All instruction are in attached files

In the previous unit, we examined the various ways in which different societies have organized themselves in order to satisfy their material needs and desires, at the level of production, distribution, and consumption. As noted in that unit, approaches to the economic organization of societies already involve a close examination of the themes of power and social organization that will constitute the central focus of this unit. In this unit, we will expand our understanding of what power is and how it functions both in relation to the organization of the economy and more broadly, seeking to explore some key questions that have long been of interest to anthropologists and other scholars. How are social relations organized, reproduced, and contested, within given societies and globally? Relatedly, what leads individuals to accept a given organization of social relations, even when the resulting social system may not be in their best interests? Finally, how do individuals attempt to transform or resist the organization of social relations or relations of power within their societies and globally?

In this unit, we will address four main topics:

1. Power and Political Anthropology: An Introduction

2. Ideology and Commodity Fetishism

3. Antonio Gramsci: Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony

4. Resistance

Learning Objectives

By the end of this unit, you should be able to:

1. Identify and distinguish between different types of political structures, including uncentralized versus centralized, as well as bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states.

2. Identify and distinguish between visible, hidden, invisible, and structural forms of power.

3. Define and explain commodity fetishism and different approaches to ideology employed in anthropology and critical theory.

4. Apply the concepts of commodity fetishism and ideology to specific case studies, including the production and consumption of mardi gras beads.

5. Define and explain Antonio Gramsci’s concepts of hegemony and counter-hegemony.

6. Recognize and discuss ways in which individuals engage in indirect forms of resistance, with reference to specific case studies.

Assigned Reading and Viewing

Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods, Chapter 11 and the section “The Classification of Political Structures” from Chapter 3, pp. 65-66.

Redmon, David. 2005. Mardi Gras: Made in China (1 hour 12 minutes), © 2005. Carnivalesque Films. All rights reserved. No alteration, duplication or downloading is permitted without authorization. Reproduced with permission from Carnivalesque Films.

How to Proceed

1. Read Chapter 11 of Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods.

2. Read Parts I and II of the unit instructional notes.

3. Watch the required documentary, David Redmon’s Mardi Gras: Made in China.

4. Complete the graded concept application exercise, drawing on Chapters 7 and 11 of the textbook, the instructional notes for Units 6 and 7, and your analysis of the documentary.

5. Read Parts III and IV of the unit instructional notes.

6. Complete the review questions.

Instructional Content

Part I: Power and Political Anthropology: An Introduction

1.1 An Anthropological Classification of Political Structures: Bands, Tribes, Chiefdoms, States

Exercise 1: Defining Power

1.2 Defining Power: Visible, Hidden, Invisible, Structural

Part II: Ideology and Commodity Fetishism

2.1 Ideology as “False Consciousness”

2.2 The “Cynical Reason” Approach to Ideology and Commodity Fetishism

2.3 Ideology as an Ambivalent Attachment to Promises of “the Good Life”

Graded Concept Application Exercise#2: Capitalism, Commodity Fetishism, and Ideology in Mardi Gras: Made in China

Part III: Antonio Gramsci: Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony

3.1 Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony

3.2 Hegemony and Beng Kingship

3.3 Hegemony, National Identity, and Sri Lanka

Part IV: Resistance

4.1 Alienation, Resistance, and Indigenous Bolivian Tin Miners

4.2 Bargaining for Reality and Marriage Negotiations in Sefrou, Morocco

4.3 Everyday Resistance and Malaysian Peasants

Part I: Political Anthropology and Power: An Introduction   

As with the study of the economy, the analysis of power and the political or social organization of societies has, over the course of the years, come to play a crucial role in cultural anthropology and constitutes its own specialization within the discipline. Your textbook defines political anthropology as “the study of social and political power in human society” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 270). As your textbook notes, anthropologists and other social scientists have historically devised a variety of explanations for why different societies adopt different social and political organizations. Unilineal evolutionists such as Henry Lewis Morgan, whose work I discussed in Unit 3, or Karl Marx, whose theories I introduced in Unit 4, argued that different forms of social and political organization evolved over time. However, such evolutionary models have since been rejected, since they overlook the ways in which different forms of political and social organization may overlap and treat some contemporary societies as though they were precursors to others in often ethnocentric fashion.

Others have attempted to explain the political organization of societies as an adaptation to a given environment. But such theories overlook the fact that social groups living in similar environments may often develop quite different social and political systems. An environmentally deterministic account of social and political structures also ignores the way in which global forces such as colonization can disrupt local political systems, regardless of their adaptiveness to their local environment, and ignore the role of human agency in determining a society’s political system. Finally, some analysts have argued that population growth may often determine social organization. Yet as Marshall Sahlins notes, population pressures only determine how many people can be sustained by a given environment. There are a variety of ways in which societies can respond to such pressures, including trying to get by with less, developing new technologies in order to increase food production, devising new social practices such as attempts to control fertility and reproduction, and migration. These practices, in turn, lead to new sets of decisions.

Instead of adopting a deterministic explanation of social organization, then, political anthropology adopts a more holistic approach. At its core, this specialization is concerned with the variety of ways in which social relations within human societies are organized, reproduced, or transformed, dynamics which can be influenced by and influence economic practices, cultural beliefs and values, and environmental change. As with the case of economic anthropology, contemporary approaches to political anthropology reflect the challenges to the concept of holism discussed in Unit I. Rather than treat societies as though they were bounded or separated from one another, political anthropologists today are often interested in how global forces from colonialism to contemporary capitalism impact and are transformed by the organization of social relations and the dynamics of power within local social contexts. Finally, as we will discuss in depth in this unit, political anthropology is often interested in why and in what ways individuals either accept or resist local or global organizations of social relations and distributions of power. One of the key issues in which political anthropologists are often interested then, is what power is and how it works. Before delving into the topic of power more closely, in the next section I will briefly outline the historical development of political anthropology as a specialization within cultural anthropology as well as the classification of political structures into bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states developed by early political anthropologists. These instructional notes refer both to the discussion in Chapter 11 of your textbook and to the discussion of Ted Llewellen’s typology of political structures discussed in the section, “The Classification of Political Structures” in Chapter 3 of your textbook. Before proceeding with the instructional notes, then, make sure to review this section from Chapter 3, which can be found on pages 65-66 of the 3rd Canadian edition of the textbook.

1.2 The Anthropological Classification of Political Structures: Bands, Tribes, Chiefdoms, States  

Following Joan Vincent, your textbook argues that the history of political anthropology as a subfield within the discipline can be divided into three general periods. Initial concepts were formulated in the first period, from 1851 to about 1939. But political anthropology really emerged as a distinct specialization within the discipline during the second period, from approximately 1942 to 1971. During this period, British structural functionalist anthropologists such as Meyer Fortes and E.E. Evans-Pritchard examined the local political systems of different social groups in Africa, while others examined the traditional political systems of indigenous groups in the Americas or societies in the Middle East and Asia.

