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The Erosion of Patron-Client Bonds and Social Change in Rural Southeast Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

James C. Scott
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Abstract

This paper attempts to explain how, in Southeast Asia, the strong patron-client bonds which joined peasants to local elites tended to break down during the colonial period—particularly in directly-ruled low-land areas. By examining the effects of social differentiation, the commercialization of subsistence agriculture, and the growth of colonial administration on day-to-day class relations in the countryside, it is possible to show how a relationship the peasant once viewed as collaborative and legitimate came increasingly to be seen as one of simple, if unequal, bargaining or of outright exploitation.

Patron-client relationships are seen as a pattern of exchange of goods and services in which the balance of exchange is related to the legitimacy of the relationship. In particular, physical security and subsistence insurance are minimal services the peasant anticipates in exchange for his deference. In the pre-colonial period the greater availability of alternative social mechanisms such as the kindred and village, the existence of unclaimed land, and the absence of strong outside backing of local powerholders served to provide minimal guarantees for clients, with the social and demographic impact of colonialism strengthened, the bargaining power of elites and moved the balances of reciprocity to their advantage the protective power and coverage of deference relations eroded. The result was a loss of legitimacy by agrarian elites.

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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , November 1972 , pp. 5 - 37
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Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1972

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References

1 Carl Lande, the first explicitly to apply the patron-client model to Southeast Asian politics, found it an indispensable tool in explaining the absence of class-based voting and the alliances between “big people” and “little people” that characterized Philippine parties. Lande, Leaders, Factions, and Parties: The Structure of Philippine Politics (New Haven: Yale Southeast Asia Studies, 1964)Google Scholar, see also his article “Groups and Networks in Southeast Asia,” delivered to the Southeast Asia Development Advisory Group, New York, November, 1969, and American Political Science Review (forthcoming). A careful study of village politics in Upper Burma by Nash concludes that a villager's basic political decision was to affiliate himself with a well-to-do patron who could protect and advance his interests. Nash, Manning, The Golden Road to Modernity (New York: Wiley, 1965)Google Scholar, passim. Local politics in Malaya and Thailand has been explained in comparable terms. See, for example, Swift, M. G., Malay Peasant Society in Jelebu (London: Athlone Press, 1965)Google Scholar, and Phillips, Herbert, Thai Peasant Personality (Berkeley: Univ. of California, 1965)Google Scholar. Even in rural Java where party labels suggest an ideological polarization, one major interpretation has emphasized the factional nature of santri-abangan cleavages, in which each party was led by rich peasants who brought along their kin, neighbors, and clients. Jay, Robert R., Religion and Politics in Rural Central Java, Cultural Report Series (New Haven: Yale University-Southeast Asian Studies, 1963), pp. 98–99Google Scholar. On this also see Hindley, Donald, The Communist Party of Indonesia 1951–1963 (Berkeley: Univ. of California, 1966)Google Scholar, Ch. 14; Mortimer, Rex, “Class, Social Cleavage, and Indonesian Communism,” Indonesia, #8 (10, 1969), pp. 1–20Google Scholar; and Wertheim, W. F., “From Aliran to Class Struggle in the Countryside of Java,” Paper No. 55, International Conference on Asian History, 08 5–10, 1968Google Scholar, Kula Lumpur, Malaysia.

2 There is an extensive literature dealing with patron-client bonds upon which I have relied. Some of the most useful include: Foster, George M., “The Dyadic Contract in Tzintzuntzan: Patron-Client Relationship,” American Anthropologist, 65 (1963), pp. 1280–1294CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wolf, Eric, “Kinship, Friendship and Patron-Client Relations,” in Banton, M., ed., The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies (New York: Praeger, 1966)Google Scholar; Campbell, J., Honour, Family, and Patronage (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964)Google Scholar; Powell, John Duncan, “Peasant Society and Clientelist Politics,” American Political Science Review, LXIV, 2 (06, 1970)Google Scholar; Lande, Carl, Leaders, Factions and Parties: The Structure of Philippine PoliticsGoogle Scholar; op. cit., and Weingrod, Alex, “Patrons, Patronage, and Political Parties,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 19 (07, 1968), pp. 1142–1158Google Scholar. See also my “Patron-Client Politics and Political Change in Southeast Asia,” American Political Science Review, 66: 1 (03, 1972), pp. 91–113.Google Scholar

