Paradigm

Then, what has really gone wrong in the R/H paradigm? My view is that it leavesout or obscures the actors experience of impersonal domination which is alsovital when encountering local oppression. This missing part possesses a con-spicuous association with Scotts early theoretical formulation of the patron-client tie, which constitutes the basis of the personal exchange in his subsequentnotion of resistance. For the patron-client relationship, he defined it as:

y a special case of dyadic (two person) ties involving a largelyinstrumental friendship in which an individual of higher socioeconomicstatus (patron) uses his own influence and resources to provide protectionor benefits, or both, for a person of lower status (clients) who, for hispart, reciprocates by offering general support and assistance, includingpersonal services, to the patron.

[And, the three]y distinguishing features of patron-client links [are]ytheir basis in inequality, their face-to-face character, and their diffusedflexibility.y

[T]he third distinctive quality of patronclient ties, one that reflects theaffection involved, is that they are diffuse, whole-person relationshipsrather than explicit, impersonal-contract bonds. (Scott, 1972, pp. 6667,original emphases)

As suggested before, only in his Protest and Profanation that Scott thematizesthe little tradition an impersonal component as the most important singlefactor that mediates the experience of the oppressed. However, his empiricalanalyses in subsequent texts seem to suggest that once the little tradition istaken by the actors and used to mobilize their social myths, their politicalexperience will become exclusively personal and only direct at real individualsin face-to-face, patronclient situations. In other words, once the impersonal



historical force makes the actors believe that the existing pattern ofexploitation and status degradation is not just material hardship but infers,for example, a world turned upside down (Scott, 1985, p. 80) or a loss ofeveryday social meaning (Scott, 1977b, p. 232), the actors will swiftly walk outof the shadow of the little tradition, and only face dyadically with realpeople. The oppressed are then engaged in the politics within (inter-)personalbonds. In question then relates to my enemies, not the enemies. Consequently,subordinates experience is totally stripped of the impersonal elements whenthey are experiencing with superordinates. What I attempt to argue in the restof this essay is that this move is theoretically unwarranted.In Domination and the Arts of Resistance published in 1990, Scott reiterated

this position lucidly. He addressed that his analysis was only concerned withstructures of personal domination, such as serfdom and slavery, and admittedthat it was exactly where he departed from Foucault whose preoccupationwas with the impersonal, scientific, disciplinary forms of the modernstate (Scott, 1990, p. 62, original emphases). I believe that Scotts attempt toappropriate the construct of personal domination out of Foucaults corpus ofwork is problematic. It is not just because Foucault endows primordiality tothe impersonal power-knowledge sovereignty in his own work.6 Moreimportantly, personal domination is exactly what Foucault overtly disclaimsas the defining feature of his power relation. He stated repeatedly and withexceptional clarity that the power relation is neither a binary [i.e., dyadic]structure with dominators on the one side and dominated on the other(Foucault, 1980, p. 142), nor a political structure, a government, a dominantsocial class, the master facing the slave, and so on.7 To overemphasize thepersonalized forms of human experience of oppression in dyadic, face-to-facesituations would easily confine an actors resistance to a welter of personal specific re-actions, susceptible to the influences of the fleeting psychologicalstatuses of particular individuals. However, it is only a restricted view onthe concept of resistance which once again diverges deeply from that ofFoucault.Throughout his work, Foucault deems resistance simply as an irreducible

opposite to power, a natural consequence of disciplinary practices of power.8

His notion of resistance only represents a prototype of human agency inresponse to the constraining system. Resistance is considered a fountainof vastly multifarious courses of actions ranging from the possibility ofcommitting suicide, of jumping out of window or of killing the other; to thatof violent resistance, of escape, of ruse, of strategies; to that of a revolution(Foucault, 1994, p. 18; Foucault, 1998, p. 96). Thus, put in Foucauldian terms,resistance is an open concept as there is always a whole field of responses,reactions, results, and possible inventions may open up [in any relation ofpower] (Foucault, 1982, p. 220).

