Rightful resistance revisited

Abstract

James Scott (1985) placed ‘everyday forms of resistance’ between quiescence and rebellion. Others have noted that defiance in unpromising circumstances need not be quiet, disguised and anonymous if the aggrieved use the language of power to mitigate the risks of confrontation. How does ‘rightful resistance’ (O'Brien and Li 2006) relate to Scott's everyday resistance and other types of protest in contemporary China? Are rightful resisters sincere or strategic? Is their contention reactive or proactive? Does rightful resistance suggest growing rights consciousness or only a familiar rules consciousness? Rightful resistance in rural China has been criticized for (1) lacking ‘peasantness’, (2) shortchanging history and culture, (3) focusing on elite allies and one pattern of protest and (4) being overly rationalist, state-centric and caught in ‘developmental thinking’. How do I respond?

Keywords:

• protest
• contention
• peasants
• China
• rightful resistance
• rights consciousness
• everyday resistance
• proactive
• reactive

I am grateful to Jun Borras for suggesting that I ‘revisit’ rightful resistance and to Sara Newland for research assistance on other types of resistance. I would like to thank Tamara Jacka, John Kennedy, Sally Sargeson, James Scott, Rachel Stern and Emily Yeh for comments on an earlier draft. Generous financial support was provided by the Institute of East Asian Studies and the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. For a nearly career-long collaboration and for teaching me far more than I ever taught him, I am indebted to Lianjiang Li.

Notes

¹See also Ortner (1995, 190): ‘Resistance studies are thin because they are ethnographically thin: thin on the internal politics of dominated groups, thin on the cultural richness of those groups, thin on the subjectivity – the intentions, desires, fear, projects – of the actors engaged in these dramas’.

²For a historian's account of the path from righteous to rightful resistance in the 1950s, see H.Y. Li (2009).

³On elderly protesters in Zhejiang and tactics they deployed to keep the authorities off balance, see Deng and O'Brien (2013 forthcoming). On Chinese protest tactics more broadly, see X. Chen (2012).

⁴For ‘experience-near’, less state-centric accounts of the thinking that gives rise to protest, see G.D. Chen and Wu (2006), Chan and Pun (2009), Erie (2012), and Lora-Wainwright et al. (2012).

⁵For exceptions, see Perry (2002), Lee (2007), Stern and O'Brien (2012) and Stern (2013).

⁶In the most repressive regimes, resistance is largely limited to ‘weapons of the weak’ (Scott 1985). In slightly less controlled settings, one or more features of rightful resistance may appear. As sanctioned coercion diminishes further and partial inclusion is formally extended, cases of more complete rightful resistance become possible. In circumstances where numerous rights are guaranteed, the rule of law is established and political participation is unquestionably legitimate, rightful resistance may still be viable and effective, when dissatisfied citizens try to make officials and business leaders prisoners of their own rhetoric and exploit the gap between rights promised and rights delivered.

⁷Following the abolition of the agricultural tax in 2006, extraction receded as a source of rural discontent and other issues came to the fore, including land grabs and environmental degradation. The time is ripe to explore how the nature and intensity of particular grievances influence the dynamics of contention, and to identify how different complaints can be linked, as happens when environmental claims are ‘piggybacked’ on land-related grievances (Deng and Yang 2013). On ‘issue linkage’ more generally, see Cai (2010, Ch. 4).

⁸For a defense of this practice, in certain circumstances, see Collier and Mahoney (1996).

⁹See Michelson (2008, 44, 45) on our focus on one strategy of contention and not seeking to evaluate the relative popularity of competing strategies. On selecting cases ‘according the value of the dependent variables’ and ‘caution in generalizing from [our] analysis’, see R.B. Wong (2007, 851).

¹⁰John Kennedy (conference remarks, 28 September 2012) suggested that our differences with Michelson (2008) may be temporal rather than conceptual: the aggrieved may try ‘local solutions’ first and then move on to rightful resistance. Michelson (2008) also considers a wider range of disputes than we do.

¹¹See Michelson (2008).

¹²See, among others, Santoro and McGuire (1997) on institutional activists who work as insiders on outsider issues, Stearns and Almeida (2004) on state actor-social movement coalitions and Rucht (2004) on movement allies.