3 I am indebted to Barrington Moore, Jr.'s persuasive argument that exploitation is, for the most part, an objective relationship in which feelings of exploitation bear a relationship to the services an elite offers the peasantry in return for the surplus it extracts. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), pp. 453–483Google Scholar. His argument was advanced considerably by its successful application to Central Italy by Sydel F. Silverman in which the categories of exchange are carefully analyzed. “‘Exploitation’ in Rural Central Italy: Structure and Ideology in Stratification Study,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 12 (1970), pp. 327–339Google Scholar. It is from Moore and Silverman and from Peter Blau's theoretical work on exchange theory, Exchange and Power in Social Life (New York: Wiley, 1964)Google Scholar, that my conceptualization of agrarian relations is drawn. See also Arthur Stinchombe's fine essay on rural class relations in “Agricultural Enterprise and Rural Class Relations,” American Journal of Sociology, 67 (1961–1962)Google Scholar, particularly the portion on family sized tenancy.

4 The term is that of E. P. Thompson who applies it in a similar fashion to the early English working class and their attitude toward the price of bread. See his classic The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage, 1966), p. 203.Google Scholar

5 Although we cannot do justice here to the detailed structural conditions which promote patronclient networks, three predisposing criteria seem especially noteworthy: (1) the persistence of marked inequalities in wealth, status, and power which are accorded some legitimacy; (2) the relatailed five absence (or collapse) of effective, impersonal guarantees, such as public law, for physical security, property, and position—often accompanied by the growth of semi-autonomous local centers of personal power; and (3) the inability of either kinship units or the traditional village to serve as effective vehicles of personal security or advancement.

6 My categories are organized quite differently from Silverman's (op. cit., pp. 331–333) but I profited greatly from her enumeration for Central Italy.

7 A much more extended discussion of the notion “balance of exchange” and patron legitimacy may be found in Scott, James and Kerkvliet, Benedict, “How Traditional Rural Patrons Lose Legitimacy: A Theory With Special Reference to Lowland Southeast Asia,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, (forthcoming 1973).Google Scholar

8 Empirically, of course, disapproving submission may be difficult to distinguish from approving submission if there are no means for the expression of discontent.

9 This is not to deny that norms of equity in the balance of exchange do not vary from culture to culture. They most certainly do. Within a particularly cultural and historical context, however, shifts in the balance are likely to produce correspending shifts in the evaluation of the legitimacy of subordination.

10 Changes may come about by (a) some shift in the content of reciprocity—e.g., a landlord reduces or eliminates pre-harvest loans, (b) a shift in the value of a particular good or service—e.g., the value of a feudal lord's protection is reduced by the rise of central states, and (c) a shift in the cost of a particular good or service—e.g., casual domestic service in the patron's house may become more costly when outside wage labor opportunities develop. The relational quality of exchange also requires emphasis. An analysis of changes in the legitimacy of agrarian elites necessarily focuses on changes in the exchange relationship and not on the position of the peasantry taken alone. Although shifts in the relationship and shifts in the peasantry's material well-being may often coincide, they may occasionally diverge as well.

11 Hobsbawn, E. J. and Rudé, George, Captain Swing (New York: Pantheon, 1968).Google Scholar

12 Assuming that a following is valuable, a short-age of. potential clients and competition among patrons will benefit peasants. This was tragically illustrated by the impact of the Black Death on conditions of serfdom in Europe. As the plague decimated the population, labor became scarce and the conditions of serfdom eased.

