Scott, James C. 1990. Dominance and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven; London: Yale University Press.Scott's concepts of infrapolitics and hiddent and public transcripts are key to my research project. Infrapolitics refers to “a wide variety of low-profile forms of resistance that dare not speak in their own name.” Power relations between the dominant and the dominated produces two types of transcript. The public transcript is the “self-portrait of dominant elites,” and “it is designed to… affirm and naturalize the power of dominant elites” (18). The hidden transcript, on the other hand, is created when “subordinates… gather outside the intimidating gaze of power” (Ibid.). It is the “dissonant political culture” of the dominated (Ibid.). Infrapolitics is in between the public and hidden transcripts. The dominated may resist repression of the dominant in disguised forms. Question: How can we understand relgious lives in authoritarian regimes by employing this framework?Einwohner, Rachel L. 2006. “Identity Work and Collective Action in a Repressive Context: Jewish Resistance on the 'Aryan Side' of the Warsaw Ghetto.” Social Problems 53(1):38–56.Einwohner (2006) studies the Jewish resistance to draw implications for movement research. She argues that the resistance shares many attributes with other cases of movements, defined as “organized, sustained, collective attempts to further the goals of some group, typically in opposition to some government or authoritative structure” (39).Question: Can we conceptualize religious groups as a kind of social movement, or movment-like? How would this help scholars evaluate the church-state relations?Yang, Fenggang. 2017. “From Cooperation to Resistance: Christian Responses to Intensified Suppression in China Today.” The Review of Faith & International Affairs 15(1):79–90.Yang Fenggang (2017), a sociologist in religion, establishes a tentative framework of Chinese Christian responses to the state. He categorizes the leaders of churches in China into three groups: cooperators, accommodators, and resisters.Question: This is a rigid categorization, and focuses mostly on leaders. How should we problmatize rigid categorization of leaders, as well as relationships between leaders and followers?
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