Some scholars have seen ideology as a critical force in providing cohesion for a state because it masks the unequal distribution of power and wealth by creating a false consciousness for the dominated groups and because it naturalizes the power of the elites. In Domination and the Arts of Resistance (1990), Scott takes issue with this view and argues instead that the ideology of domination states and their political elites promote through public rituals and documents (“public transcripts”) is not shared by the dominated groups (or classes), which develop their own ideologies of resistance in “hidden transcripts” (for example, in myths, songs, and rituals that take place in the household or through practices such as poaching, pilfering, and carnival-like celebrations) (see also Abercrombie, Hill, and Turner 1980).
Rather than arguing about whether there is resistance in stratified social systems, Scott (1990) sees it as always there and argues that any “analysis of forms of domination might well begin by specifying the ways in which the structure of claims to power influences the sort of public transcript it requires.” Then we “might. . . examine how such a public transcript may be undermined or repudiated” by the dominated groups (104). Scott contrasts feudal Europe with its warrior aristocrats to the Hindu religious caste system in India to highlight the kind of analysis necessary to understand domination:
If, for example, we were studying the relation between warrior aristocrats of feudal Europe and their serfs it would be important to understand how their claim to hereditary authority was based on providing physical protection in return for labor, grain, and military service. This “exchange” might be discursively affirmed in an emphasis on honor, noblesse oblige, bravery, expansive generosity, tournaments
And contests of military prowess____A parallel kind of analysis might
Be applied to relations between the Brahmin (or high-caste superior) and the lower caste [in Hindu Indian society]. Here the basis for the claim to power is based on sacred hereditary status, superior karma, and on the provision of certain presumably vital ritual services that can be performed only by Brahmin due to their status and knowledge. Discursive affirmations might include all the ritual separations of purity and pollution, diet, dress. . . and presiding at key rites of birth, marriage, death. (Ibid.)
Each distinct system of domination will encounter specific forms of resistance. Thus, it is important to consider the claims to power or foundations of power of ancient rulers in order to understand both the “public transcripts” promoted by the political elite and the “hidden transcripts” of competing ideologies of resistance among the dominated groups. Emerson and Pauketat (2002) add that resistance should not be viewed in the Western sense of conscious actions: “It is critical that we divorce resistance from its Western foundation of consciously motivated actions taken in opposition to a hegemonic force if the concept is to have utility in the study of the past. Such resistance as we mean. . . here is of the everyday sort” (107).
World History