13 Cf. von Heine-Geldern, Robert, Conceptions of State and Kingship in Southeast Asia (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1956)Google Scholar, and Coedes, George, The Indianized States of Southeast Asia (Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1964).Google Scholar

14 See Rabibhadana, Akin, The Organization of Thai Society in the Early Bangkok. Period, 1782–1873 (Ithaca: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 1969)Google Scholar, and Quaritch-Wales, H. G., Ancient Siamese Government and Administration (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1934).Google Scholar

15 Leach, E. R., Political Systems of Highland Burma: A Study of Kachin Social Structure (Boston: Beacon Press, 1965).Google Scholar

16 See, for example, Weingrod, , op. cit., p. 388Google Scholar, Wolf, , op. cit.Google Scholar, and Southall, Aiden, ed., Social Change in Modern Africa, p. 32.Google Scholar

17 Patron and client are enjoined to treat one another as father and son respectively and frequently use fictional kingship (god-parenthood) and kindship terms of address to emphasize the bond.

18 Highland lineage structures produced a cohesive but narrow kin-group while bi-lateral kindreds typical of the lowlands surrounded an individual with a large network of kin whose depend-ability faded dramatically the further removed they were from him.

19 Lehman, F. K., The Structure of Chin Society: A Tribal People of Burma Adapted to Non-Western Civilization, Illinois Studies in Anthropology, N. 3 (Champaign-Urbana; University of Illinois Press, 1963), p. 49.Google Scholar

20 Part of the internal solidarity may be in full recognition that village consensus will help avoid outside intervention.

21 The fairly predictable exactions of a central kingdom were preferable, one might guess, to the plunder of bandits and claimants when the kingdom fell. The reality for many traditional villages, however, must have been both bandits and taxes.

22 Jay, , op. cit., p. 39.Google Scholar

23 The strength of these pressures, as George Foster has argued, derive in part from the prevalent and usually realistic assumption among peasants that the social product is fixed and that, therefore, the gain of any one family comes necessarily at the expense of other families in the community. Foster, George M., “Peasant Society and the Image of Limited Good,” American Anthropologist, 67, 2 (04, 1965).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 This is true both in settled communities where the requirements of legitimate leadership were perculturally fixed and in bandit areas where a leader must share enough of the loot to retain the loyalty of his gang. Leaders who fail to establish their legitimacy and generosity and have no outside backing are likely to find their clientele switching to other leaders or simply striking out on their own.

25 Blau observes the same effect of localization though he seems to explain its effects more by changes in reference groups than changes in the sources of power. “Social approval has a less pervasive significance as a restraining force in complex societies than in simpler ones, because the multiplicity of groups and the possible mobility between them in complex societies allows deviants of nearly all sorts to escape from the impact of community disapproval by finding a sub-group of likeminded persons.” Op. cit., p. 114.

26 I hope to deal at greater length with these changes, paying more regard to significant variation, in a future article.

27 Godfrey, and Wilson, Monica, The Analysis of Social Change: Based on Observations in Central Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1945), pp. 28, 40.Google Scholar

28 Schumpeter, Joseph, Social Classes in an Ethnically Homogeneous Society (New York: Meridian, 1955), pp. 101–168.Google Scholar

29 We can appreciate how decisive the systematic outside backing of colonialism was in eroding local terms of exchange and undermining the legitimacy of local officials by noting the restorative effect meaningful local elections had on the standing of local officials after independence. The major effect of local elections, of course, was to improve a potential client's bargaining position inasmuch as his vote and that of his family was a valuable service which competing patrons desired. Elections restored the incentive for locial patrons to build large, loyal clienteles. For a more detailed argument along these lines see “Patron-Client Politics and Political Change in Southeast Asia,” American Political Science Review 66:1 (03, 1972), pp. 91–113.Google Scholar

30 Kartodirdjo, Sartono, “The Peasants' Revolt of Banten in 1888 ('S-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966), Ch. 3.Google Scholar

