The Art of Not Being Governed

James C. Scott is Sterling Professor of Political Science, professor of anthropology, and codirector of the Agrarian Studies Programme, Yale University, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

出版者:Yale University Press

作者:James C. Scott

页数:464

出版时间:2009-09-29

价格:USD 35.00

装帧:Hardcover

isbn号码:9780300152289

图书标签:人类学社会学东南亚政治学历史人类学Anthropology社会scott

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. 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.

读后感

解构极端现代主义：从前现代国家发展中寻求启发：以人民的名义来反对个人，以程式化、扭曲化、精确静止的理念实现独裁统治。而这些理念背后反映出的统治者试图以极具说服力的现代工具和社会欲望为诱饵，强加于人民权威意识形态的行为，其实在无政府主义的抗争中就已经被解构了...  

引 言 宣统三年（1911）夏天，川滇边务大臣赵尔丰在四川康区的“改土归流”事业进入尾声。康区改土归流的目标是把原土司地区从四川省划分出来，单独设立西康省，原土司管理下的各地方将改设为八九十个州县，由外派流官治理。[1]赵尔丰与助手傅嵩炑抵达康定（打箭炉），收缴完...  

作者探究的对象是包括中国西南在内的所谓赞米亚高地，读来很亲切，也很有启迪性。书中涉及到了史学（政治史、边疆史、民族史、经济史）、人类学、社会学等多个方面，内容十分丰富。这书的翻译真心不错，读起来轻松，不别扭。我同时也购过作者所著的上海译林版的《农民的道义经...  

从序言就可以很明确的看出，斯科特希望改变的是长期以来对于东南亚历史和政治关系的民族国家话语式的理解，他引入了van Schendel所提出的Zomia概念，认为整个东南亚地区的山地-谷地模式以及多如牛毛的族群并不是一个单纯的纵向关系，也不是序列性的进化发展关系，而是一种互生...  

用户评价

identities--a bandwidth of possibility for adjusting the relation of individuals to the state effect

西南研究不得不看。略读加精读，两天总算搞定，关于高地社会族群认同bandwidth的讨论非常有趣。

the history of people without history is a history of their struggle against the state

为了证明自己的观点而打造证据的痕迹太明显。

教授今天还送了我一本