Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has paid tribute to influential American anthropologist James C. Scott, whose death has left a lasting impression in Malaysia, where he did the fieldwork for his most seminal book.
Anwar described Scott’s works as “exceptional” and expressed his deep sadness at the professor’s passing in a post to his official social media accounts, noting how much of an impact the academic’s research had on him.
Born in New Jersey in 1936, Scott taught political science at Yale University, where he was appointed a sterling professor – the university’s highest rank, reserved for those considered to be the best in their field – in 2001. He passed away on Friday at the age of 87.
Scott’s primary research centred on peasants in Southeast Asia and their strategies of resistance to various forms of domination, as exemplified by the titles of his books: Weapons of the Weak, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, The Art of Not Being Governed and Against the Grain.
“His seminal 1985 work, ‘Weapons of the Weak,’ based on two years of meticulous field research in a Kedah village, has always resonated with me, recalling my activism for the rural folk in Kedah in the 1970s,” Anwar wrote in his post, published late on Monday.
The book examines subtle, everyday forms of resistance employed by Malaysian peasants, such as foot-dragging and petty theft, to challenge economic exploitation and traditional power structures, revealing the class struggles within rural communities .
A radical student leader at the time, Anwar was arrested in 1974 during a student protest in support of rural farmers in Baling, Kedah, and served 20 months in jail, his first of several stints behind bars.
“Despite writing many other books, ‘Weapons of the Weak’ remained his crowning achievement,” the prime minister wrote.
Anwar, an avid book reader and close friend of academia, said Southeast Asian studies must continue to be championed to foster future scholars like Scott.
“[It deepens] our understanding of our societies for indeed, self-knowledge is essential for our progress as nations and as a region,” he added.
In a 2007 interview, Scott described Weapons of the Weak as the work he is most proud of.
“I also think it’s my best work, because it’s richer and deeper. It was the hardest thing I had ever done,” he said. “Weapons of the Weak has more of my blood, sweat, and tears in it than anything else.”
Political analyst Bridget Welsh at the University of Nottingham in Malaysia said that Scott’s observations on class divisions and resistance remain as relevant today as when he made them more than four decades ago.
“While Malaysia has transitioned from an agrarian society, new forms of resistance and power dynamics have emerged, keeping Scott’s work as engaging and pertinent as ever,” she told This Week in Asia.
Eekmal Ahmad, chief policy advisor to the Selangor state chief minister, compared Scott’s writings about Kedah’s farmers to the artwork of Pangrok Sulap, a Sabah-based art collective, depicting the present-day struggles of rural communities in their state.
“The artwork is about communities in Sabah working together to build a dam for their village. That teamwork is, in a way, a ‘weapon of the weak’,” Eekmal said, playing on the title of Scott’s seminal work.
The second-largest state in Malaysia, Sabah also ranks as the country’s poorest with many of its diverse communities still lacking in some basic needs.
Ahmad Rizky Umar, a Southeast Asia researcher and lecturer at the School of Political Science and International Studies at Australia’s University of Queensland, described Scott’s work as going beyond disciplinary boundaries.
“Learning from his works has enabled me to get a deeper understanding of the sociological and political realities of the region,” Umar told This Week in Asia.
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Anwar Ibrahim on navigating Malaysia through China-US tensions | Talking Post with Yonden Lhatoo
Anwar Ibrahim on navigating Malaysia through China-US tensions | Talking Post with Yonden Lhatoo
Welsh, however, criticised Prime Minister Anwar’s praise for academia as hypocritical given the reality that higher education institutions in Malaysia are stifled by bureaucracy and performance markers that hinder intellectualism and innovative research.
“Malaysia was the place Scott and many other scholars found inspiration. It certainly should be a place where local scholars can reach their potential, free from government-made obstacles,” Welsh told This Week in Asia.
Wan Chang Da, deputy director at the National Higher Education Research Institute of Universiti Sains Malaysia, noted in a 2022 research paper that the country’s universities face strong influence from government agencies and have limited authority to self-govern, even on academic matters.
According to Wan, this hammers home the fact that “the freedom to teach, freedom to inquiry and research as well as freedom to extramural utterance and action of an academic in public universities in Malaysia has been curtailed”.
Additional reporting by Amy Sood
