The Art Of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History Of Upland
Southeast Asia

Product Description

For two thousand years the disparate groups that now reside in Zomia (a mountainous region the size of Europe that consists of portions of seven Asian countries) have fled the projects of the organized state societies that surround them-slavery conscription taxes corvee labor epidemics & warfare This book essentially an anarchist history is the first-ever examination of the huge literature on state-making whose author evaluates why people would deliberately & reactively remain stateless Among the strategies employed by the people of Zomia to remain stateless are physical dispersion in rugged terrain; agricultural practices that enhance mobility; pliable ethnic identities; devotion to prophetic millenarian leaders; & maintenance of a largely oral culture that allows them to reinvent their histories & genealogies as they move between & around states In accessible language James Scott recognized worldwide as an eminent authority in Southeast Asian peasant & agrarian studies tells the story of the peoples of Zomia & their unlikely odyssey in search of self-determination He redefines our views on Asian politics history demographics & even our fundamental ideas about what constitutes civilization & challenges us with a radically different approach to history that presents events from the perspective of stateless peoples & redefines state-making as a form of internal colonialism This new perspective requires a radical reevaluation of the civilizational narratives of the lowland states Scott's work on Zomia represents a new way to think of area studies that will be applicable to other runaway fugitive & marooned communities be they Gypsies Cossacks tribes fleeing slave raiders Marsh Arabs or San-Bushmen