Scott, James (1936-)

One of the marks of outstanding scholars is that their work elicits response outside their areas of study. James C. Scott, who is currently the Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science at Yale University, is one such scholar. Although he is a political scientist by profession, his erudition has made an impact on social scientists of various [Page 587]persuasions. Scott is responsible for spelling out a number of concepts including moral economy, weapons of the weak, hidden and public transcripts, infrapolitics, state legibility, high modernity, and others. These concepts were not merely the result of a critical exegesis of existing theories. Although he is well versed in theory, the concepts that he has originated have emerged as a result of a thorough study of empirical data that he has gathered. These concepts have opened new venues in the study of peasant studies, social movements, social revolutions, social change, discourse analysis, and more. Scott's chief concepts of relevance to the social theory of power include moral economy, weapons of the weak and hidden transcripts, and seeing like a state.

Scott's early work deals with the social phenomenology of insurrection. Here his primary focus was on the reasons for peasant rebellion. Without undermining the importance of structural factors, such as the development of Western capitalism and the rise of the modern state, Scott provides an agent-centered analysis of peasant insurrections. However, his view has few similarities to theories with subjectivist assumptions, such as relative deprivation theory. Critical in Scott's analysis is the idea that the moral economy of peasants is based on subsistence ethics, a loose system of morality wherein the livelihood of the peasant occupies center stage. Peasants, according to Scott, are less interested in the maximization of profit; their chief concern is on the reduction of risk. Peasants prefer to deal with landlords who take the lion's share of the produce but who are flexible during times of crisis than a state that imposes uniform taxation in order to stabilize its income. Peasant insurrection, accordingly, is occasioned when the ontological security of the peasant is challenged as a result of the actions of the interventionist modern state.

Extending this idea, Scott makes a critique of the Marxist concepts of false consciousness and hegemony. Both concepts are intended to explain acquiescence by way of the hegemonic order's ability to penetrate the habitus of the dominated. Adherents of these views, overemphasizing the capacity of the powerful to manufacture consent, focus on spectacular, overt, political conflicts, while giving short thrift to subtle forms of resistance. The latter, which are often discursive in nature, takes place within the “free space” of friends and relatives. The war of words against the rich may not be as dramatic as foot dragging, pilfering, arson, sabotage, and individual boycotts. The poor may appear deferential, conforming, and submissive in front of the upper class. But the dominated are not merely mystified by the hegemonic order. Oppression may be perceived as inevitable but not as just. Hence, even when peasants are not openly revolting, they are involved in hidden transcripts, activities that are beyond the purview of public gaze. If social inquiry has failed to understand this dynamic, it is because social scientists assumed that social conduct is primarily characterized by concurrence and unity and have limited themselves to the examination of public transcripts. Scott, accordingly, insists that social researchers need to focus on the infrapolitics of the dominated, especially when the balance of power is tipped toward the powerful. Far from being a safety valve for reducing social tension, the infrapolitics of the powerless are a prelude to forthcoming organized actions. Charisma in this sense is an outward manifestation of what has been brewing behind public transcripts. However, Scott is quick to note that what happens in the symbolic universe has its roots in the objective relations between different groups of people. But symbolic forms of resistance are by no means an automatic reflection of objective conditions. Symbolic struggles are reactions based on interpretations of material conditions. These interpretations pass through a “normative filter” before they assert themselves as ideological conflict.

...