An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia by James Scott
A World of Peripheries
The Last Enclosure
Creating Subjects
The Great Mountain
Kingdom; or Zomia, The
Marches of Mainland
Southeast Asia
 Zones of Refuge
 The Symbiotic History of
Hills and Valleys
 Towards an Anarchist
History of Mainland
Southeast Asia
 The Elementary Units of
Political Order
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MAPPING STATE SPACE
INFLUENCE OF GOD-KINGS
The State as Centripetal
Population Machine
 The Shaping of State
Landscapes and State
Subjects
 Eradicating Illegible
Agriculture
 E Pluribus Unum: The
Creole Center
 Techniques of Population
Control
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 Slavery
 Fiscal Legibility
 State Space as Self-
Liquidating
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Valley States, Highland
Peoples: Dark Twins
The Economic Need for
Barbarians
The Invention of
Barbarians
The Domestication of
Borrowed Finery: All the
Way Down
The Civilizing Mission
Civilization as Rule
Leaving the State, going
over to the Barbarians
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Other Regions of Refuge
The Peopling of Zomia: the Long
March
The Ubiquity and Causes of
Flight
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Taxes and Corvee Labor
War and Rebellion
Raiding and Slaving
Rebels and Schismatics to the Hills
Crowding, Health, and the Ecology
of State Space
Against the Grain
The Friction of Distance: States
and Culture
Mini-Zomias, Dry and Wet
Going over to the Barbarians
Autonomy as Identity, StateEvading Peoples
An Extreme Case: Karen “Hiding
Villages”
 Location, Location, Location, and
Mobility
 Escape Agriculture
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New World Perspectives
Shifting Agriculture as “EscapeAgriculture”
Crop Choice as Escape Agriculture
Southeast Asian Swiddening as Escape
Southeast Asian Escape Crops
▪
▪
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Maize
Cassava/Manioc/Yucca
Social Structure of Escape
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“Tribality”
Evading Stateness and Permanent
Hierarchy
In the Shadow of the State, in the
Shadow of the Hills
Oral Histories and
Writing
 The Narrowness of
Literacy and Some
Precedents for Its Loss
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 On the Disadvantages of
Writing and the
Advantages of Orality
 The Advantages of Not
Having a History
The Incoherence of Tribe
and Ethnicity
 State Making as a
Cosmopolitan Ingathering
 Valleys Flatten
 Identities : Porosity,
Plurality, Flux
 Radical Constructionism:
The Tribe Is Dead, Long
Live the Tribe
 Tribe-Making
 Genealogical Face Saving
 Positionality
 Egalitarianism: The
Prevention of States
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A Vocation for Prophecy and
Rebellion: Hmong, Karen, and Lahu
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Hmong
Karen
Lahu
Theodicy of the Marginal and
Dispossessed
Prophets are a Dime a Dozen
“Sooner or Later…”
High-Altitude Prophetism
Dialogue, Mimicry, and Connections
Turning on a Dime: The Ultimate
Escape Social Structure
Cosmologies of Ethnic
Collaboration
Christianity: A Resource for
Distance and Modernity
State Evasion, State
Prevention: GlobalLocal
 Gradients of Secession
and Adaptation
 Civilization and Its
Malcontents
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Brad C. Davis - Eastern Washington State
University http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/
2010/07/05/review-of-art-of-not-beinggovernned-tlcnmrev-viii/
Mandy Sadan - School of Oriental and
African Studies http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/9
03
Tom Palmer - Atlas Foundation
http://reason.com/archives/2010/05/25/lifeon-the-edge
Victor Lieberman http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displa
yAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=7807296
Debate http://asu.academia.edu/HjorleifurJonsson/
Papers/506301/States_lie_and_stories_are
_tools_Following_up_on_Zomia
Do the achievements of the High Civilizations
justify previous bias in their favor?
 Do these civilizations propose solutions to the
violence of more egalitarian societies?
 Do the High Civilizations contain dangers within
their constructs of order that result in
catastrophic outcomes that bring into question
their solutions to the problems of egalitarian
societies?
 How do High Civilizations navigate a path
around the dangers of massive violence
associated with their accumulation of power.