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Another problem inherent in the R/H paradigm, probably an even morechallenging one, is Scotts usage of the phrase direct experience. In portrayingpolitical experience as exclusively personal, Scott lays stress on the concretenessof the local social milieu within the horizon of the actors direct experience.Initially, it seems wise that Scott conceives of a coupture between macro,national ideologies/politics and local social milieu featuring little traditionparochialism.9 But, it quickly becomes problematic to end his analysis solely onthe subordinates experience of the local domination as it is lived (Scott,1985, p. 43), or as experienced (Scott, 1990, p. 21) within the interpersonalrelationship. His view is that any experience of the abstract values anddesiccated terminology of social science (for example, proletarianization,differentiation, accumulation and marginalization) would be incompatible withpeasants lives in a world of diffuse whole-person relationships.10 He claimsthat his gaze is only placed at the actors direct experience of domination inthe realm of personal engagements with either personal allies or enemies.What is meant by direct experience? Scott admits only once that the

concept of direct experience is borrowed from Berger and Luckmanns classicthesis The Social Construction of Reality.11 For Berger and Luckmann, whosework drew on the social phenomenology of Alfred Schutz (1980[1932]), theactors direct experience of another person refers to the face-to-face encounterwithin which the two actors share with each other the same time (duree) andspace with the inter-corresponding streams of consciousness. Scott then statesthat only in the time-space simultaneity shared by subordinates and the rulingelite, that the former views the latter as enemies [who] are not impersonalhistorical forces but real people (Scott, 1985, p. 348). To him, it is in this realmthat the oppressors are considered consociates (in Berger and Luckmannsterminology) (Berger and Luckmann (1972[1966]) by the oppressed withthe highest sense of concreteness without considering the larger, abstract(stereo-)types.Obviously, Scott is totally unaware of the phenomenological conceptualiza-

tion of subjective experience. In The Social Construction of Reality, the actorsorientation to the other in the world of consociates is characterized by ataken-for-granted natural standpoint. In phenomenological terms, directexperience refers to the unreflective routine dispositions of the actor whonaively takes the other (including the enemy) for granted in the naturalattitude. It is only when the actor experiences exploitation and comes to ask:who is treating me shabbily?, or who is exploiting my family? that she/hemoves out of the temporal and spatial simultaneity with the other. She/he thenstops to reflect upon the experiences with the act of attention in the world ofcontemporaries within which larger, abstract categories and types are usuallyused. It means that in the phenomenological tradition when one is toexperience local oppression, she/he must abandon his/her direct experience



with the other in the world of consociates. She/he must consciously adjust tothe emergent exigencies of changing situations within real-world circumstances(that is, the world of contemporaries).12 In short, when Scott claims that hecan see subordinates directly experiencing and consciously directing their angeronto their exploiters as enemies, as real people, he is making a paradoxicalphenomenological statement in a way similar to saying that he can see a circleout of a square. This is because his usage of the notion of direct experiencehas mistakenly conflated two highly distinctive categories (that is, the world ofconsociates and the world of contemporaries) in social phenomenology.13

Therefore, I deem that Scotts attempt to dispel the impersonal elements fromthe political experience through emphasizing the actors direct experience ofparticular individuals is theoretically problematic.

The R/H Paradigm in a Broader Theoretical Context

The theoretical underpinning of the R/H paradigm, which emphasizesindividual motivations and strategic calculations being actively played out inthe face-to-face interpersonal relationships, is indeed typical of the approach ofrational-choice theorists. The rational-choice theory typically posits that allsocial actions are predicated on self-conscious experience which helpsindividuals define the situation and the strategic priority of actions (Bates,1988; Levi, 1988; Coleman, 1990; Sil, 2000). To Emirbayer and Mische, theR/H paradigm and its rational-choice component involves, what they call, thepractical-evaluative dimension of agency (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998,pp. 10001001). Featuring in Scotts notion of resistance is the capacity ofactors to make practical judgments among alternative possible trajectoriesof action in response to the emerging demands, dilemmas and ambiguities ofpresently evolving oppressive situations (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998, p. 971).Some rational-choice theorists, like Scott, also take into account the role of

