Domination and the Arts of Resistance

I think Scott is one of the most creative social scientists working today, and this book is probably his strongest work.

Scott flips the script and focuses attention on the strategies subordinates use to navigate and deal with the power of their social superiors. He has great faith in the abilities of ordinary people to mock and hoodwink the powerful and to create for themselves little refuges from kings, bosses, and overlords.

I go back to this book all the time because it is a treasure trove of wonderful anecdotes, too.

This is another big book that tells us about something we miss about past societies in general.

When I teach a course on “Histories of the Margins,” this is the first book I assign. It’s clear, provocative, and makes us think about why the most fascinating stories of people’s resistance to their own oppression are, by definition, hard to find because the oppressed are so often forced to express their disagreement in hidden ways.

Some of my students dislike the book when they read it first because its claims are so broad, yet many of these same students—and various others—end… show more.

You can count on citizens who are out of power to struggle to regain it. The more those on top use their position to keep those on the bottom under their thumb, their domination will inspire inventive ways to resist. Scott’s study of the ways the powerless confront the powerful is a mind-opening exploration of the richness and strength of vernacular rhetoric.  From everyday actions that are overtly compliant while simultaneously subterranean expressions of resistance to hush harbors where a vernacular of identity and solidarity is openly shared, the powerless craft the rich rhetoric of opposition. Their arts of resistance… show more.