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=                   The_Art_of_Not_Being_Governed                    =
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                            Introduction
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'The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland
Southeast Asia' is a book-length anthropological and historical study
of the Zomia highlands of Southeast Asia written by James C. Scott
published in 2009. Zomia, as defined by Scott, includes all the lands
at elevations above 300 meters stretching from the Central Highlands
of Vietnam to Northeastern India, encompassing parts of Vietnam,
Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar, as well as four provinces of
China. Zomia's 100 million residents are minority peoples "of truly
bewildering ethnic and linguistic variety", he writes. Among them are
the Akha, Hmong, Karen, Lahu, Mien, and Wa peoples.


                              Argument
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For two thousand years, the disparate groups that now reside in Zomia
(a mountainous region the size of Europe--2.5 million km2--that
consists of portions of seven Asian countries) have fled the
projects--slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée, epidemics, and
warfare--of the nation state societies that surround them. This book,
essentially an "anarchist history", is the first examination of the
huge literature on nation-building whose author evaluates why people
would deliberately choose to remain stateless.

Scott's main argument is that these people are "barbaric by design":
their social organization, geographical location, subsistence
practices and culture have been maintained to discourage states from
curtailing their freedoms. States want to integrate Zomia peoples and
territory to increase their landholdings, resources, and people
subject to taxation--in other words, to raise revenue. Scott argues
that these many minority groups are "...using their culture, farming
practices, egalitarian political structures, prophet-led rebellions,
and even their lack of writing systems to put distance between
themselves and the states that wished to engulf them." Tribes today do
not live outside history according to Scott, but have "as much history
as they require" and deliberately practice "state avoidance".

Scott admits to making "bold claims" in his book, but credits many
other scholars, including the French anthropologist Pierre Clastres
and the American historian Owen Lattimore, as influences.


                             Reception
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The text triggered significant debate. Some academics argue that it
reduces complexity to simplistic binaries between state evasion and
state co-optation, or between freedom and oppression. Andrew Ong
writes, however, that text acknowledges throughout that autonomy is
not binary but rather a negotiated process of positioning and mutual
adaptation. Others have recognised Scott's contribution to championing
highland communities, while being critical of simplistic models of
environmental determinism that Scott uses.

Recent empirical archaeological and historical evaluations of Scott's
anthropological theory suggest that highlands in Southeast Asia were
places of creative transformation, and could both resist states and
also create new forms of social organisation, including new cities and
states. Historical as well as anthropological material also show how
hill people were regularly attracted by the wealth of the plains,
either raiding plains' villages or settling in lowlands.


                              See also
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*Escape crops in Southeast Asia
*Stateless society
*Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area
*Southeast Asian Massif
*'Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States'


                             References
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Reviews
*
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20150123015250/http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/65873/james-c-scott/the-art-of-not-being-governed-an-anarchist-history-of-upland-sou
The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland
Southeast Asia] review by 'Foreign Affairs'
*[http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=843 The
Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast
Asia] review by The Independent Institute
*[http://reason.com/archives/2010/05/25/life-on-the-edge Life on the
Edge] review by 'Reason'
*[http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/903 The Art of Not Being
Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia] review by
'Reviews in History'
*[http://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/jfrr/article/view/2941/2817
The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland
Southeast Asia] review in 'Journal of Folklore Research Reviews'


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