"The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Subsistence and Rebellion in Southeast Asia"
Author: James C. Scott
Review by:
Kishor Subba Limbu
A Brief Introduction to the Author
Born on December 2, 1936, in Mount Holly, New Jersey, as an American political scientist and anthropologist.Scott received his B.A. from Willims College, as well as his M.A. and PhD in political science from Yale University.(CV)
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James Scott has been the Sterling Professor of Political Science and Professor of Anthropology from 1976 to date. Scott got a Rotary International Fellowship to study in Burma, and he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and worked against communist-controlled global student movements. Scott wrote The Moral Economy of the Peasant about Southeast Asian peasants based on archival research. Then Scott did 14 months (1978–1980) of fieldwork in Southeast Asia for his third book, Weapons of the Weak. The most impressive aspect of his third book is that he revisited his field, discussed the draft, made corrections based on discussion and comments, and then finalised the book.
James Scott published 12 books: 1. Political Ideology in Malaysia: Reality and the Beliefs of an Elite, Yale University Press, 1968; 2. Political Corruption in Comparative Perspective,Prentice Hill, 1971, p. 3). The Peasant's Moral Economy: Subsistence and Rebellion in Southeast Asia, Yale University Press, 1976, p. 4). Friends, Followers, and Factions: A Reader in Political Clientelism, University of California Press, 1976, p. Everyday Peasant Resistive Behavior in Southeast Asia, London: Frank Cass, Ltd., 1986, p.Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985, p. 7; Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, Haven: Yale University Press, 1990, p. 8). Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997, p. 9. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009, 10 Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, Meaningful Work, and Play, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2012, 112 pp.Decoding the Subaltern: Ideology, Disguise, and Resistance in Agrarian Politics (London: Routledge, 2012, 12) Against the Grain: A Deep History of the First Agrarian States, Yale University Press, 2017. (CV)
Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (1997) and The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (2009) are two of James Scott's multi-award-winning books.(CV)
The Moral Economy of the Peasant (1976)
The Peasant's Moral Economy: Subsistence and Rebellion in Southeast Asia, published by Yale University Press in 1976, The book was translated into Italian (1981), Japanese (1981), Chinese (1986), Indonesian (1982), Thai (1984), and Vietnamese (1996).
The book "The Moral Economy of the Peasant" was based on secondary data and archival records and based on E.P. Thompson's (1971) idea of the "Moral Economy" and Karl Polayni's (1944) "Substance Economic Perspectives." The book discussed Southeast Asian peasants' economic orientation, subsistence ethics, and resistance strategies in the face of adversity in the peasant-state relationship.
Technically, the book has 246 pages, organised with the introduction at the beginning and seven chapters. The first three chapters talk about the Southeast Asian peasants' (Vietnam, Burma, Thailand, and Cochinchina) social-cultural lifeworld, economic activities, agricultural productions and strategies, peasant-state relationship, colonial tax burden, and the like. The rest of the chapters present life stories and archival records in detail about the southeast Asian peasants' economic behaviour, strategies, and resistance rebellion against the colonial tax burden.
Critical Review of the Book
The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Subsistence and Rebellion in Southeast Asia is one of the influential books by James Scott. The book is based on secondary data (archival records by the colonial state and village notables) for Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, Thailand, Burma, Chochinchina, and Malaysia. Scott used British historian E.P. Thompson's term "moral economy" to analyse the economic behaviour of the Southeast Asian peasant. Thompson defined "moral economy" in his article "The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century" as a conceptual hybrid of cultural norms, social practices, and economic institutions.
James Scott starts with a quote: "There are districts in which the position of the rural population is that of a man standing permanently up to his neck in water so that even a ripple is sufficient to drown him" from R.H. Tawney's book "Land and Labor in China." Scott claims that Southeast Asia's traditional peasantry is drowning.It could shrink at any time due to the colonial state, landlord, and poor harvest due to the natural epidemic.
The key argument of moral economic theories (William, 1994) is that people's economic behaviour or activities, how they perceive the right, justice for financial activities, for example, how they make their perception of right and unacceptable economic activities, the moral develops with cultural norms, values, and practices.
