Peasant workers on a feudal estate systematically slow their work pace, feign ignorance of instructions, and steal small amounts of grain. Which concept best captures this behavior?
AHegemony — the dominant class is shaping the peasants' behavior through cultural norms
BWeapons of the weak — everyday forms of resistance that erode domination without openly challenging it
CFull agency — the peasants are acting with complete freedom from structural constraints
DCultural determinism — the peasants' behavior is a predictable output of their cultural system
James Scott's 'weapons of the weak' describes exactly this pattern: everyday acts of noncompliance — foot-dragging, feigned ignorance, petty theft — that do not openly confront power but continuously erode what domination can accomplish in practice. These acts do not require collective organization or public confrontation, and they rarely make it into official histories. Option C (full agency) is wrong because agency is always situated within constraints; these acts occur within a structure of domination, not outside it.
Question 2 Multiple Choice
According to Gramsci's concept of hegemony, how do dominant groups primarily maintain power over time?
AThrough overt military force and legal punishment of those who resist
BBy manufacturing consent — shaping the cultural categories people use to think about the world so that existing arrangements seem natural or inevitable
CBy controlling access to economic resources so that subordinate groups have no practical alternative
DThrough ritual and symbolic inversion that temporarily allows transgression within controlled channels
Hegemony describes a subtler mechanism than force: dominant groups maintain power by shaping the frameworks within which people think. A worker who attributes their poverty to personal inadequacy rather than structural conditions is reasoning within a hegemonic framework — not because they were coerced, but because the cultural categories available to them have been shaped to naturalize inequality. Crucially, hegemony is never total and must be constantly reproduced, which is why schools, media, and rituals are political sites.
Question 3 True / False
Agency means that a person can act independently of social structure — to have agency is to be free from the constraints of culture, class, or power.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: False
This is the central misconception about agency. In anthropology, agency means the capacity for meaningful action — but it is always situated within and through structural constraints. A peasant, a factory worker, and an enslaved person all have agency in the sense that they make choices, interpret situations, and act in ways that are not merely mechanical expressions of structure — but none of them acts outside of constraints. Agency is not freedom from structure; it is the ability to navigate, negotiate, and sometimes resist within it.
Question 4 True / False
A subordinate group that enforces social norms against even more-marginalized members of its own community may be engaging in a form of adaptation that reproduces the hierarchy it occupies rather than resisting it.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: True
This is one of the most important critical insights in power and resistance analysis. Resistance does not automatically lead to transformation; some acts of resistance reproduce the logic of the system they oppose. When a subordinated group maintains its position by policing those below it in a hierarchy, it has adapted to the structure of domination without challenging it. This is why analysis must hold multiple levels in view simultaneously: the individual act, the structural conditions, and the systemic effects.
Question 5 Short Answer
Why is it important for anthropologists to distinguish between resistance and transformation when analyzing everyday acts of noncompliance?
Think about your answer, then reveal below.
Model answer: Resistance describes acts that make domination uncomfortable, costly, or less effective — but these acts may not change the underlying structure. Everyday resistance (foot-dragging, symbolic inversion, gossip) can accumulate without fundamentally altering power relations. Treating resistance as transformation overstates its political effect and misses cases where resistance actually reproduces the system it opposes. The distinction forces analysts to ask: what are the systemic effects of these acts over time, and at what level is change actually occurring?
The danger of conflating resistance with transformation is that it leads to romanticizing the agency of subordinated people while underestimating the resilience of structural domination. A realistic account of power must acknowledge both: that people are active agents who shape their circumstances, and that structural conditions constrain what those acts can accomplish.