Normal Exploitation, Normal Resistance

Abstract

In this text, James C. Scott develops the concept “everyday forms of resistance”. Whereas former studies about peasant resistances have focused specially in violent and organized rebellions, Scott tries to prove how these forms of rebellion have been a minority and unpractical form of resistance. Instead, peasants have developed their resistance mainly through everyday practices, sometimes in a hidden way, and in any case not in a noteworthy way. For this purpose, he places emphasis not only in the acts, but also in the experience and consciousness of resistant agents and, by doing so, he enters into dialogue with concepts like Gramci’s “hegemony” and with the most structuralist Marxist schools.