The different ways in which peasants are represented by the different authors:

J. C. Scott

- Believed that the peasantry were shown in two lights – when they came to pose a threat to the state and to the existing international order (when historical records were the richest), but most of the time as appearing in the historical records as anonymous contributors to statistics e.g. taxes and crop production.

- Believed that a lot of the time the peasants found themselves having helped to power ruling groups whose plans were against their own goals.

- They used Brechtian forms of class struggle that require little or no coordination or planning; often represent a form of individual self-help and they typically avoid any direct symbolic confrontation with authority.

- He believed that this form of struggle was not trivial e.g. the collapse of the Confederate army and economy in the course of the Civil War in the US.

- There have been a few occasions when this resistance has become active, even violent. Mostly however it takes the form of non-compliance, subtle sabotage, evasion and deception. Most of their struggles are marked by quiet evasion that is often far more effective than defiant confrontations.

- He thought their style of resistance could be described in pairs – the first of each pair described as “everyday resistance”, which is informal, covert and concerned largely with immediate gains e.g. peasants encroaching on plantation and state forest lands, and the second representing open defiance (e.g. openly challenging property relations).

- The nature of resistance is greatly influenced by the existing forms of labour control and by beliefs about the probability and severity of retaliation. E.g. instead of participating in open strikes which could lead to dismissal from your job, people would just slow down in work and become inefficient.

- He also thought that resistance is not necessarily directed at the immediate source of appropriation, as peasants want to meet their objectives in relative safety, and so may simply follow the line of least resistance.

- Believed the peasantry were a diverse class of “low classness”, scattered across the countryside. They lacked discipline and leadership, and they were best suited to guerrilla-style campaigns that required little or no co-ordination. Their actions could change or narrow policy options available to the state.

- The declarations of open war normally only come after the slow, quiet struggle is failing or has reached crisis point.

- Believed in order to study class relations you had to study the human agents involved.

E. Weber

-Talks about vast parts of 19^th century France were inhabited by savages (peasants).

- The rural population were savages. They were poor, backward and wild.

- Mentions how Joseph Roux regarded the peasant as sin, original sin, still persistent and visible in all its naïve brutality.

- Peasants lacked civilization, as this was something that was only found in the city, not in the countryside.

- They were barbarous, wild, and lived like beasts. They had to be taught manners, morals, literacy, a knowledge of French, and of France, and a sense of the legal and institutional structure beyond their immediate community.

- They had to be integrated into the national society, economy and culture.

- Until this progress was fully achieved, the countryman would be a rough and incomplete draft of the civilized man.

- The peasant was always ill at ease and constrained in town, as he was uncomfortable there. They were seen as not being able to think for themselves, or having ideas of their own.

- At the first opportunity a peasant would try to shed his name, which had become something of an insult. E.g. bouz – cow-dung gave way to bouzon for peasant.

- As the century advanced the division between country and town did not decrease. In the countryside barbarism and misery were still the norm.