1st Edition

Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance

By Forrest D. Colburn Copyright 1989
    250 Pages
    by Routledge

    250 Pages
    by Routledge

    Peasant rebellions are uncommon. "Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance" explores peasants' foot dragging, feigned ingorance, false compliance, manipulation, flight, slander, theft, arson, sabotage, and similar prosaic forms of struggle. These kinds of resistance stop well short of collective defiance, a strategy usually suicidal for the subordinate. The central argument about peasant resistance is presented in the opening chapter by James Scott in which he summarizes and extends the thesis of his book on Malaysia's peasantry, "Weapons of the Weak". Scott's ideas are employed and refined in the ensuing seven country studies of peasant resistance: Poland, India, Egypt, Colombia, China, Nicaragua and Zimbabwe.

    Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance; Chapter 1 Everyday Forms of Resistance, James C. Scott; Chapter 2 Between Submission and Violence: Peasant Resistance in the Polish Manorial Economy of the Eighteenth Century, Jacek Kochanowicz; Chapter 3 Saboteurs in the Forest: Colonialism and Peasant Resistance in the Indian Himalaya, Ramachandra Guha; Chapter 4 The Conspiracy of Silence and the Atomistic Political Activity of the Egyptian Peasantry, 1882–1952, Nathan Brown; Chapter 5 Class, Gender, and Peasant Resistance in Central Colombia, 1900–1930, Michael F. Jiménez; Chapter 6 Struggling over Land in China: Peasant Resistance after Collectivization, 1966–1986, David Zweig; Chapter 7 Foot Dragging and Other Peasant Responses to the Nicaraguan Revolution, Forrest D. Colburn; Chapter 8 How the Weak Succeed: Tactics, Political Goods, and Institutions in the Struggle over Land in Zimbabwe, Jeffrey Herbst; Chapter 9 Commentary, Milton J. Esman;

    Biography

    Forrest D. Colburn