During this second period, anthropologists attempted to devise typologies that would allow them to compare the similarities and differences between the political systems of societies located around the world. Chapter 3 of your textbook outlines Ted Llewellen’s 1983 reformulation of the typologies of political systems devised by earlier anthropologists who operated during this second period, such as Meyer Fortes and E.E. Evans-Pritchard systems (see pages 65-66 of the 3rd Canadian edition of Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods). As your textbook notes, following these older schemas, Llewellen distinguishes between uncentralized and centralized political systems. Uncentralized political systems can be further subdivided into bands and tribes, while centralized political systems can be further subdivided into chiefdoms and states. 

Uncentralized political systems, according to Llewellen, are relatively egalitarian forms of organizing social relations in which decisions tend to be made either through consensus or through the influence of individuals who emerge as temporary leaders. Uncentralized political systems include a band, which your textbook defines as “a form of social organization that consists of a small group of foragers (usually fewer than fifty people), in which labour is divided according to age and sex, and social relations are highly egalitarian” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 65). Typically, bands consist of small groups of foragers who move across particular territories while hunting and gathering. They may break up and reform on a regular basis as conflicts arise among members and new alliances form between different individuals. They are relatively decentralized and egalitarian in that decisions are often made through consensus and leaders emerge with respect to given tasks as they arise. The Ju’hoansi people of the Kalahari Desert, discussed in Unit 6, were traditionally organized into what may be considered a band.

The second type of decentralized political system in Lewellen’s classificatory system is that of a tribe. Your textbook defines a tribe as “a form of social organization generally larger than a band, in which members usually farm or herd for a living” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 66). Like bands, tribes are generally egalitarian with a decentralized decision making process. However, as anthropologist Marshall Sahlins (1971) notes, that in such societies leaders can emerge. These are typically referred to in the anthropological literature as village heads or big men. Through personal achievements such as an ability to resolve conflicts or their capacity to give generously, “big men” are able to establish their prestige and garner the support of other individuals within their villages or societies. Such analyses thus demonstrate once more how the gift giving or practices of redistribution we discussed in Unit 6 can be essential in some societies to establishing power and prestige.

In contrast to uncentralized political systems, centralized political systems possess a “distinct, permanent, public decision-making institutions (eg. a chief, a king or a queen, a formal government)” and often involve an important degree of social stratification and inequality between different social groups (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 65). Chiefdoms constitute the first type of centralized political system identified by Llewellen. Your textbook defines chiefdoms as “a form of social organization in which the leader (a chief) and the leader’s close relatives are set apart from the rest of society and allowed privileged access to wealth, power, and prestige” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 66). As in bands or tribes, the social relations involved in chiefdoms are organized through kinship. Unlike these other two types of political structures, however, leadership is centralized around a ruling authority figure, the chief, who holds the authority to make and enforce decisions.

The final type of centralized political system is that of a state. What a state is and how it functions in the world today are often linked to colonial histories, ethnicity, nationalism, and globalization. In what follows I will define the state and the role of colonization in the formation of the modern nation-state. We will return in greater detail to definitions of ethnicity and nationalism and their role in modern state formation in Unit 9 of this course and to the relationship between globalization and the state in Unit 10.

Your textbook defines the state as “a stratified society, controlled by a formal government, that possesses a territory that is defended from outside enemies with an army and from internal disorder with police” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 66). The state as we know it today is both a relatively recent invention and one that is now spread throughout the world. Anthropologists argue that examples of the state can be seen as early as 5 000 years ago in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Many anthropologists link the rise of the state form to the increasing importance of agriculture, which encouraged social groups to establish fixed settlements and to develop elite specialists entrusted with economic activities or the defense of the settlement. However, most of the states that now exist in the world reflect the effects of Western colonialism on the rest of the world. European colonial forces deployed economic, political, and military force to redraw the social and political boundaries around different social groups to better meet the needs of the colonial forces, sorting indigenous groups who had previously been organized along different lines into the newly created territories and states.

Beginning with the American Revolution from 1765-1783 and the Haitian Revolution from 1791-1804, the new territories formed through the effects of colonization then acquired independence from the European colonial states. More colonized territories achieved independence in the centuries that followed including after World War II. Yet the effects of colonialism and its role in shaping modern states remain with us today, as reflected by the ongoing domination and struggle for their rights on the part of indigenous groups in modern states such as Canada as well as by conflict between distinct ethnic groups reorganized through the process of colonization and independence into single states. Finally, the sovereignty of the state, that is, the ability of state leaders and organizations to autonomously control the political, economic, and social processes at work within the boundaries of its geographic territory, has itself come under increasing attack from the twentieth century on as globalization leads to new flows across state boundaries of people, goods, and ideas.

Typologies such as Llewellen’s are useful because they demonstrate that the state, arguably still one of the dominant political structures even in today’s globalizing world, is not the only way in which humans have historically organized their social relations. Yet such typologies can be problematic when they are used in a way that treats local societies as though their political strategies were unaffected by history or by the influence of nearby societies and global processes. Indeed, anthropologists working during the second phase of political anthropology, from 1942 to 1971, often overlooked the fact that the social groups they studied resided in modern states that had been created through the processes of colonization. They frequently ignored the effects that colonization and global processes had on local political strategies. Concerns about such limitations sparked a third phase in political anthropology, which as of the 1970s and 1980s began to take history, global processes, and broader questions of power and inequality into consideration, adopting new theoretical lenses and concepts such as ideology in the process. In order to set up our discussion of ideology, in the next section I will first define power and provide a broad overview of the different forms that it can take.

Exercise 1: Defining Power

As your textbook’s definition of political anthropology and the above discussion suggest, the concept of power, what it is, and how it works, are of core concern to cultural anthropology. Before proceeding with these unit notes, take a couple of minutes to jot down your own answers to the following questions. How might you define power? What is it and how does it work? What types of examples come to mind when you think about situations in which power is employed?

1.2 Defining Power: Visible, Hidden, Invisible, Structural

According to your textbook, power can be generally defined as the “ability to transform a given situation,” which we might also rephrase as the relative ability to bring about change through action or influence (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 11). When we think of power, it is often the most obvious examples of violence and coercion that come to mind. For instance, slave owners often used threats of violence to punish slaves who disobeyed their orders or attempted to run away. This is a clear exercise of power, domination, and inequality. However, as your textbook makes clear and as we will explore in greater detail in Part II of these unit notes, power can also operate in far less overt and obvious ways. It can, for instance, work through beliefs and practices that make the existing organization of social relations, no matter how unequal they may be, appear simply right and natural, or otherwise encourage us to reproduce these social relations even if we recognize the unfairness involved. We often refer to power that functions in this way as ideology, as I will explain later in this section.

