Offene und verschleierte Widerstandsformen in Agrargesellschaften: Banditentum, Rebellion und informelle Beziehungsnetzwerke

This article aims to deconstruct the romanticised depiction of the peaceful and harmonious world of agrarian societies, highlighting, instead, the tensions and conflicts of these social configurations. Accordingly, it analyses the different forms of peasant resistance against the dominant classes and state institutions (politicians and bureaucrats included). The article focuses on two types of open resistance and protest, i.e. the so-called social banditry and the various phenomena of rebellism. In these societies, however, there is also the alternative option of more inconspicuous and nearly invisible strategies of resistance. These chiefly involve informal personalised networks, such as coalitions based on patron-client relationships. These coalitions aim to counter the arbitrariness of power structures and states, which are perceived as distant and alien. Thus, on the one hand, their legitimacy is rejected while on the other their efficacy, viewed as detrimental, is curtailed.