value system (such as, the little tradition in Scotts case) in determining thestrategies for action (Elster, 1983; Taylor, 1983; Knight, 1992; Bates et al,1998). However, as Sil points out that they do not view the dominating forcesemanating from the impersonal value systems as carrying equal epistemolo-gical significance y as y that of the instrumental action of rationalindividuals (Sil, 2000, p. 358). Premised on this theorizing, the R/H paradigmalso entails an outlook on interpersonal relationship similar to Goffmans viewof the interaction order which is autonomous by nature, and can bedistinguished, both analytically and theoretically, from the larger impersonalstructures (Goffman, 1983, pp. 23).Although the R/H paradigm is useful for understanding human

experience which requires active definition of situations with conscious and

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practical-evaluative actions, its exclusive emphasis on the interaction processhas abrogated all supra-interpersonal traces in human experience.14 Such atheoretical move is akin to the relational perspective which seems to begaining popularity among sociologists (Emirbayer, 1997; Ewick and Silbey,2003). The advocates erect an enduring polarization between the processualand substantial views of structure. They claim that the former focuses ondynamic interpersonal experiences of constraints and resources, whereas thelatter something impersonal leads one to see nothing but static things .15

However, my call for a more comprehensive framework for understandingpolitical experience rests on the presupposition that the experience ofdomination (no matter whether its outcome is resistance, compliance,collectivist spirit, or else) is predicated on the apprehension of both personaland impersonal domination pertinent to the social structure.

Impersonal Domination Rekindled

In speaking of impersonal domination, I mean that political experiencenecessarily involves something supra-interpersonal, something transcending theself, and something beyond personal patron-client relationships. It is essentiallya call for incorporating in the R/H paradigm, what Emirbayer and Mischecoin, the iterational (or habitual) dimension of human agency. To them, theiterational component of agency refers to:

y the selective reactivation by actors of past patterns of thought andaction, as routinely incorporated in practical activity, thereby givingstability and order to social universes and helping to sustain identities,interactions, and institutions over time. (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998,p. 971)

In the literature, different social theorists have developed their own theoriesthat underscore the iterational dimension of agency. For instance, PierreBourdieu emphasized the immanent harmonization, synchronization of theagents experiences and the objective structures (Bourdieu, 1990). AnthonyGiddens argued for the duality of structure such that man actively shapesthe world he lives in at the same time as it shapes him (Giddens, 1982, p. 21).To relate it to the empirical analyses of political experience, Sherry Ortnerlays stress on the internalization/reproduction, constitution and improvisa-tion of structure through embodied resistive practice (Ortner, 1989). Inanother study, Jean Comaroff suggests that the [resistive] movement was anintegral part of the culture of the wider social community, drawing upona common stock of symbols, commenting upon relations of inequalityy, and



communicating its message of defiance [unconsciously] beyond its own limitedconfines (Comaroff, 1985, p. 262).Not withstanding the critiques of these theories,16 I suggest that to speak of

experience of something other than the self (or the alter ego) points to a time-honored doubt in social theory, which can be dated back, at least, to thelate Emile Durkheim. In one of his last papers entitled The Dualism ofHuman Nature and its Social Conductions, Durkheim stated succinctly hisdouble-centered-gravity thesis of human experience; he wrote,

Our inner life has something that is like a double center of gravity. On theone hand is our individuality and, more particularly, our body in whichit is based; on the other is everything in us that expresses something otherthan ourselves. (Durkheim, 1960, p. 328)

Apparently, to Durkheim, the self could be neither completely other than itself,nor entirely and exclusively of itself.17 The reason is that in order to think, hewrote, we must have something [other than ourselves] to think about(Durkheim, 1960, p. 328). But, what is this something other than ourselves?Durkheim held that it is [s]omething else in us besides ourselves [that]stimulates us to act (Durkheim, 1960, p. 328, emphasis added). In other words,it is something within our subjective experience but not originating from orbelonging to the subjectivity. Unfortunately, the ontological status Durkheimassigned to this something was ambiguous as he seemed to be ambivalentabout whether it was the result of a collective elaboration among humanbeings, or was something impersonal beyond the reach of human interaction(Durkheim, 1960, p. 327).18