To better understand the different forms power can take, it is useful to begin by exploring the four different types of power identified by your textbook. Following Lisa VeneKlasen and Valerie Miller, your textbook defines visible power as the “definable aspects of political power – the formal rules, structures, authorities, institutions, and procedures of decision-making” (qtd. in Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 269). Visible power is probably the type of power that comes to mind for many of us when we consider the concept. It can include defined political roles, such as Prime Minister, President, King, or Chief, that through various mechanisms grants an individual or a group of individuals enormous powers to make decisions that will affect both the people he or she is supposed to represent or govern and individuals in other societies. Visible power can also refer to institutions such as the police or the military. One of the defining characteristics of modern states is that they have a standing police and military force entrusted with enforcing the laws of a particular state and the decisions and authority of its political leaders both within the state’s own territorial boundaries and with respect to other sovereign states.

Hidden power is the second type of power referred to by your textbook. It can be defined as an exercise of power that results in political or social effects that individuals can identify, but where the sources, reasons, or strategies behind these effects are often less easy to trace. Political lobbying in contemporary liberal democratic states provides one salient example of hidden political power. For instance, while some forms of political lobbying in contemporary liberal democratic states may involve public advertising campaigns, it can also rely on backroom negotiations between interest groups and politicians in which the former work to convince the latter to adopt their goals.

Hidden forms of power are also often at work in state socialist contexts, where political leaders may announce decisions to the population while deliberately avoiding identifying the reasons behind them. Shortly after Raúl Castro took over power from Fidel Castro in Cuba in 2008, for instance, two individuals who had occupied important political positions under Fidel Castro were demoted from their positions. The state newspaper announced this decision, but did not explain why it had been made. A day later, the state newspaper published a letter from Fidel Castro accusing the two of having been “seduced by the honey of power” and both submitted their resignations admitting to wrongdoing. But with no further specification as what exactly they had done, concerned citizens were left to speculate as to whether the dismissal of these government officials signaled an attempt on Raúl Castro’s part to assert his new authority or a conspiracy on the part of established political figures against the new leader.

As this example suggests, hidden forms of power can often lead to conspiracy theory or political paranoia. Political paranoia can be defined as a political style in which individuals link disparate events that may or may not in fact be linked together into an often-totalizing scheme of how power is operating. Conspiracy theory and political paranoia have become topics of great interest to recent work in cultural anthropology (Comaroff and Comaroff 1999; Marcus 1999; West and Saunders 2003). Whereas earlier theorists dismissed political paranoia as irrational, contemporary theorists argue that conspiracy theories and political paranoia are better viewed as rational responses to difficult political and social contexts in which citizens attempt to make sense of the strategies of elites and global forces such as capitalism, regardless of how accurate the resulting theories may be.  

Indeed, while conspiracy theories may sometimes be wrong, it is worth recalling that rumours that the American government was listening in on citizens’ phone calls circulated long before whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden, who worked as a contractor for the NSA (the American National Security Agency), revealed that the NSA had in fact required Internet companies such as Verizon to hand over information about millions’ of Americans phone calls and had direct access to the servers of some of the biggest technology companies, including Apple, Facebook, Google, and so on (Lyon 2014). The activities of the NSA, then, can be thought of as an example of hidden power, while the conspiracy theories that abounded both before and following the Snowden revelations demonstrate how political paranoia and conspiracy theory, while they may often misrepresent reality, are nonetheless understandable responses and strategies on the part of citizens confronted with the frequently non-transparent actions of political elites and government agencies.

The third type of power identified by your textbook is invisible power, which Lisa VeneKlasen and Valerie Miller describe as the power relations that shape “people’s beliefs, sense of self, and acceptance of their own superiority or inferiority.” As VeneKlasen and Miller argue, invisible power is arguably “the most insidious of the three,” since it is a form of power that we may not even recognize as such (qtd. in Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 269). Ideology is the most important example of invisible power. In Unit 5, I introduced a preliminary definition of ideology. Ideology, in its most general sense, can be understood as the social beliefs, practices, or senses of self that make the existing organization of social relations, no matter how unequal they may be, appear simply natural and right, or otherwise encourage us to reproduce existing systems of power and inequality even when we recognize them as unfair. As I noted in that unit, critical theorists and anthropologists often disagree as to whether beliefs or actions are more central to how ideology works in specific social and historical circumstances. In Part II of these instructional notes, I will explain the differences between some of the dominant approaches to the question of ideology and its role in reproducing dominant systems of power and inequality current in contemporary anthropology.    

Finally, your textbook notes a fourth type of power that is also relevant to our discussion in this unit. Structural power, as defined by Eric Wolf, refers to a form of power that “organizes social settings themselves and controls the allocation of social labour” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 270), To put this more simply, structural power refers to the ways in which the social division of labour can contribute to power and inequality. As your textbook notes, in today’s world, to understand how the social division of labour contributes to inequality, we need to pay attention to how labour is often distributed in unequal ways not only locally but also between far-flung areas of the globe and how these relations are maintained or modified over time.

Colonialism, of course, was one system that led to such a large-scale and unequal division of power. As discussed in Unit 3 of this course, colonizing countries in Europe and settler communities such as the English and the French in North America derived economic benefit through the social and economic exploitation of the labour of colonized peoples. Today, global capitalism perpetuates such large-scale and unequal relations of power as corporations increase their profits by outsourcing labour to areas of the world where workers are paid less than they would be in the corporations’ home countries.    

Part II: Ideology and Commodity Fetishism

As I noted in the introduction to this unit, in the past decades many anthropologists and scholars have been interested in the question of what it is that leads individuals to accept a given organization of social relations and distribution of power, even when the resulting social system works against their best interests. One way in which anthropologists have attempted to answer this question is through the concept of ideology. As noted above, we can define ideology broadly as the social beliefs, practices, or sense of self that make the existing organization of social relations, no matter how unequal they may be, appear simply natural and right, or otherwise encourage us to reproduce existing systems of power and inequality even when we recognize them as unfair.

The above definition, however, includes often quite different and even contradictory approaches to the concept of ideology. In this section of the unit notes, we will further explore and unpack the concept of ideology. We will explore three different approaches to the concept of ideology that have been developed and adopted by anthropologists and other social theorists. These include: the “false consciousness” theory of ideology, the “cynical reason” theory of ideology, and an approach to ideology that views it as an ambivalent commitment to promises of “the good life.” While these approaches to ideology have been applied to a broad array of social and political contexts, here we will focus in particular on how they relate to arguments about capitalism, with a special emphasis on Karl Marx’s analysis of capitalism and his concept of commodity fetishism.

For those of you who may be studying Marx in other classes or will do so in the future, it may be useful to note that in Marx’s own writings the theory of ideology is developed most explicitly in one of his early works, The German Ideology. Marx does not explicitly use the term ideology in relation to his concept of commodity fetishism. However, later theorists have argued that commodity fetishism should be viewed as a form of ideology, an argument which has been instrumental in the development of different approaches to this concept.  