31 See, for example, Benda, Harry J., “The Structure of Southeast Asian History: Some Preliminary Observations,” Journal of Southeast Asian History, 3:1 (03, 1962), p. 126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 A comparable process is seen by Wertheim to be at work in the violent “Social Revolutions” marin Acheh and Minangkabau after the war. Wertheim, W. F., Indonesian Society in Transition (The Haque: W. van Hoeve, 1959), p. 81Google Scholar. The loss of legitimacy of mandarins collaborating with the French in Tonkin and Annam and of local officials in Indochina follows much the same pattern. This is particularly clear in the seizure of tax officials, prefects, mandarins, and clerk-secretaries during the tax riots of 1908. Cf. Maar, David, Vietnam's Anti-Colonial Movements: The Early Years 1885–1925 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970Google Scholar, Ch. 8. To mention only one other instance where the loss of legitimacy contributed to actual rebellion, Saya San's uprising in 1930 against Burma's colonial government, its taxes, and its tax collectors with Buddhist pongyis playing an important organizing role bears some similarity to the development in Banten.

33 A classic analysis of the process in England is that of Karl Polanyi in The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957)Google Scholar. In England traditional forces were powerful enough to retard the full impact of the market and to defend the traditional right to subsistence through such illfated relief measures as the Speenhamland system. In the directly ruled areas of Southeasa Asia, market forces were given full rein while in the indirectly ruled areas they were somewhat more circumscribed.

34 This is confirmed by Sansom in his historical analysis of rents in the Mekong Delta. “…The extent of tenancy and the degree of competition among prospective tenants for the right to farm land determined the share of the crop taken in Ecorent. Competition among agricultural laborers for the rights of tenancy varied directly with the size of the population, inversely with the amount of land in cultivation, and inversely with the amount of land being brought into cultivation.” Sansom, Robert L., The Economics of Insurgency in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1970), p. 33Google Scholar, italics in original. See also the evidence linking the proportion of the crop taken as rent to the density of the agricultural population in Clark, Colin and Haswell, Margaret, The Economics of Subsistence Agriculture (London: St. Martins Press, 1964), pp. 99–100.Google Scholar

35 See Lông, Ngô Vinh, The Colonial Peasants of Viet-Nam, 1900–1945 (Mss, 1969), pp. 82–95Google Scholar and Ch. 6, Sansom, , op. cit., pp. 37–39Google Scholar, and Furnivall, , op. cit., pp. 103, 192–193.Google Scholar

36 In this context, peasants were often willing to move from land starved areas to newly opened land, to add cash crops to a base of subsistence farming, and to migrate out of the village on a curseasonal basis. These changes in behavior represented an effort to take advantage of new opportunities while retaining a certain level of security. The implication is that peasants with an assured subsitence and/or a large surplus will be more willing to take risks since they can survive a mistake. At inadequate levels of welfare—when current behavior will produce disaster—risks once again make sense; there is nothing to lose.

37 Sansom, , op. cit., p. 199.Google Scholar

38 Ibid., p. 27, and Clark, and Haswell, , op. cit., p. 84.Google Scholar

39 Takahashi, Akira, Land and Peasants in Central Luzon (Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1969), p. 137Google Scholar. See also Piron, Jorge, “Land Tenure and Level of Living in Central Luzon,” Philippine Studies, Vol. 4, No. 3 (09, 1956), p. 393.Google Scholar

40 Lông, Ngô Vinh, op. cit., pp. 57–61.Google Scholar

41 Anderson, J. H., “Some Aspects of Land and Society in a Pangasinan Community,” Philippine Sociological Review, Vol. 10, Nos. 1 and 2 (01–04, 1962), p. 58.Google Scholar

42 Gourou, Pierre, The Peasants of the Tonkin Delta, translated by the Human Relations Area Files (New Haven: HRAF Press, 1955), p. 357.Google Scholar

43 See Hobsbawm, and Rudé, , op. cit.Google Scholar, Ch. 2, and Thompson, , op. cit., Ch. 7.Google Scholar

44 ten Dam, H., “Cooperation and Social Structure in the Village of Chibodas,” in Vol. 6, Indonesian Economics: The Concept of Dualism in Theory and Policy of Selected Studies of Indonesia by Dutch Scholars (The Hague: W. van Hoeve, 1961) p. 366.Google Scholar