To relate the above reflections to the R/H paradigm, if subordinates, tofollow Scotts description, understand the larger realities of capital accumula-tion, proletarianization and marginalization, these rationales are by no meansderived from the subjectivities of the subordinates. Therefore, their subsequentactions directed at the concomitant changes in social structure either do theseactions involve resistance, compliance, collectivist spirit, or else must involve,at least, momentarily, the experience of something other than the selves, orsomething of an impersonal cause which is larger than the narrow interestsof the individual. The presence of the impersonal cause implies that thereis always a shared, supra-interpersonal basis underlying various coursesof actions when facing local oppression. Thus, I argue that no matter howsurreptitious, personal or individualistic resistance appears, the presence of theimpersonal cause always assumes that other actors in similar situations wouldexperience similar structural constraints. They are likely to measure thedomination subjectively by similar moral yardsticks and enact similar coursesof actions (to resist being one of the options for action). The role of the shared,

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impersonal cause that mediates resistance helps demarcate it from previouslymentioned instances of pseudo-resistances, such as burglary and killing,which are solely based on narrow individual interests. In addition, in reality,the awareness of the impersonal dimension of domination that transcendsindividual motives may not involve a high level of consciousness withdesiccated social scientific terms. Rather, subordinates usually understandit in a fragmented and contradictory manner which still makes Gramscisquandary of how to transform sporadic resistance into a revolutionirresolvable.To bring the experience of impersonal domination back in the R/H paradigm

does not mean that personal domination is absent in the experience of theoppressed. What I suggest is that the experience of the impersonal force derivedfrom values, tradition and the symbolic universe is also vital in understandinglocal politics. In fact, Kerkvliet has already hinted at the same point when hesuggests that one should move beyond the patron-client, fractional frameworkimplied in the R/H paradigm. Kerkvliet stated in the context of Philippinepolitics that,

[a]ccording to the pcf [patron-client, fraction] framework, the underlyingvalues and ideas in Philippine politics are largely if not exclusively in therealm of personal attachments and animosities, personal allies andenemies, personal interests and those individuals with whom one hasa personal relationship.y [T]he framework leaves little or no room forother values and ideas, other bases for cleavage and struggle, othergrounds for organization and cooperating. (Kerkvliet, 1995, pp. 403404)

Kerkvliet argued that it is not only personal and familial loyalties but also theexperience of capitalism, Marxism, democratic values and liberation theologythat are important in constituting moral appeals to peoples desire to revolt inthe face of oppression.Another attempt to move beyond the experience of face-to-face, patron

client domination is my study of the rise of a collective spirit in a community inShanghai during the 1960s1970s (Ho, 2006). On the surface, informantsattributed their fervent participation in socialist mass campaigns to the face-to-face persuasions of the old mothers (state representatives in the community).However, further research suggests that underlying the dyadic, old-motherversus the resident form of patron-client relationship is the influence of thetraditional Chinese ethics of reciprocity. Therefore, apart from the face-to-facedomination of the state representative, the massive compliances of andindividual resistances against the state orders were mediated by the impersonalConfucian moral values that were woven into the fabric of the residentspolitical experience.19



Concluding Remarks

The ubiquitous presence of Scotts concept of resistance in social scienceresearch has confirmed the importance of the R/H paradigm. However, myview is that the R/H paradigm has unwarrantedly taken for granted theexistence of an impersonal element in the actors experience in facingoppression. This impersonal dimension of political experience can take theforms of values, traditions or the symbolic universe which is understood andshared across contexts for particular groups of actors in particular situations. Icontend that the political experience is overwhelmingly characterized by thedimension of personal rule owing to Scotts two-fold problematic appropria-tion of Foucault and phenomenology, as well as his theoretical predilection fora rational-choice theory of social action. To strip the political experience of itsimpersonal flavor, one consequence is that the R/H paradigm has the meaningof resistance within the confines of individualistic, subdued and unobtrusivediscontent. By only attending to a particular experience bound within (inter-)personal ties, the paradigm has aroused criticism for its inability to grasp thecomplexity of human agency and the experience of domination.However, one should remember that the way the impersonal dimension of

