James Scott will present an extension of his 2009 book The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia on Monday, March 25. Scott is the Sterling Professor of Political Science, Professor of Anthropology, and Director of the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University.
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, corvée labor, epidemics, and warfare. 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; and maintenance of a largely oral culture that allows them to reinvent their histories and genealogies as they move between and around states.
Monday, March 25
5:30 – 6:30 pm (Reception to follow)
101 West Duke Building, East Campus
Free admission and parking, open to the public