Resistance and Accommodation

Definitions of resistance and accommodation, even in their earliest formulations, inevitably raised issues of culture and consciousness. As early as the 1960s, scholars began widening their definitions and complicating what once appeared to have been clear distinctions between accommodation and resistance. The absence of organized resistance, they said, did not necessarily imply accommodation, and certainly not acquiescence. All forms of critique could be seen to be examples of resistance. In the study of slavery in the Americas, scholars called attention to symbolic rather than directly confrontational forms of resistance. Songs might criticize the planter class. The preservation and reworking of African beliefs and practices pointed to the creation of identities and consciousness independent of the slave master. The accumulation of personal property offered some, albeit often very small, degree of economic autonomy and indicated the success slaves had in mitigating their condition. The existence and preservation of family networks were another way slaves created a world separate from their masters and, in so doing, brought into question the solidity of slavery as a system of domination.

Indeed, in this new way of looking at slavery, masters were discovered to have accommodated to the demands of their slaves in order to protect their economic investment and preserve a modicum of stability. Slavery came to be seen in less stark terms, slave societies as intensely negotiated worlds. At the same time, as topics such as songs and rituals began being included within the more expansive definitions of resistance, so also did theft, slowdowns, and other actions that did not have as their immediate object the overthrow of slavery itself. Because slaves had access to the master's valuable economic resources, they could steal from planters, damage crops, livestock, and machinery, or simply work slowly or inefficiently. Behaviors that Elkins and others had viewed as examples of moral defeat and acquiescence came to be viewed far differently, as creative expressions of resistance.

In Africa and elsewhere in the colonial world scholars were making similar points, focusing increasingly on symbolic and "hidden" forms of resistance. The older dichotomies of resistance versus accommodation fell out of favor. Historians called attention to social banditry, theft, and myriad activities ranging from tax evasion to migration, whereby the colonized resisted domination. One important concept was "moral economy," the cultural and ideological logic by which people understood social and economic relationships. The dominated—whether slaves or the colonized—expected their superiors to abide by certain codes of conduct that created a kind of consensus about how the community should function. These norms and obligations might range from how hard people should work to the provisioning of food. This logic could at times be articulated in ways that helped to foment active resistance or to force masters or colonizers to somehow accommodate to the demands of slaves or colonized peoples.

Oral histories and the recording of songs and other cultural productions pointed to the elaboration of rich critiques of colonial power. They also revealed the important roles of gender and generation. Women contested colonialism in ways that were often very different than men, and younger adults did so differently than their elders. In Mozambique, women complained of the burdens of forced cash-crop production of cotton and of sexual abuse by local colonial functionaries. Pounding grain into flour offered women an opportunity to converse and to compose songs about their condition as exploited people. "I suffer, I do," women lament in one song (see White and Vail),

I cultivate my cotton,
I suffer, my heart is weeping,
Picking, picking a whole basketful,
I suffer, my heart is weeping,
I've taken it to the Boma [market] there,
I suffer, my heart is weeping,
They've given me five escudos
I suffer, my heart is weeping.

Other songs the women sang parodied colonial officials, using rich and ribald language; the critique of colonialism remained implicit, so as not to invite retribution.

In the 1980s, the beginning of a cultural turn in studies of accommodation and resistance shifted attention away from collective acts such as rebellions. Increasingly, scholars emphasized culture and what people believed and how they felt. The definition of both words shifted from the physical to the mental to embrace historical conditions that could be political, cultural, even psychological. Scholars demonstrated the ways in which the creation of meaning, the ways people imbued the world around them with significance, could be powerfully constitutive of new identities that stood in opposition to slavery or the colonial order. Compliance therefore did not automatically indicate an absence of resistance. Indeed, some forms of accommodation could mask resistance as long as actions somehow mitigated conditions.

Cultural as opposed to political definitions of resistance have emphasized concepts such as moral economy, ritual, hegemony, and hybridity. Scholars of the subaltern school of South Asian history have been especially important in expanding the definitions of resistance and accommodation. They have, for instance, argued that since colonial domination was never total—that is, hegemonic—the culture of the colonized remained autonomous; their behavior cannot be reduced to so many reactions to colonialism. The emphasis thus shifts from resistance or accommodation to the kinds of engagements people had with those who wielded power. The decision the Melians faced more than two thousand years ago was exceptionally stark. Since most forms of domination—including slavery and colonialism—entail some sort of negotiation, scholars in the early twenty-first century focus on the complex cultural borrowing that typically characterizes slave and colonial societies.

For example, rituals and what some have described as "invented traditions" incorporated parts of the slave master's or the colonizer's world, such as dress, ceremony, or even state procedures such as criminal trials. This mixture of artifacts and other facets, what is called syncretism, can be seen most clearly in religion. Slave religions and religious movements throughout the colonial world have combined Christianity with earlier conceptions based on local gods and ancestor worship. The new beliefs have frequently critiqued the slave or colonial order as not simply unjust but immoral, even evil. They also have helped shape resistance movements such as the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya (1954–1956) and the 1915 Chilembwe revolt in Nyasaland (Malawi).

Definitions of resistance and accommodation now embrace far more than treaties, formal acceptances of defeat, and in the alternative large-scale organized movements against slavery or colonialism. As Fanon suggested, even looking the colonizer in the eye could be a form of resistance. Extending the definitions beyond formal settlements and organized resistance has not only broadened the range of possible examples but ultimately blurred the lines separating words that once had clearly opposed meanings. Even conventional acts of resistance are becoming seen as more ambiguous, since resistance often entails some sort of recognition of and accommodation to the colonizer's world. But the understanding of culture and consciousness raises thorny questions. Can one resist without consciously doing so? Can resistance include at the same time accommodation? The central challenge now facing scholars of slave and colonial societies is how to understand meaning and action within highly unequal relationships and how to creatively rethink those moments when people actively reassert their humanity in the face of power.