experience manifests itself to actors does not simply mean that social values, suchas religious ideals and traditional moral yardsticks, play an important part inguiding various courses of action. Indeed, considerable ethnographic effort havealready been put into showing that religious values, traditional beliefs andpractices, and indigenous political ideology may constitute vital and relativelyautonomous forces that explain and justify resistance and revolt on the partof subordinates.20 The key issue that this essay attempts to bring up is to(re-)introduce the impersonal dimension into the empirical investigation ofsubjective experience in the field of power and politics. It implies that actorsderive subjective experience from encountering the impersonal objective reality not as static things but as something extended beyond their immediate hereand now, something of the transcendence but it is experientially real and comesto bind them and guide their action. Rather than a reified entity that reduces thecomplexity of human ingenuity to a limited set of antinomic forces betweensubordinates and super ordinates, the domination emanated from the pertinentobjective structures constitutes the more or less open field of possibilities inwhich the actors cannot have complete control of its consequences.

Notes

1 Fifty-nine items were found in a search conducted on 5 August 2008. For those wanting

to understand the early theoretical formulation of the resistance/hegemony paradigm, Scott

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(1972) is an essential reference. For those who first touch on resistance studies, Susan

Seymour (2006) offers an instructive and most recent bibliography relevant to political

anthropologists.

2 The term episteme is Foucauldian. The terms features Foucaults much debated account of

power such that discursive formations, that is, the structures of epistemes (knowledge), both

constitute and exert power over social objects, including human bodies.

3 However, it should be noted that scholars did make attempts to repair such a (Mertonian)

ritualistic view on resistance. For instance, Ortner (1995) argued for a more comprehensive

framework as to look also into the cooperation and reciprocity manifested by subordinates.

Brown (1996, p. 731) suggests that subordinates who inserted themselves into this conflict were

not only responding to external challenge but also advancing their own vision of existential

redefinition or transcendence. Kerkvliet (2002) observed that everyday politics featured

cooperation and conflict among people in different classes and statuses; and proposed to delve

into the contending moral values that constituted a significant, and relatively autonomous,

motivational force behind their resistive actions.

4 Two notable exceptions are Skrimshire (2006) and Sivaramakrishnan (2005).

5 Although Escobar is one of the representative figures who criticizes the resistance/hegemony

paradigm as having no concern with collective action, his notion of submerged network of

meanings in mediating collective movements I suggest has strong resemblance to Scotts

little tradition. Escobar suggested that in engaging in collective action, people do not mimic

dominant ideological models, such as those derived directly from the Marxist cannon, but

appropriate them and remodel them into their own distinctive system. He suggested that

collective identities are constructed through processes of articulation that start out of a

submerged network of meanings, proceed through cultural innovation in the domain of

everyday life, and may result in visible and sizable forms collective action for the control of

historicity Escobar, 1992a, pp. 395432).

6 In Foucaults work, there is an organic linkage between the impersonal power-knowledge

sovereignty in Foucaults work set out to examine in The Other of Things and The

Archaeology of Knowledge, and the personal domination in his later Discipline and Punish.

Although the former outlines the historical a priori (that is, the episteme) that

grounds knowledge and its discourses within a particular epoch, the latter substantiates

the rules as derived from the a priori conditions of possibility by the minutiae of various

corporeal rituals of bodily discipline. Here, I generally concur with Smart regarding

the logical sequence between The Order of Things and Discipline and Punish; he remarks:

Only after having attempted to reveal the epistemological configuration on which the human

sciences depend for their possible does Foucault proceed, in Discipline and Punish

and subsequent works, to a discussion of the disciplinary methods, the technology

of power, and the administrative extraction of knowledge, which provided the extra- or

non-discursive conditions of possibility for the human sciences (Smart, 1982, p. 125); see also

Hook (2001).

7 Michel Foucault (1994, p. 11). Another highly relevant, but longer quote from Foucault which

points to the impersonality of domination is that power is not something that is acquired,

seized, or shared, something that one holds on to or allows to slip awayy [And,] neither thecaste which governs nor the groups which control the state apparatus nor those who make the

most important economic decisions direct the entire network of power that functions in a

society (Foucault, 1998).