2.1 Ideology as “False Consciousness”

Your textbook argues that Marx adopts a “false consciousness” approach to ideology. The false consciousness theory of ideology argues that ideology works primarily through the adoption by individuals of “false” ideas and beliefs that persuade them to accept the rule of the governing class or existing social order as simply natural and right. Analysts argue that these ideas and beliefs are “false” because they misrepresent some aspect of that dominant social system, for instance, by representing capitalism as though it guaranteed individual equality when it in fact depends on, as we have seen in Unit 6, the systematic exploitation of workers’ labour. 

The “American Dream” provides us with a compelling example of how ideology would seem to function as such false ideas and beliefs. The “American Dream” can be taken to refer to the long-standing belief or myth, often replayed in films, advertisements, or political campaigns, that, in the United States, every individual has equal opportunity to succeed financially through their own individual hard work and perseverance. Many social theorists argue that this belief is false because it ignores how various social differences and identities – race, ethnicity, class origin and economic status, gender, and so on –contribute to whether or not and to what degree individuals are able to succeed financially and in their careers in the United States, as well as, more broadly, the various ways in which capitalism in the United States and elsewhere depends on exploiting the labour of workers.

The false consciousness theory of ideology is compelling. It points to how dominant ideas and beliefs within a society often do not measure up to its reality, thus encouraging individuals to support an organization of society that may work against their own best interests or those of many others. Understandings of ideology as ideas and beliefs about the organization of society and distribution of power that are simply or totally false, however, also have important limitations. For instance, consider Karl Marx’s comparison of capitalism to other modes of production. As outlined in Unit 6, Marx argues that in some ways capitalism does in fact promote greater equality than do other modes of production or ways of organizing labour, such as medieval feudalism or modern forms of slavery. Under medieval feudalism, individuals are born to a particular station in life, and remain in that station for life. The serf works the land that belongs to his or her lord, extracts just enough to allow for his or her survival, and gives the rest to the lord. There is no possibility of moving out of that position. Modern forms of slavery similarly involve a coercive and violent relationship of power. Slaves were obliged by individuals to whom they were sold as so much property to work, often through violence, were allowed enough to survive (or not), and the remaining products of their labour went to the benefit of their owners.  

By contrast, according to Marx, capitalism offers relative freedom. The worker sells his or her labour as a commodity to capitalists who own the means of production. If workers don’t like where they work, then, at least in theory, they are free to look for work elsewhere. There may be serious limitations to where and what types of work any particular worker can locate, but again, by comparison to the serf or the slave, there is a relative freedom at work here. Again, in principle, there is nothing to prevent the worker from looking for work elsewhere. Yet even if capitalism promotes a relative freedom by comparison to feudalism or slavery, it also involves its own particular forms of exploitation and inequality. Recall, as we noted in Unit 6, Marx’s argument that capitalism depends on extracting a surplus-value from the labour of workers for which the workers are not compensated. The creation of new commodities with new and greater values than the materials used to make them depends on the labour of worker, but workers are not compensated for this increased or surplus-value. Instead, companies come up with various strategies, including, for instance, outsourcing labour to areas of the world in which workers are paid less for their labour or there are fewer environmental and safety protections and standards, in order to increase the gap between costs to the company, such as paying workers’ wages, and the profits made by the company through the sale of its products.

From this perspective, myths such as the American Dream are not “just” or simply false. The contemporary United States and capitalism arguably do offer greater opportunities for equality and social mobility than did medieval feudalism or modern slavery. In that sense, we must minimally understand that ideologies may often have some basis in reality, even as they encourage us to gloss over or ignore other aspects of how society is functioning. In the case of the American Dream, for instance, the representation of the contemporary United States and capitalism as offering equal opportunity to all individuals is true when we compare the contemporary United States or capitalism to medieval feudalism or slavery, but false when it leads us to equate this relative freedom for an absolute freedom or equality. From this perspective, we might say that the American Dream has some basis in reality, but nonetheless misrepresents or ignores how social differences such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, and so on, give some individuals more opportunities for financial or career success than, as well as, more broadly, how capitalism depends on exploiting workers’ labour in order to increase profits.

Both a simple or a revised notion of ideology as false consciousness retains at core both a similar view of how ideology works and how it can be overturned. In this approach, ideology is viewed as involving, at its core, ideas and beliefs that misrepresent some essential aspect of how the existing organization of society in fact works to reproduce inequality and exploitation. From this perspective, the task of ideology critique and, even, perhaps, the road to social change and revolution, would thus seem to be relatively straightforward. All we should have to do is to demonstrate to people how their ideas and beliefs about reality obscure some essential aspect of how it works in order to convince them that they or others are in fact being exploited.

2.2 The “Cynical Reason” Approach to Ideology and Commodity Fetishism

Other scholars, however, challenge the false consciousness approach to ideology. They argue that ideology does not depend just or even primarily on the ideas and beliefs that individuals hold about reality. Rather, they argue that ideology involves the ways in which individuals reproduce the dominant systems of power through their actions and behaviours. In the “cynical reason” approach to ideology, developed for instance by philosopher Slavoj Zizek (1989), this emphasis on actions as key to ideology leads some to conclude that, in many cases, individuals may even be aware of the exploitative nature of capitalism or some other social system, and yet, through their actions, may nonetheless continue to participate in and reproduce this unequal social system.  

Zizek developed his cynical reason approach to ideology in large part in relation to Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism. To get a better understanding of the difference between the false consciousness and the cynical reason approaches to ideology, let’s take a moment to explore that concept. Marx defines the commodity fetish in Volume 1 of Capital (1977), his three-volume analysis of capitalism as follows:

"The mysterious character of the commodity-form consists . .  . in the fact that the commodity reflects the social characteristics of men’s own labour as objective characteristics of the products of labour themselves, as the socio-natural properties of these things” (164).

To understand what Marx means in this passage, recall, as noted in Unit 6 and above, that Marx argues that the value of commodities is derived from the labour of humans. It is through labour that materials or commodities, such as thread and material, can be brought together in order to produce a new commodity, blue jeans, with a new and greater exchange-value than the costs of producing it, or a surplus-value, which is then either reinvested in the system of production or extracted as profit. Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism suggests that, even though it is human labour, intentions, and efforts that produce the value of commodities, in our everyday lives, we treat commodities as though value were inherent in these objects themselves.

To unpack this argument, let’s look more closely at the example of jeans. Jeans were initially designed for cowboys and miners. They became a fashion staple for a broader sector of the Western population when James Dean wore them in his iconic role in the 1955 movie, Rebel Without a Cause, which then recast jeans as a statement of youth rebellion. In the 1960s, jeans were identified with hippy subcultures. And in more recent decades, they have become a staple of contemporary Western and even global fashion. In part through the cooperative activities and labour of designers, editors of fashion magazines, retail companies, and so on, popular styles of jeans continue to change every few years, such that in the early 2000s it became more fashionable for jeans to be worn around the hips and close to the legs (low-waisted skinny jeans), whereas in more recent years, waistlines have risen again on popular jean styles.

