KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Professor James C. Scott (Yale University)
27 JUNE, 17.30-19.30
A Brief History of Flight from the State
Abstract: “Zomia,” the designation invented by Willem van Schendel for that portion of upland Southeast Asia that has, until recently, evaded
incorporation into nation states and empires, could be, metaphorically,
extended to other areas of the world that have become zones of state
evasion. My talk explores some of those zones in Southeast Asia and
elsewhere. Though Zomia is mountainous, wetlands, swamps, marshes,
deltas and even city slums have also served historically as refugia for
state-fleeing populations. The principles of geography, subsistence
practices, mobility, and social structure that abet both state avoidance
and state-prevention are examined.
James Scott is the Sterling Professor of Political Science and Professor of Anthropology and is Director of the Agrarian Studies Program. He 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.
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.
Recent publications include “Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed”, Yale University Press, 1997; “Geographies of Trust: Geographies of Hierarchy,” in Democracy and Trust, 1998; “State Simplifications and Practical Knowledge,” in People’s Economy, People’s Ecology, 1998 and “The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia” (Yale Press, 2009).