¹³On villagers siding with different levels of government depending on the type of land expropriation they face, see Paik and Lee (2012, 273).

¹⁴Michelson (2006) emphasizes family ties to government officials. On support ‘from individuals within the government, not “the government” more generally’, see Spires (2011, 14).

¹⁵Shi and Cai (2006, 316) suggest that social networks with officials and media personnel provide information that helps protesters formulate and implement strategies, create a channel to influence decision-making and generate pressure, and offer access to the media.

¹⁶Lianjiang Li, personal communication, 30 September 2012. On village cadres leading protests, see Wang (2012).

¹⁷Lee (2007, 17) sees rightful resistance as mainly a form of strategic framing. It was not our intent to leave readers with this impression.

¹⁸‘Analytically, distinct types of political consciousness often co-exist in the mind of the same individual’ (L.J. Li 2010, 65).

¹⁹On recognition that contention in China is evolving, but doubts that proactive protest is overtaking reactive protest, see Bianco (2001, 249–53).

²⁰Perry (2002, 275–308) also found it helpful to categorize protest in China as competitive, reactive or proactive.

²¹Lianjiang Li is more inclined to link rightful resistance and growing rights consciousness with regime change. ‘Compared to those who only have rules consciousness, individuals who also have rights consciousness are more likely to press for institutional changes in the hope of converting revocable “state-endowed rights” into inalienable rights. If rights consciousness keeps a democracy healthy by turning citizens into active participants in governance, the mobilization of rights consciousness may help chart a course toward a more participatory political system in China’ (L.J. Li 2010, 66).

²²There are signs, however, that this is becoming less common, as small, often symbolic victories may lead to larger demands. The popular notion that ‘no disturbance leads to no solution’ while a ‘large disturbance leads to a large solution’ also points to the value of risk-taking, persistence, and an unwillingness to settle for partial solutions.

²³On authority systems with 'strong thumbs, no fingers', see Lindblom (1977). This image refers to the ability of centralized, non-market systems to do homogeneous, repetitive activities well, but not to discriminate or adapt.

²⁴Froissart (2007, 119) writes: ‘By seeking intervention from higher levels of administration, this form of resistance helps the Centre respond to conflicts through ad hoc solutions that expand its capacity to manage contradictions while withholding political reform… It would thus appear that this form of resistance is an integral part of the regime's dynamic stability, though that does not rule out the possibility of the balance being upset some day’. Perry (2008, 45) also suggests that today's pattern of protest ‘may prove more system-supportive than system-subversive. In an authoritarian polity, where elections do not provide an effective check on the misbehavior of state authorities, protests can help serve that function – thereby undergirding rather than undermining the political system’. In a highly hedged passage (O'Brien and Li 2006, 123–29), we mention that rightful resistance ‘could evolve into a more far-reaching counter-hegemonic project’, but I do not believe it is ‘poised to mount a counter-hegemonic project’ (Perry 2010, 24).

²⁵Mann (1996) identifies five varieties of citizenship, only one of which is associated with free association, strong legislatures and liberal democracy.

²⁶‘Although rights talk always implies a certain assertiveness, in contemporary American discourse, for example, it tends toward the absolute, individualistic, and ontological in that individuals possess rights by virtue of being human beings. In contrast, Chinese rights talk tends to be relative, social and phenomenological in that subject-citizens of a given state only have rights defined in relation to obligations to each other and their relationship to rulers’ (O'Brien and Li 2006, 117). ‘Unlike the rights discourse employed by some liberal intellectuals, there is little evidence that most rural rightful resisters consider rights to be inherent, natural, or inalienable; nor do most of them break with the common Chinese practice of viewing rights as granted by the state mainly for societal purposes rather than to protect an individual's autonomous being’ (O'Brien and Li 2006, 122).

Additional information

Kevin J. O'Brien is the Alann P. Bedford Professor of Asian Studies, Director of the Institute of East Asian Studies, and Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. His books include Grassroots elections in China (2011) (with Suisheng Zhao), Popular protest in China (2008), Rightful resistance in rural China (2006) (with Lianjiang Li), and Engaging the law in China: state, society and possibilities for justice (2005) (with Neil J. Diamant and Stanley B. Lubman).