Monday, January 26, 2009

Scott: Weapons of the weak. Really?

The article has indeed been written very nicely. Its free flowing and you almost agree with the content. An afterthought, which weak are we actually talking about? The 'weak' suggested have at least one job or like where he can protest passively. Do these 'weak' include day laborers, marginal farmers? In our country if someone somehow manages a job, there are hundreds lined up to take that job, why would one tolerate any 'everyday form of resistance'? The counter argument is if all resist the higher power has to give in. But if management fires two or three people everybody submits immediately or at best it takes form of the strikes etc. which is again an open confrontation, which usually happens. Many of the articles talk about the 'weak' and 'poor' but not about the 'weakest' and 'poorest'. Talking about MFIs, they also basically concentrate on 'poor' and their good intention are averse to 'poorest' which eventually are the 'weakest' as well.
Why is not mobilization of poorest is given its due attention? Probably no takers or may be too marginalised to be worth uplifting... I am not too sure.

1 comment:

Joseph Kalassery said...

gud one nishant..

with respect to why mngmt doesnt fire, 2 points:-
1) the resistance is masked very well, hence it is difficult for mngmt in the 1st place to discover it. their safety lies in anonymity(Pg 95, last para of tau)
2) wat surety is ther tat the new employee will not use the same weapon. hence, actors will change but the problem continues

regarding ur question of poorest not getting mobilised, 2 points again:-
1) even inside groups using weapons of the weak, there can be stratification. The article never tells tat this does not happen. But then when there is a bigger enemy(maybe the capitalist), they are more concerned about opposing him rather than fighting amongst themselves.
2) whether the degree to which both more-weak and less-weak uses weapons of weak is an interesting question. i wud presume the degree of less-weak to be higher as they are less dependent.

thanks