45 Goudal, Jean, Labour Conditions in Indo-China (Geneva: I.L.O., 1938), p. 193Google Scholar. Quoted in Sansom, , op. cit., p. 28.Google Scholar

40 Sociologically, they are distinguished by a certain independence and mobility that derives from the necessity of surviving without the minimal securities that village membership and personal dependence might provide. In addition, of course, this group is socially disorganized because it lacks the traditional structures of cooperation available to stable village-based populations,

47 Thompson, E. P., The Maying of the English Working Class, op. cit., p. 216.Google Scholar

48 The account of the Samin movement on which this brief discussion is based is that of Benda, Harry J. and Castles, Lance, “The Samin Movement,” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Vol. 125, Part 2 (1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also The Siauw Giap, “The Samin and Samat Movements: Two Examples of Peasant Resistance,” Revue du Sud-Est Asiatique, 67, no. 2, pp. 304–310, and 68Google Scholar, no. 1, pp. 107–113.

49 Report of the Land and Agriculture Committee, Government of British Burma (Rangoon, 1938), II, p. 51.Google Scholar

50 Jay, , op. cit., p. 34.Google Scholar

51 Geertz, Clifford, Agricultural Involution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963).Google Scholar

52 ten Dam, H., op. cit., p. 372Google Scholar. Other land-owners in the village ten Dam studied more or less ostracized a wealthy villager who rented land to merchants from a neighboring town who in turn brought in outside labor.

53 van Gelderen, J., “The Aim and Task of Tropical-Colonial Economics,” p. 138, in Indonesian Economics: The Concept of Dualism in Theory and Practice, Vol. 6 of Selected Studies on Indonesia by Dutch Scholars (The Hague: W. van Hoeve, 1961).Google Scholar

54 In inter-war China as well as in Tudor and Stuart England, it is clear that when the poor send a child to be a domestic or apprentice in the home of a landlord or craftsman, they are mindful of the fact that the employer thereby assumes responsibility for the dependent's subsistence. That is, while the poor family is surely a victim of circumstances, local elites often take more servants than they need in response to local redistributive pressures. Cf. Fried, Morton H., The Fabric of Chinese Society (New York: Praeger, 1953), pp. 103–115Google Scholar, and Laslett, , The World We Have Lost, Chs. 1 and 5.Google Scholar

55 See Lyon, Margo L., Bases of Conflict in Rural JavaGoogle Scholar, Research Monograph #3 (Berkeley: University of California Center for South and South-east Asian Studies, December, 1970), and Wertheim, W. F., “From Aliran Towards Class Struggle in the Countryside of Java,” op. cit.Google Scholar

56 Gourou, Pierre, The Peasants of the Tonkin Delta, I, p. 379.Google Scholar

57 Ibid., II, p. 659.

58 Long, Ngo Vinh, op. cit., p. 30.Google Scholar

59 Swift, M. G., Malay Peasant Society in Jelebu, London School of Economics, Monographs on Social Anthropology #29 (London: Athlone Press, 1965), p. 153.Google Scholar

60 Swift, M. G., “Economic Concentration and Malay Peasant Society,” in Freedman, Maurice, ed., Social Organization: Essays Presented to Raymond Firth (London: Cass, 1967), p. 265Google Scholar. See also Kessler, C. S.'s excellent “Muslim Identity and Political Behavior in Kelantan,”Google Scholar to appear as a contribution to William R. Roff, ed., Essays on Kelantan (Forthcoming).

