“The struggle between rich and poor is not merely a struggle over work, property rights, grain, and cash. It is also a struggle over appropriation of symbols, a struggle over how the past and present shall be understood and labelled, a struggle to identify causes and assess blame, a contentious effort to give partisan meaning to local history,” wrote James Scott.

Scott is an anthropologist and political scientist who specialises in comparative politics. His research has been focused on the strategies and methods used by peasants in Southeast Asia in their resistance against various forms of domination...