8 Speaking of resistance, he puts: We all fight each other. And, there is always within each of us

something that fights something else (Foucault, 1980, p. 208).

9 To Scott it was the local social structure which was decisive, not the national parties and what

they stood for (1977b, 220221).



10 The reason is that peasants (unlike urbanites) know the biography, family and peculiarities of

other people well within the community (Scott, 1977b, p. 219).

11 It is interesting to note that Scott seems to have quoted Berger and Luckmann only once when

illustrating his use of the concept of experience in Protest and Profanation though his stresses

on direct experience and concrete experience resonate in Weapons of the Weak and later

Domination and the Arts of Resistance. Another thing is that Scotts reference to Berger and

Luckmann in the endnote is problematic as I see no clear relation between the pages (pp. 2834,

with two pages being blank) Scott quoted and what had been discussed in the main text. See

Scott (1977b, p. 243).

12 The explication here is based on the premises that exploitation by nature invokes ones

conscious act of attention, and that resistance involves the practical-evaluative dimension of

agency, which inflects conscious and explicit actions. The latter premise is in line with the

categorization of Mustafa Emirbayer and Ann Mische (1998, p. 1001). However, one should be

reminded that this categorization is opposite to the view of Gramsci who regarded resistance as

largely passive, and took it to contrast with agency (1971, p. 337). According to Kaplan and

Kelly, [to Gramsci,] resistance itself is largely unconscious activity, and revolution is only

possible through active agency (Kaplan and Kelly, 1994, p. 126).

13 It should be noted that Scott does not shy away from calling his approach phenomenological;

for example, see Scott (1985, p. 42).

14 It should be noted that this theoretical move is also similar to the poststructuralist,

deconstructive treatments to reject claims about the capacity of discourse to objectively

represent extra-linguistic realities. For example, an extreme postmodernist like Baudrillard

argues to explain away reality in terms of signs and images, or in what he calls the contingent

play of simulacra (Baudrillard, 1983).

15 Emirbayer writes in his seminal article Manifesto for a Relational Sociology that, Sociologists

today are faced with a fundamental dilemma: whether to conceive of the social world as

consisting primarily in substances or in processes, in static things or in dynamic, unfolding

relations (Emirbayer, 1997, p. 281).

16 For example, see Hannerz (1992, pp. 275276), Certeau (1984, p. 58), Mouzelis (1995,

pp. 118221), Emirbayer and Mische (1998, p. 983), and Farnell (2000, pp. 397418).

17 In the quote, subjectivity could never be nullified by collective representations as Durkheims

earlier work seemed to be suggesting. As a matter of fact, scholars now commonly recognize

two Durkheims in his writing. See Rawls (1996), Janssen and Verheggen (1997), Stone and

Farberman (1967).

18 In fact, such theoretical ambivalence remains unraveled in the theories of Durkheims

intellectual posterity. For example, Parsons had a formulation of social structure very close to

late Durkheim such that social structures are essentially interconnected institutional subsystems

comprising sets of activities and their underlying values and normative supports. These

normative elements, stressed Parsons, can be conceived of as existing [real] only in the mind of

the actor (Parsons, 1937, p. 733). But, like Durkhiem, he did not pursue further to discern the

ontological status of these normative elements which are essentially something other than the

actor.

19 For a theoretical exposition of my usage of the traditional Confucian value as an impersonal

component of human experience, see Ho (2008).

20 As mentioned in passing, Scott himself can be classified as an advocate for this view. Skrimshire

(2006, p. 208) has rightly pinpointed that in Scotts paradigm, the imaginations of a world

turned upside down performed in rituals such as the Carnival in the Catholic tradition or the

Saturnalia in classic Rome has continually provided the ideological motivation for revolt. Other

proponents for this view include Peel (1983), Comaroff (1985), Laitin (1986), Ong (1987), and

Owusu (1989).

Ho


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ho, chung - james scott’s resistance-hegemony paradigm (crítica a scott)

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