61 Anderson, J. H., “Some Aspects of Land and Society in a Pangasinan Community,” Philippine Sociological Review, 10:1 and 2 (01–04, 1962), p. 56.Google Scholar

62 Local elites are also increasingly integrated into district and provincial elites who now form the important reference group from which they now seek status and approval. They can thus go against local opinion both because their power is supported from above and because they are now extracting local resources in order to advance their position outside the village. See, in this context, Blau, Peter, op. cit., pp. 75–76.Google Scholar

63 Kerkvliet, Ben J., “Peasant Society and Unrest Prior to the Huk Revolution in the Philippines,” Asian Studies (Manila, 1972), pp. 3–8.Google Scholar

64 At one point Tinio was governor of the province. For another account of collective land-lord services, see Larkin, John A., The Evolution of Pampanga Society (PhD dissertation, N.Y.U., 1966), pp. 126–128Google Scholar, recently published as The Pampangans, (Berkeley: University of California Press. 1972).Google Scholar

65 Kerkvliet, , op. cit., p. 6.Google Scholar

66 Ibid., p. 8.

67 Anderson, J. N., “Some Aspects of Land and Society in a Pangasinan Community,” Philippine Sociological Review, 10:1 and 2 (01–04, 1962), p. 56.Google Scholar

68 Takahashi, Akira, Land and Peasants in Central Luzon, pp. 117–118Google Scholar. As Takahashi points out, the terms of tenancy, even in the Bulacan village he studied, are not as severe as in many other rural areas of Asia. As late as 1950, for example, almost one third of the tenant class was related to the owner of the land they rented. McMillan, Robert T., “Land Tenure in the Philippines,” Rural Sociology, 20:1 (1955), p. 27Google Scholar. Although that may have made little difference in the formal conditions of tenancy, it probably improved the security of tenure and the possibility of loans for those concerned. I suspect that the tradition of rebellion in the area and popular elections—which, in a sense, restore local redistributive pressures by requiring officeholders to have a sizable local following—have also prevented even more extreme conditions from developing.

69 For example, ten Dam, H., “Cooperation and Social Structure in the Village of Chibodas,” in Vol. 6, Indonesian Economics: The Concept of Dualism in Theory and Policy, of Selected Studies of Indonesia by Dutch Scholars (The Hague: W. van Hoeve, 1961), p. 367Google Scholar, and Larkin, , op. cit., p. 173.Google Scholar

70 Stinchcombe, , op. cit., p. 186.Google Scholar

71 Sansom, Robert L., The Economics of Insurgency in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1970), Ch. 2, pp. 18–56.Google Scholar

72 Ibid., p. 29. Emphasis in original. Ngô Vinh Lông, The Colonial Peasants of Viet-Nam, 1900–1945, Mss, 1969, p. 10Google Scholar, suggests that this quote overstates the paternalism of landlords in the early 20th century. While the statement should certainly be taken with a grain of salt as self-serving, there is little doubt that such practices were far more common before 1930 than after.

73 Sansom, , op. cit., pp. 35–37Google Scholar. This figure assumes an equal distribution of rice and thus under-states the gravity of the situation. It should be added that the internal shortage of rice resulted less in actual starvation than in a shift to less desirable food sources such as cassava and sweet potatoes.

74 Stinchcombe, , op. cit., p. 187Google Scholar. Peasant protest in such circumstances is likely to take on populist overtones because landowning and town interests have frequently become synonymous.

75 There is evidence that peasant violence may play a major role in preserving a tolerable balance of exchange. Hobsbawm and Rudé have shown how the English agrarian revolts of the 1830's, though put down by force, did retard the introduction of threshing machines and made land-owners more hesitant about lowering wages. Eric Hobsbawm and George Rudé, op. cit., Introduction. Sansom, , The Economics of Insurgency, pp. 60–61Google Scholar, has shown that, in the Mekong Delta, the less secure (from the standpoint of the Saigon regime) a village is, the lower the percentage of the crop commonly taken by landlords as rent. Peasants in Central Luzon similarly credit the Huks, though indirectly, for improvements in the conditions of tenancy. “In the previous uprising the rate of rent dropped from 50 to 45 percent.” “If the next one occurred, it would drop to 40 percent.” Takahashi, , op. cit. p. 77.Google Scholar