From the acclaimed author and scholar James C. Scott, the
compelling tale of Asian peoples who until recently have stemmed
the vast tide of state-making to live at arm's length from any
organized state society 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, and
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 and 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; and
maintenance of a largely oral culture that allows them to reinvent
their histories and genealogies as they move between and around
states. In accessible language, James Scott, recognized worldwide
as an eminent authority in Southeast Asian, peasant, and agrarian
studies, tells the story of the peoples of Zomia and their unlikely
odyssey in search of self-determination. He redefines our views on
Asian politics, history, demographics, and even our fundamental
ideas about what constitutes civilization, and challenges us with a
radically different approach to history that presents events from
the perspective of stateless peoples and 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,
and marooned communities, be they Gypsies, Cossacks, tribes fleeing
slave raiders, Marsh Arabs, or San-Bushmen.
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