For instant patron-client relations, rent, communal labour and land, reciprocity, and the like, the Southeast Asian peasantry is based on traditional subsistence peasantry.In subsistence agriculture, a household is a unit of consumption as well as production. They believe one can produce more than his subsistence needs, so a big family always counts as a significant working force.
Scott's case study during the Vietnam War presents the life stories of the peasants who experienced the 1856–57 famine in Burma, the 1954–45 great famine in Vietnam, and a series of typhoons and natural calamities like drought and flood.
The Southeast Asian peasant uses different subsistence ethics and strategies to cope with the problematic situation. One of them is the "safety first" principle, which Karl Polyany used in "The Great Transformation" and Eric Wolf in "Peasant War." Peasants are in trouble because of their meagre income, little land, large families, highly variable yields, few opportunities, and colonial tax optimization state.
In order to be safe, the peasant employs "self-help" methods of subsistence in the problematic situation: they reduce their food intake, tighten their belts, stop feeding grain to livestock, store root crops, migrate, engage in petty business, and seek mutual assistance from kinship, neighbors, landlords, and others.In 2018, I was in a neighbouring village with my hometown. The geography of the village was highland hill with an elevation of more than 1500 meters.One day I was in a tea shop; randomly, I heard people's conversations: "This year I have a terrible harvest because of the low rainfall, so I must organise marriage for my son to survive." I was surprised. He has a poor harvest; he wants to add a family member for food subsistence; and I investigate through kuragraphy with the villagers.The villagers then explained that "we have the bahi uthaune" (a list of contributors with their names and amounts contributed), and that in practice, we must assist the household because they are organising rituals, functions, and ceremonies.The amount of assistance would be voluntary and self-determined.Still, the general ethics are that we shouldn't return less than his previous amount of contribution, and on the other hand, it is a matter of prestige: villagers contribute as much as possible to show off, and some of the villages have an equilibrium practise too; they shouldn't exceed the maximum limit, and the poor don't have a minimum limit. If the household had a large network of social relations, the man who collects the food and money could collect for more than a year.
The peasantry in Southeast Asia and South Asia have more or less minor similarities, with paddy as the main crop for the lowland irrigated field and millet, maize, buckwheat, and other root crops for the highland non-irrigated area. Traditional patron-client relationships, labour exchange, communal land, sharecropping, fixed rent, and the Jajmani system (caste-based labour division) are all in use in Nepal.
The colonial state creates a more complex situation for the peasant. More taxes were imposed by the colonial state, which was critical for tax collection.They have the right to use the gifts of nature—for instance, bamboo, fish, banana trees, and firewood exploitation in the jungle—that affect the peasants' handicraft productions for their daily use and small cash income. The colonial state offered rewards to informants of tax evasion and jailed them until they paid the tax.
The head tax is always the central issue of resistance and rebellion against the colonial state. The colonial state, for example, collected $21.4 million in taxes from the Societies of Nghe-Ai and Ha-Tinh alone in 1929.The low-income peasants' earnings would represent 20 days of reaching and perhaps as much as 30 days of earning, making people angry. The theory of the moral economy's central argument is that the people's perspective on economic behaviour or economic activities The unacceptable heavy tax on peasants' heads, as well as the peasant movement for the fundamental subsistence right, violate subsistence ethics and the right to subsistence.
Peasant rebellions against colonial states vary from village to village. Generally, peasant protest, marches, and violence—attacks on the colonial tax office, destroyed tax records, and the like—are common. Scott presents more detail about two rebellions: the Nghe-Tinh and Ha-Tinh areas of Vietnam, and the Saya San Rebellion of Burma.
The peasant rebellion in Vietnam was influenced by the communist party, mass protests, and a colonial tax office attack. Peasant expresses their anger "we want to kill the Dutch" in Vietnam and "The British are imposing us more taxes, which is not exist in other countries, and we don't have any benefit by paying tax to colonial state" in the Saya San rebellion in Burma.
