Art Theory

James Scott on the topic of "The Art of Not Being Governed"



University of New England

Scott is the distinguished Sterling Professor of Political Science and Professor of Anthropology and is Director of the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University.

The author of several books, such as Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed; The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia; Domination and the Arts of Resistance; and Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, Scott is recognized worldwide as an authority on Southeast Asian, peasant, and agrarian studies.

His research concerns political economy, comparative agrarian societies, theories of hegemony and resistance, peasant politics, revolution, Southeast Asia, theories of class relations and anarchism. He is currently teaching Agrarian Studies and Rebellion, Resistance and Repression.

Scott is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has held grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation, and has been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Science, Science, Technology and Society Program at M.I.T., and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He received his bachelor’s degree from Williams College and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University.

The lecture is sponsored by the UNE Department of Political Science and the Student Club “People of Politics.”

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17 thoughts on “James Scott on the topic of "The Art of Not Being Governed"
  1. Brilliant speech… It's also supported by the traditional associations of traveling, migration, and nomadic life being more free than static geographic existence. The most common way of escaping oppressive government is exodus, if possible.

  2. I am from a Mizo from Mizoram, our language is used to derive the term 'Zomia'. (I belong to one of the hill tribes described in this book) We have a number system from 1 to billion, each digit with a name. The western counting system or Indian counting system doesn't have this. I think it says a lot about us having been apart of a larger civilization at some point in our history and due to some reason, had decided to break ties and hide away. May be to escape enslavement, famine, diseases or the tyranni of the state. Thank you Mr. Scott for writing a book about us.

  3. Scott's views seem to be consistent with Carneiro's theory of state formation. If you can escape the rule of a state by making yourself scarce, do it. States may be disinterested in ruling these people because they've got little or nothing for states to steal and the costs to states of subduing them isn't worth the costs.

  4. I think it could be argued that those who voluntarily chose to go overseas to new world colonies may have something in common with these people, the colonists were usually fleeing one or another form of repression. The same could probably be said for the pioneers pushing west and the people who choose to be mountain men even today.

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