James C. Scott writes powerfully in favour of marginalised peoples' refusal to be subjected to extracting rulers in The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia.
THE ART OF NOT BEING GOVERNED An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia by James C. Scott 337 Pages. Yale University Press
At the same time, Scott pinpoints the difficulties of states that have tried to wrest control over people constantly on-the-move. The anthropologist and political scientist draws extensively on works done by other scholars before him. But original and a source of the author's pride is his development of "friction of terrain" _ or the ruggedness of hill peoples' choice of environment and remoteness _ as a major constraint for state-making in pre-modern societies.
Looking back 2,000 years from the time of the Han Chinese state up until World War II, Scott covers people living in a mountainous area stretching from Central Vietnam across Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Burma and four provinces in the southwest of China to India and Bangladesh.
He credits William van Schendel with being the first to call this area Zomia in a paper published in 2002. He dwells at length on Edward Leach's 1954 study of minorities in the highlands of Burma, and pays tribute to Pierre Castre's 1987 paper on frontier peoples in South America. Duly cited is Thongchai Winichaikul's opus on the mapping of Siam.
In Southeast Asia, Scott says the upland peoples evaded rulers "to avoid incorporation into state structures" and escape "peasant status". Those on the move in Zomia included egalitarian Hmong or Miao, as well as the hierarchai Tai or Shan, who were widely dispersed through the area.
He says his discussion of the limits set by hill peoples' choice to stay distant from centres of power and in terrain difficult to reach is intended to generate a new way of understanding state space.
James C. Scott
Scott refuses to refer to the 80 to 100 ethinicities in Zomia as tribes "in the strong sense of the word". The book's longest chapter _ called Ethnogenesis _ spells out why as it elaborates on the hill people's origins and practices. Scott is witty and cites examples that should make sense to specialists and generalists. He emphasises the "symbiosis" of hill and valley peoples, and in particular, their mutual benefits in trade.
Scott is emphatic in rejecting the notion that hill peoples lived the way they did because they were less civilised ancestors. They "elected" their social organisations, mobility patterns, agricultural forms, crops, cultural traditions because it was politically expedient. In other words, these saved them from conscription, taxes, corvee labour, epidemics and warfare
Showing his special interest in agriculture, Scott says hill peoples chose shifting cultivation, and grew root crops and tubers because these could be safely left in the ground for up to two years beyond the reach of raiders. They also were unattractive to the tax collector because of their low value-per-unit weight.
The hill people opted for oral rather than written histories because writing and texts were associated with states, and seen as consisting of lists for corvee labour, legal codes and specific contracts, among others.
Oral histories survive through retelling and accumulate interpretations that reflect current interests. "Oral tradictions are capable of impressive feats of faithful transmission over many generations if the group bearing the tradition so desires," Scott comments. As a case in point, he cites the Akha, whose teachers have succeeded to preserve elaborate recitations of long genealogies, major events in Akha history, and customary law despite different dialects spoken by widely dispersed groups.
He says states were valleys-based, and amassed manpower rather than territory because they had to be defended and fed. Hence the encouragement of the sedentary cultivation of rice which ripened at a predictable time, was visible because it grew above ground, and therefore could be easily taxed or confiscated.
He points to inherent fragilities in the practice of concentrating manpower, grain and revenue around the state centre. Rulers were vulnerable to being deceived by officials, even if the crop was visible. The fiscal population varied from season to season depending on the weather, pests and crop diseases. In addition, concentrating on one crop, rice, was too dangerous a gamble.
Though the book is about upland Southeast Asia, the author notes similar practices by marginalised peoples in South America, Europe and Africa. Hence a wide range of readers can relate with the "anarchist history" though minorities' specialists and anthropologists will get more out of it. Political scientists, for instance, should appreciate Scott's explanations for the hill people's life experiences, and his exploration of the egalitarian or hierarchical values they respectively uphold.