The production of many brands of jeans, meanwhile, often relies on an exploitative and global division of labour. To increase profits, many companies rely on a global and exploitative division of labour in which jeans and other clothes are produced in factories in the Global South by workers who are paid less than they would be if these same items were produced in the United States or Canada. Workers in these countries are often also required to work in more dangerous work conditions than would be considered acceptable in North America. Many of the clothes sold by widely known brands such as Joe Fresh, Walmart, or Benetton, for instance, are made in Bangladesh. In 2013, the poor conditions in which Bangladeshi workers making clothes for these brands must work came to international attention, when a garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, collapsed, killing over a thousand workers. This is a horrific tragedy by any standard, and drew global attention to the ways in which the desires of consumers in the Global North for cheap fashion depends on the exploitation by international corporations of workers in the Global South.

The value of jeans, therefore, is a product of human labour. Jeans have value for us because of the activity and labour of individuals involved in the fashion industry who work to convince consumers of the aesthetic worth of different styles at different moments through advertising campaigns and other tactics. The value of jeans also derives from an often exploitative and global division of labour in which consumers in the Global North gain access to cheap fashion at the expense of workers in the Global South, as corporations outsource labour to countries where they can pay less in wages and conditions around health and safety are lower. And yet, in spite of all of this human labour that goes into making the clothes we buy, when many of us purchase jeans, we are probably most concerned with how they look on us, whether or not they are in keeping with current trends, and their cost relative to other similar products and how much money we make. In that sense, we are behaving like commodity fetishists. We are treating the jeans as though their value, including their stylishness and cost, were the natural property of the jeans themselves instead of paying attention to the complicated human history of fashion and the global and exploitative division of labour that goes into making them.

If we follow this explanation, commodity fetishism would still seem to fit the false consciousness theory of ideology. The problem seems to be a question of false ideas or beliefs about commodities and the production of their value through human labour. From this perspective, paying attention to the conditions of labour involved in the production of jeans would be enough to rid ourselves of ideology. Zizek and others, however, argue that commodity fetishism and ideology do not depend just on our ideas and beliefs, but rather on our actions. Take the example of the jeans. As noted above, probably one of our concerns when we buy a pair of jeans is whether or not they look good on us, are up to date with current fashion trends, and are within our price range. But it may also be the case that you have a keen sense of the history and politics of fashion. Maybe you’re the kind of person who tries to keep their old clothes for as long as you can rather than spend more money on every new fashion trend that shows up. Maybe you’re even aware of the global division of labour involved in the clothing industry and prefer to buy locally produced clothes. At the same time, for all your awareness of the politics of the clothing industry, at some point your jeans are likely to develop holes and need replacing. So, you go to the store and buy a new pair. Maybe you don’t make that much money at the job you currently have, so you even find yourself buying jeans made in China or some other part of the Global South, where you suspect that workers may not be paid that well. Indeed, even if you do have the cash to buy locally produced clothing, at least according to Marx, all labour under capitalism involves some degree of exploitation. According to this perspective, regardless of whether the clothes you buy are made in Bangladesh or in Canada, you are reproducing capitalism and all of the exploitation of workers’ labour that this entails. 

Zizek argues that some variant of the above scenario is how ideology often functions in modern western societies. He contends that it isn’t because we don’t know how power and exploitation function that we reproduce it. Rather, we know perfectly well, but through our actions, we reproduce the dominant power dynamics of our societies anyway. Or, to put this in terms of our jeans example above, it isn’t that we don’t know at least something about the exploitative and often global dynamics of labour that go into the products that we buy, it’s that we do know, and yet we buy these products anyway. We are commodity fetishists who end up reproducing capitalism not because we don’t know any better, but rather because we keep participating in this system even though we know something about how it works.

2.3 Ideology as an Ambivalent Attachment to Promises of the Good Life

Still other scholars argue that neither the false consciousness nor the cynical reason approaches to ideology fully account for why individuals might continue to support and reproduce existing systems of power. They contend that if we continue to reproduce a particular social system, this is because we remain attached to the ideal of a “good life” it offered us in spite of the fact that it continuously fails to deliver on that promise. Thus, Lauren Berlant (2011) suggests that if many individuals continue to reproduce capitalism, this is because we retain some hope of achieving, for instance, the dream of middle class economic stability or that of becoming rich, even when in actual fact we find ourselves working part time job after part time job or working increasing numbers of hours to keep our jobs. From this perspective, individuals are neither totally deluded nor totally cynical about the realities of contemporary capitalism. Rather, it’s because we keep hoping for some version of the life we were brought up to want, or because we see in capitalism some set of values and promises that still appeal to us, that we end up reproducing it.

Graded Concept Application Exercise#2: Capitalism, Commodity Fetishism, and Ideology in Mardi Gras: Made In China

To consolidate your understanding of Karl Marx’s theories of exploitation under capitalism as well as different approaches to the concepts of commodity fetishism and ideology, watch the required documentary, David Redmon’s Mardi Gras: Made in China (2005), which tracks the production and consumption of Mardi Gras beads. After watching the documentary, draw on Part IV of Unit 6’s unit instructional notes, Part II of Unit 7’s unit instructional notes, and related arguments in the textbook and the additional required reading by Gary Lapon, “What Do We Mean By Exploitation,” to write a brief essay answering the following questions. Note that to answer these questions and succeed on this assignment, you are strongly advised to watch the documentary more than once and take notes as you watch it.

1 In your own words, explain Marx’s theory of how exploitation works under capitalism. To answer this question, you will need to explain the differences between use-value, exchange-value, and surplus-value, what produces value according to Marx, and how capitalism reproduces exploitation and inequality. Next, describe the conditions of labour in which Chinese workers are producing the Mardi Gras beads, as well as the roles in and justifications for this labour given by the Chinese factory owner, Roger Wong, and the American distributor, Dom Carlone. How would Marx’s theory of labour, value, and exploitation under capitalism account for the production of the Mardi Gras beads?

2 In your own words, explain commodity fetishism and the different approaches taken to this practice by the false consciousness theory of ideology versus the cynical reason theory of ideology. Next, analyze some of the answers given by people at the Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans when the documentarist asks them if they know where the beads come from. Which of the responses of the Mardi Gras celebrators might be seen as an example of a false consciousness version of commodity fetishism? Why? Which seems more like a cynical reason version of commodity fetishism? Why? One way to approach this question is to choose responses which seem particularly good examples of one or the other approach to commodity fetishism and compare and contrast them. You may draw on the responses of Mardi Gras celebrators provided at any point in the documentary, but note that some excellent responses can be found in a brief sequence beginning at minute 31 of the documentary.  

