bcbm
8th December 2009, 11:58
Zomia, the anarchist's Shangri-La
Monday December 7, 2009
Categories: A Sense of Place (http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/a-sense-of-place/)
Fascinating piece from the Boston Globe about "Zomia," (http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/12/06/the_mystery_of_zomia/?page=full)a name given to Asia's high mountain regions. What sort of person lives there? How does the geography make the culture? Excerpt:
Yale political scientist James Scott has published a book making a far more ambitious argument: Zomia, he says, offers a sort of counter-history of the evolution of human civilization. In Zomia's small societies, with their simple technologies, anti-authoritarian tendencies, and oral cultures, Scott sees not a world forgotten by civilization, but one that has been deliberately constructed to keep the state at arm's length.
Zomia's history, Scott argues, is a rejection of the mighty lowland states that are seen as defining Asia. He calls Zomia a "shatter zone," a place where people go to escape the raw deal that complex civilization historically has been for those at the bottom: the coerced labor and conscription into military service, the taxation for wars and pharaonic building projects, the epidemic diseases that came with intensive agriculture and animal husbandry.
What Zomia presents, Scott argues in his book "The Art of Not Being Governed," is nothing less than a refutation of the traditional narrative of steady civilizational progress, in which human life has improved as societies have grown larger and more complex. Instead, for many people through history, Scott argues, civilized life has been a burden and a menace.
"The reason why some people didn't become civilized, why some people didn't 'develop,' may not be a question of them not having the talent, or being backward and so on, but may be historically produced by their desire to avoid what they saw as the inconveniences of states," says Scott.
Scott's anarchist history of Zomia is controversial, both in its claims about the predatory nature of the state and in its portrait of Zomia's past. Other scholars of Asia - and Southeast Asia in particular - charge him with overgeneralizing about the region, and with seeing political motives in decisions and traditions that in fact have their roots in ecological necessity, happenstance, or even the profit motive.
But Scott, and other scholars of Zomia, are also pressing for a change in how we see the political world. In looking beyond national borders, or politically defined regions like East Asia or Southeast Asia, and in applying different kinds of organizational logic - in other words, in thinking of areas like Zomia as places in themselves - they see a chance not only to paint a more coherent portrait of history, but also to better address the troublesome and sometimes violent politics that can erupt in what are traditionally seen as the world's marginal border regions.
"There are all kinds of ways of cutting up the world," says Scott, "and it partly depends on what you want to understand."
Read the whole thing. (http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/12/06/the_mystery_of_zomia/?page=full) Are the Zomians rightly seen as barbarians, or as people who, like Bartleby the Scrivener, would prefer not to (in their case, be civilized, according to the rules of civilization).
http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2009/12/zomia-the-anarchists-shangri-l.html
Monday December 7, 2009
Categories: A Sense of Place (http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/a-sense-of-place/)
Fascinating piece from the Boston Globe about "Zomia," (http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/12/06/the_mystery_of_zomia/?page=full)a name given to Asia's high mountain regions. What sort of person lives there? How does the geography make the culture? Excerpt:
Yale political scientist James Scott has published a book making a far more ambitious argument: Zomia, he says, offers a sort of counter-history of the evolution of human civilization. In Zomia's small societies, with their simple technologies, anti-authoritarian tendencies, and oral cultures, Scott sees not a world forgotten by civilization, but one that has been deliberately constructed to keep the state at arm's length.
Zomia's history, Scott argues, is a rejection of the mighty lowland states that are seen as defining Asia. He calls Zomia a "shatter zone," a place where people go to escape the raw deal that complex civilization historically has been for those at the bottom: the coerced labor and conscription into military service, the taxation for wars and pharaonic building projects, the epidemic diseases that came with intensive agriculture and animal husbandry.
What Zomia presents, Scott argues in his book "The Art of Not Being Governed," is nothing less than a refutation of the traditional narrative of steady civilizational progress, in which human life has improved as societies have grown larger and more complex. Instead, for many people through history, Scott argues, civilized life has been a burden and a menace.
"The reason why some people didn't become civilized, why some people didn't 'develop,' may not be a question of them not having the talent, or being backward and so on, but may be historically produced by their desire to avoid what they saw as the inconveniences of states," says Scott.
Scott's anarchist history of Zomia is controversial, both in its claims about the predatory nature of the state and in its portrait of Zomia's past. Other scholars of Asia - and Southeast Asia in particular - charge him with overgeneralizing about the region, and with seeing political motives in decisions and traditions that in fact have their roots in ecological necessity, happenstance, or even the profit motive.
But Scott, and other scholars of Zomia, are also pressing for a change in how we see the political world. In looking beyond national borders, or politically defined regions like East Asia or Southeast Asia, and in applying different kinds of organizational logic - in other words, in thinking of areas like Zomia as places in themselves - they see a chance not only to paint a more coherent portrait of history, but also to better address the troublesome and sometimes violent politics that can erupt in what are traditionally seen as the world's marginal border regions.
"There are all kinds of ways of cutting up the world," says Scott, "and it partly depends on what you want to understand."
Read the whole thing. (http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/12/06/the_mystery_of_zomia/?page=full) Are the Zomians rightly seen as barbarians, or as people who, like Bartleby the Scrivener, would prefer not to (in their case, be civilized, according to the rules of civilization).
http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2009/12/zomia-the-anarchists-shangri-l.html