When people suffer from extreme poverty and the state's failure to address public security, basic subsistence needs, and development, they fight for the essential requirements. Southeast Asian peasants are in acute poverty. The expansion of the peasantry would be facilitated by the expansion of the road network and the neoliberal market.Arjun Gunaratne explored the villagers' economic activities and the impact of the East-West Highway expansion in Nepal. Peasant people don't have anything else to sell to make money, so when the road network gets there, they start travelling by bus, riding bicycles and motorcycles, buying junk food, and other things that aren't necessary (Gunaratne, 2002).
Although James Scott presents vibrant data about the third world peasants' moral and economic behaviour, some are lacking in the book; for instance, Scott used the "moral and economic" approach to explore the economic behaviour of the peasant, and he has mentioned that the household is the unit of consumption as well as the unit of production, but he lacks details about the household settings, geographic settings, and the cultural bonds of the peasants. It is critical because, according to "ecological determinism of culture" and "cultural determinism to the adaptation of ecological environment," "culture," "norms," "values," and "belief systems," "village settings," "village economic and political settings," are essential to developing an individual's cognitive moral sense of right and justice.
James Scott presents some evidence of the "stratification" class struggle and conflates it with the condition, such as social network, skill, workforce, and the like.Scott lacks an exploration of the internal politics or struggles of the peasants.
The peasant rebellion in the entire area is more influenced by the community party than the volunteer resistance against the colonial power. We can compare it to the Maoist insurgency (1996–2006) in Nepal. The Maoist party's manifestation of social issues such as class and caste exploitation fuels the Maoist insurgency, which has widespread support among the poor and lower caste peasants.The Maoists promised subsistence to the poor and lower-caste people, abolishing tenancy with the bourgeoise class and caste-based discrimination, among other things.Maoists looted the grain store of the landlord and distributed it to the poor. They avoid the caste-based hierarchy and sell a dream of the utopian equilibrium of a communist state. Even after the peace program, the Maoist party got the majority vote in the first public vote. But when the Maoist party-led government is unpopular with the public, the Maoist party is almost in danger of disappearing from Nepali politics. (Upreti, 2006)
Conclusion:
James Scott explored the peasant-based economic world of the third world, the moral and economic behaviour, and the moral orientation of the justices about right and wrong. The book presents us with vibrant information about the Southeast Asian economic sphere, the peasantry, and the story of the hardship in the people's lives during the great famine, war, and colonial exploitation.
Peasant rebellion for the right to subsistence is fueled by extreme poverty, the uncertainty of yield, rent, and tax burden.The village economy, cultural production of moral and experiences, and the distribution system all contribute to the moral of the request and justice.The transition from the traditional economy of the conventional peasantry to neo-liberal market intervention causes more vulnerability for the peasant.
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Reference :
CHAYANOV, A. V. (1966), "The Theory of Peasant Economy". In, D. Thorner, B. Kerblay, and R. E. F. Smith (eds.), Homewood, 111.: Richard D. Irwin, for the American Economic Association, 1966; originally published in 1926).
DHAHAL, D.R. (1981), "The concept of economy in a peasant society: a case study of the Athpahariya rais in east Nepal". In Contributions to Nepalese Studies, Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies (CNAS), Tribhuvan University (T.U.), Kathmandu, Nepal. Volume 8, Number 2, June 1981.
DUMONT, L. (1980). Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications. University of Chicago Press.
GEERTZ, C. (1963), Agricultural Involution, Berkeley: University of California Press.
GUNARATNE, A. (2002), Many Tongues, One People: The Making of Tharu Identity in Nepal. Cornell University Press.
POLAYI, K. (1944). The Great Transformation. New York: Farrar and Rinehart.
SCOTT, J. C, Curriculum Vitae at Yale University
https://politicalscience.yale.edu/sites/default/files/scott_james-cv-2018-08-02.pdf
SCOTT, J. C. (1976), The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. Yale University Press.
UPRETI, B. C. (2006), The Maoist Insurgency in Nepal: Nature, Growth and Impact. In South Asian Survey 13: 1, Sage Publications New Delhi/Thousand Oaks/ London.
WILLIAM, J. B. (1994), "On the Idea of the Moral Economy". In The American Political Science Review, Sep. 1994, Vol. 88, No. 3 (Sep. 1994), pp. 653-667 Published by American Political Science Association Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2944801
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