Your papers should take an essay form. In other words, they should include a brief introduction with a clear thesis statement explaining your central argument. Your paper must also be broken into separate paragraphs organized around one central sub-point clearly explained in a topic sentence that links back to your thesis statement.

Arguments from the unit notes, the textbook, or the article by Gary Lapon, should be either paraphrased or cited using the Chicago Style author-date system found here (http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html). References to the documentary can be made by citing the documentary with all bibliographic information at least once in a sentence in your essay, for example: “In Robert Redmon’s documentary, Mardi Gras: Made in China (2005) . . .” and then referring to the documentary thereafter through an abbreviated form of the title, such as, “In Mardi Gras…” Provide a reference for the documentary in your reference page as follows:

Redmon, Robert. 2005. Mardi Gras: Made in China. Carnivalesque Film Productions.

• Your paper should be 2-3 pages long, double-spaced, with 1-inch margins, using a 12-point Times New Roman font.

• See the grading rubric for further points on how to organize your papers.

• This paper is worth 10% of your final grade.

• Submit your papers to the instructor using the Dropbox.

Part III Antonio Gramsci: Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony

In the previous section of these unit notes, I outlined three different approaches to the concept of ideology: the “false” consciousness theory of ideology, which views ideology as ideas and beliefs about reality that are somehow “false” in that they misrepresent how reality in fact operates; the “cynical reason” theory of ideology, which argues that ideology functions less through beliefs than through practice and maintains that individuals may reproduce dominant social, political, and economic orders through their actions even as they may well recognize its inequalities to at least some degree; and finally, the theory of ideology as an ambivalent attachment to promises of a “good life,” which argues that individuals often reproduce the dominant social, political, or economic order, because they are still attached to ideals and values associated with that social order even if their vision of a good life regularly fails to come to fruition.

In this section, I will outline a final take on ideology and related questions of how social groups and political leaders establish and maintain political and economic dominance: Antonio Gramsci’s concepts of hegemony and counter-hegemony. As I will show here, unlike many approaches to ideology, Gramsci’s concepts of hegemony and counter-hegemony are useful in part because they show that dominant social orders are never simply stable. Gramsci argues that dominant ideologies always have to take into account and accommodate contesting views of the world. This approach thus emphasizes how dominant ideologies may change according to circumstance. It also highlights the potential for resistance, by drawing our attention to the fact that dominant ideologies are always open to contestation.

3.1 Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony

Born in Italy in 1891, Antonio Gramsci was a founding member of Italy’s Communist Party. He was imprisoned under Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime and released for health reasons, only to die shortly after while still in his forties. While in prison, he wrote thousands of pages outlining his take on Marxist notions of class, history, ideology, and dominance, including developing his key concepts of hegemony and counter-hegemony. These ideas were published as the Prison Notebooks, and contributed to Gramsci becoming one of the most widely known and respected Marxist thinkers of the twentieth century.

Key to Gramsci’s concept of hegemony was his argument that attempting to maintain social control simply through overtly coercive power or domination is expensive and unstable. He argued that a far more effective way of maintaining social control is to persuade social groups that the rule of specific political leaders or elites is legitimate. Gramsci argued that this was achieved through securing hegemony. Your textbook defines hegemony as “a system of leadership in which rulers persuade subordinates to accept the ideology of the dominant group by offering mutual accommodations that nevertheless preserve the rulers’ privileged position (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 274). To put this otherwise, hegemony is a system of rule through political leaders and elites obtain general consent for their rule through tactics of mutual accommodation, for instance, by providing material benefits to their subjects and by disseminating their ideology through institutions such as schools. Establishing hegemony is a far more stable and inexpensive form of rule, because through such tactics the governed agree to and therefore are less likely to directly challenge the authority of political leaders or the ruling elites.

At the same time, as your textbook notes, Gramsci insisted that hegemony is never absolute. Rather, it is always vulnerable to overt and indirect challenges from subordinate groups. Subordinate groups can develop counter-hegemonic practices and beliefs, or alternative practices and beliefs that counter or provide an alternative to the dominant group’s ideology. The concepts of hegemony and counter-hegemony thus demonstrates how securing a given organization of power and society depends on a process of mutual accommodation between rulers and ruled, and how this arrangement is always vulnerable to overt or indirect forms of resistance that can challenge the legitimacy of the existing social and political order.

3.2 Hegemony and Beng Kingship

One of the first examples that your textbook provides to illustrate the processes of hegemony is that of kingship among the Beng people of the Ivory Coast of Africa. For this example, your textbook draws on the field research conducted by Alma Gottlieb among the Beng people in 1979-1980, so this account reflects that historical moment in Beng society.

Among the Beng people, kings are a source of legitimate power. As Alma Gottlieb observes, “the king is responsible for not only the legal but also the moral and spiritual well-being of the people living in this region” (qtd. in Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 276). The power of witches, by contrast, is considered illegitimate and immoral. The Beng people believe that witches work in secret to kill and consume their matrilineal kin (kin related through women).

As your textbook notes, however, these two forms of moral and immoral, legitimate, and illegitimate power, come together to secure the hegemonic rule of kings. When a new king comes to power, he has one year in which to kill three of his matrilineal kin through witchcraft. Gottlieb argues that this social custom is not simply arbitrary. Rather, by turning to the illegitimate power of witchcraft to kill his matrilineal kin, the new king demonstrates his capacity to rise above the narrow interests of his kin group in order to act in the best interests of all Beng. The new king thus establishes his legitimacy and achieves consent to his rule by the Beng people by virtue of this temporary recourse to the illegitimate power of witchcraft.

3.3 Hegemony, National Identity, and Sri Lanka

Anthropologists have also found Gramsci’s concept of hegemony and counter-hegemony useful for analyzing the often-difficult processes through which national identities and dominant relations of power were forged in new nation-states as these acquired their independence from colonial rulers. The former British colony of Ceylon, which later changed its name to Sri Lanka, acquired independence in 1948. As your textbook notes, at that time it included within its territory two different ethnic groups. The more numerous or larger ethnic group was that of the Sinhalese. The minority Tamil group lived in the northern part of the island. In spite of the presence of the Tamils, dominant Sinhalese population and their rulers attempted to forge a national identity that excluded this minority ethnic group. For instance, in 1956, Sinhalese was declared the only official language. And in the 1960s and 1970s, Tamil access to education was restricted and the Tamils were barred from participating in the civil service and the army.

This systematic discrimination against the Tamils eventually led to armed resistance on the part of the Tamils and to the Sri Lankan civil war. The Sri Lankan government responded to these efforts with violence, attempting to use coercion both to force the Tamils out of Sri Lanka and t quell growing Sinhalese resistance to government policies. This can be seen as an example of coercive power or an attempt to rule through domination by the Sri Lankan government.

As your textbook points out, however, the Sri Lankan government did not just rely on coercion to attempt to assert its authority. It also turned to other strategies to persuade Sinhalese citizens that the government had their best interests in mind, a strategy that thus represents an attempt to rule by establishing hegemony or securing the consent of the governed. For instance, anthropologist Michael Woost observed how the government of Sri Lanka used a wide variety of mass media, including television, radio, newspapers, the school system, public rituals, and the lottery, to attempt to establish a link between national identity and government-sponsored development plans. National development, in turn, was presented as a means of restoring Sinhalese villages to the wealth, prosperity, and prestige they had supposedly enjoyed under pre-colonial rule. Woost observes that the attempts to link government-sponsored national development projects with the wellbeing of villages was largely successful. The villagers with whom Woost worked believed that government-sponsored development would improve their situations and accepted development as part of their core values.

At the same time, Woost’s research demonstrates the often-contradictory results of attempts to secure hegemony. Even though the villagers had accepted the state-sponsored discourse and incorporated it into their own value system, they did so in ways that led to competition among three different village factions, each one of which attempted to assert their own prior claim to the state development funds. In the end, these conflicts led to the withdrawal of the promised government resources. Woost argued that, in this case, the acceptance of the state’s hegemonic order ultimately undermined its attempt to assert its authority. By appropriating the state’s discourse of development and trying to mobilize it for their own purposes, the villagers ultimately ended up undermining the local social order that the development projects and discourse were meant to create. This example thus demonstrates both how attempts to establish a dominant social order often rely on techniques of persuasion rather than overt coercion, and also how such efforts can run into important obstacles. It shows how attempts to establish the hegemonic rule of one particular social group (in this case the Sri Lankan government) can be undermined, even when local social groups apparently accept the dominant discourse.

Part IV Resistance

This example of how an attempt to establish the hegemonic dominance of one social group can run into difficulty on the ground leads us to our last topic for this unit: resistance. This section of the unit notes takes up another question that has long interested anthropologists. How do individuals attempt to transform or resist, either directly or indirectly, the organization of social relations or relations of power within their societies and globally?

Your textbook defines resistance as “the power to refuse being forced against one’s will to conform to someone else’s wishes” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 280). To rephrase this more broadly, we can define resistance as the ability or power to refuse, challenge, or disrupt a given organization of society or system of power. Resistance can take overt forms, such as armed rebellion or street protests. But it can also take more subtle and indirect forms. In recent years, however, anthropologists have become increasingly interested in the sorts of everyday and indirect forms of resistance that oppressed social groups may adopt in an effort to reshape or challenge, even if often in very small ways, the everyday forms of oppression or discrimination they may encounter. The examples I take up here demonstrate indirect forms of resistance.

4.1 Alienation, Resistance, and Indigenous Bolivian Tin Miners

The first example of indirect resistance is that of the indigenous Bolivian tin miners studied by June Nash. As your textbook notes, scholars have long argued that the rise of capitalism around the world has historically led to the destruction of existing lifeworlds and cultural systems. We examined such effects in detail in Unit 3 of this course, where we saw, for instance, how the introduction of capitalism to societies such as that of the Baule led to new forms of gender inequality in a society in which the relationship between men and women had previously been more equal. The destruction of existing lifeworlds by capitalism led scholars such as Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim to describe the experience of life under capitalism as one characterized by alienation, or, as your textbook defines this term, “the deep separation that individuals experience between their innermost sense of identity and the labour they are forced to perform in order to survive” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 281). To put this otherwise, the argument here is that, in disrupting previously existing lifeworlds and cultural patterns, capitalism leads to a profound separation between individuals’ sense of identity and the work they perform.

In her work with indigenous Bolivian tin miners in the 1970s, however, June Nash described the subtle and indirect ways in which some individuals and communities can resist such alienation. Nash insists that the type of work in which the miners engaged was deeply exploitative and had harsh consequences on their social relations, communities, and ties to their traditional practices and beliefs. They were cut off from their traditional indigenous communities and the miners and their families suffered from poor health, high rates of infant mortality, and intra-familial abuse.

But at the same time, Nash argued that the miners had found ways to reinvest their labour and their lives with meaning. Instead of being entirely cut off from their traditional beliefs and practices, the miners adapted these beliefs to their new work conditions, creating new cultural patterns. The image found on page 282 of your textbook provides a poignant illustration of this dynamic, showing how the miners take up pre-existing spiritual figures such as “el diablo,” and reinsert them in the mines where they labored, fusing traditional beliefs with the dominant capitalist and industrial culture into which they had been forcibly drawn. Such practices do not change the material circumstances or the exploitative conditions the miners experienced in their work, but they do show how individuals can change the meaning of those circumstances.

4.2 Bargaining for Reality and Marriage Negotiations in Sefrou, Morocco

The second example of resistance taken up by your textbook is that of gender conflicts and marriage negotiations in Sefrou, Morocco. As your textbook observes, American anthropologist and political scientist James Scott has been key in developing theories of resistance in anthropology. His concept of hidden transcripts refers to the accounts of reality that dominated social groups may devise, and which can sometimes compete with or offer alternate ways of explaining social experience that counter hegemonic discourses. These hidden transcripts typically stop short of overt resistance. That is, dominated groups may appear to acquiesce or conform to the demands of the dominant, while nonetheless attempting to covertly counter dominant views through these competing hidden transcripts or accounts of reality. Sometimes, subordinated social groups may be able to persuade others that their views of reality are truer than the hegemonic discourse of dominant social groups. In these cases, hidden transcripts may develop into a counter-hegemonic discourse, leading to a more public and overt struggle between dominated and dominant social groups.

Anthropologist Lawrence Rosen’s fieldwork in the Moroccan city of Sefrou provides one example of how a dominated social group can devise hidden transcripts, leading to a continuous negotiation between different social groups over how to interpret different social situations. Rosen refers to this process of negotiation and struggle between competing visions of reality as bargaining for reality. Rosen describes how such competitions between alternate interpretations of reality, a bargaining for reality, often shapes relationships between men and women in Moroccan society. Rosen notes that in Moroccan society, men typically see women as inferior. Moroccan men argue that women are less intelligent, less self-controlled, and less altruistic, and they expect women to obey them. In this case, then, women can be seen as the subordinated social group. Rosen notes that in many instances women agreed with men’s perceptions of them. To this extent, we could argue that Moroccan men’s attempt to establish hegemonic control over women was successful, especially since women themselves occasionally agreed with men’s perceptions and accounts of the relations between the genders.

But, Rosen argues, women had also developed an alternative account – a hidden transcript – that provided a different way of accounting for social relations and dynamics, one that countered men’s assertions of their superiority even as women continued to appear to cooperate with the established gender norms of their society. Women understood that marriages could often be fragile and that, in the case of divorce, they would have to depend on men from their families for support. As a result, during marriage negotiations, women attempted to ensure that marriage would not remove a woman too far from her original family or subject her without recourse to the demands of her husband and his family. Women viewed their attempts to influence marriage negotiations as sensible. Moreover, they often disputed men’s assertions of their own intelligence and moral superiority, arguing that men were in fact childish and self-centred.  

Rosen observed how these competing views of reality – the hegemonic view of men and the hidden transcripts developed by women – came into conflict with one another in the context of one particular marriage negotiation in Sefrou. A girl’s refusal to marry the man her father had chosen for her had thrown the household into disarray. Rosen visited the girl’s mother in the company of a male friend. The man who had accompanied Rosen explained the girl’s refusal as an example of female selfishness and immorality. But while the girl’s mother never overtly disagreed with this opinion, she repeatedly and insistently offered up a contradictory account of the situation. The girl’s mother insisted that her daughter had refused the match not because she was immoral, but rather because the proposed husband lived far away. Marrying him would thus take the daughter too far from her own family, an important source of protection and support for women in this society, as I have already observed. Your textbook notes that the girl did eventually agree to marry the man her father had chosen for her. However, she changed her mind when she was finally convinced that this decision was an economically sound one. This example thus illustrates how subordinated groups – in this case, women – may resist hegemonic accounts by coming up with their own explanations of social reality, which function as hidden transcripts. As your textbook notes, even when subordinated groups comply with the demands of dominant groups, as did the young Moroccan girl, they may have their own reasons for doing so, which may not entirely conform to the vision of reality held by dominant groups.

4.3 Everyday Resistance and Malaysian Peasants

James Scott’s own study of Malaysian peasants provides a final example of indirect resistance. In his ethnographic work with peasant rice farmers in a Malaysian village, James Scott observed that the peasants were kept in line by what he termed “routine repression,” including occasional arrests, police work, legal restrictions, and an Internal Security Act that allowed for indefinite preventive detention and proscribed much political activity. Scott argued that both this routine repression as well as conflicting loyalties generated by local economic, political, and kinship ties meant that peasants were generally reluctant to engage in overt resistance against the wealthy farmers and the Malaysian state, who exploited the peasants’ labour.

However, Scott also insisted that the peasants’ reluctance to engage in overt resistance didn’t meant that they accepted their situation as right or as natural. Rather, they engaged in a variety of indirect forms of resistance. These included tactics such as foot dragging, lying, desertion, false compliance, stealing, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, and sabotage. In other cases, indirect resistance took place through the development of hidden transcripts, or competing interpretations of local cultural norms. One example of how the peasants engaged in indirect resistance through the development of hidden transcripts or competing interpretations of local cultural norms occurred when there was an attempt made by wealthy farmers to mechanize rice harvesting. Scott explained that both the wealthy farmers and the poor peasants agreed that the machines hurt the poor and benefitted the rich, but they disagreed about whether or not the benefits outweighed the costs. The poor argued that the machines were inefficient and would destroy the rice paddies. They also drew on local moral values to make their case against the mechanization of rice harvesting. They accused the rich of being “stingy” and of ignoring their traditional obligation to help the poor by providing them with work and charity. The rich countered such accusations by arguing that the poor suffered because they were bad farmers or were lazy. They attributed their own success to hard worker and prudent farm management.

Yet Scott pointed out that the wealthy farmers were only able to acquire the harvesters in the first place because of the financial support they were provided by the national Malaysian government and business groups. If the original source of the harvesters didn’t come from the wealthy farmers but rather from the state and businesses, why did the peasants direct their accusations against the wealthy farmers? Was this a misdirected form of resistance, Scott argued that the peasants were aware of the responsibility of the state and the businesses in perpetuating this situation. If they directed their criticism at the wealthy farmers instead, it wasn’t because they didn’t understand the forces that were shaping their circumstances and problems. Rather, it was because the wealthy farmers still cared about whether they lived up to local moral and cultural standards. As a result, the indirect forms of resistance in which the peasants engaged had the most traction or the best results when directed against these farmers. Furthermore, Scott noted that many of the peasants with whom he worked might well have engaged in more direct and overt forms of resistance were the tactics of routine repression to be removed. Faced with such tactics, however, peasants did not simply comply. Rather, they had recourse to hidden transcripts or more covert forms of resistance, including calling on wealthy farmers to live up to their traditional obligations, in an attempt to improve their situations, no matter how slightly.

The work of scholars such as June Nash, Lawrence Rosen, and James Scott, demonstrates that even the most vulnerable and exploited of peoples will frequently struggle to resist their oppression, even if such resistance is often constrained to indirect criticisms and competing accounts of social reality. As your textbook points out, however, other anthropologists have questioned the effectiveness of indirect forms of resistance. Political anthropologist John Gledhill, for instance, argues that it would be “dangerous to be over-optimistic.” He notes that “counter-hegemonic movements exist, but much of the world’s population is not participating in them” (qtd. in Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2015: 289). He is especially skeptical of the everyday forms of peasant resistance described by James Scott. The ability of such practices to undermine the hegemonic power of local elites, he warns, may simply clear space for a new elite to take control. Anthropologists such as James Scott, however, argue that not all resistance is revolutionary and that acts of everyday resistance can sometimes bring change over time. Paying attention to the everyday and often indirect ways in which individuals and social groups contest dominant systems of power demonstrates that even beliefs, values, practices, and institutions that appear to be broadly accepted and timeless are constantly undergoing change and negotiation. Even in the face of overwhelming power, individuals and social groups often continue to exercise some degree of agency and resistance, even if in limited or indirect forms.

Review Questions

1) What are the primary differences between centralized and uncentralized political systems?

2) Define and describe the four different types of political systems identified by political anthropologists.

3) What are the four different types of power identified in your textbook? Define and describe each of these four different types.

4) What is ideology? What is commodity fetishism? Define and describe the different approaches to ideology discussed in this unit and the different ways in which commodity fetishism has been explained.

5) Which theorist came up with the concepts of hegemony and counter-hegemony? Define and describe these concepts and explain the examples discussed in the textbook and the unit notes to illustrate both hegemony and indirect forms of resistance.

References

Berlant, Lauren. 2011. Cruel Optimism. Durham: Duke UP.

Comaroff, Jean, and John Comaroff. 1999. American Ethnologist 26.2: 279-303.

Lavenda, Robert H., Emily A. Schultz, and Roberta Robin Dods. 2015. Cultural Anthropology:

A Perspective on the Human Condition, 3rd Canadian Edition. Oxford: Oxford UP.

Marcus, George. 1999. Paranoia Within Reason: A Casebook on Conspiracy Theory. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press.

Marx, Karl. 1977 [1867]. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume One. New York:

Random House.

West, Harry G. and Todd Sanders. 2003. Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of

Suspicion in the New World Order. Durham: Duke UP.

Zizek, Slavoj. 1989. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London and New York: Verso.