What is Reddit's opinion of The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (Yale Agrarian Studies Series)?

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James S Scott speculates that this is actually very common. His main case study is Southeast Asia, where there is a lot of evidence of people fleeing heavily agricultural civilizations for a horticultural life in the highlands both as a result of conflict and simply because the life of the latter is freer and (at least in many ways) richer as compared to the heavily-taxed life of an agricultural serf in a stratified society. Of course, horticulture might not be rice paddy cultivation but it's still agriculture. Nonetheless, he finds signs that this is a worldwide dynamic that shows up where ever you have a geographic or temporal transition between densely settled agriculture and a lower-density space that makes "less civilized" lifeways possible. One space he keeps coming back to is the Eastern/Midwestern US of the 1500s and 1600s, when the post Columbian contact plagues and their associated population collapses gave the survivors plenty of elbow room to make this transition.

I don’t know if this what you’re looking for but The Art if Being Ungoverned by James C. Scott blew my mind when I read it in undergrad. https://www.amazon.com/Art-Not-Being-Governed-Anarchist/dp/0300169175

I’ll see if I can find a free copy somewhere, or if you have a university library access it’s probably online.

The book "Art of Not Being Governed" talks about "Zomia" upland mountains of Southeast Asia.

It's very good, one of the books that I actually finished from start to finish in a single setting.

Check out The Art of Not being Governed by James C. Scott. He argues that the highlands of South-East Asia are the last places on earth that are not a part of modern nation-states. Also just a great geo-political history of SE Asia!

Yes, and indeed certain anthropologists theorize that real-world hill tribes do in fact deliberately live in terrain that is difficult or useless for lowland states to access in order to escape serfdom, slavery, military conscription, corvee labor, etc.

No, The Art of Not Being Governed.

If you simply mean an attitude of "Stay home, don't go overseas, and don't invite foreigners to visit" then China was strongly anti-globalist for most of the modern period, certainly for most of the stretch after 1500.

Also the same with Japan, profoundly anti-globalist.

The same could be said of Korea, but Korea was aware that it was in-between two giants, both of whom sometimes invaded Korea, so for Korea the struggle was always, simply, to try to maintain its independence, despite being surrounded by greater powers.

The story in Vietnam was somewhat similar to Korea, it was conscious of the permanent risk of being conquered by China. Vietnam has been anti-colonialist for almost 1,000 years.

And there were many people's on the edge of China's empire, who spent almost 1,000 years simply trying to avoid imperial government. Check out this book:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300169175/ref=ox_sc_saved_image_3?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1

But if you mean Europe, that is a bit different.

People in the home countries of Europe had very little information about what happened in overseas colonies. Consider the philosopher John Locke. In his books, he talks about grapefruit several times. He references it as something that one hears about but never experiences for oneself. He apparently asked several sailors, on different occasions, what grapefruit tasted like, and he was told several different and contradictory things. Locke died without ever getting to taste grapefruit himself. In his books he was making a point about things one hears of but never experiences, but what strikes me is that this was an affluent and well informed Englishman who still couldn't get his hands on this fruit that he kept hearing rumors about.

And that was regarding an item that went on existing year after year. We can imagine how much more difficult it would have been to get specific information about, say for instance, a specific kingdom in India, or working conditions on a specific plantation on the island of Java.

Certainly, there were endless peasant revolts, and often the criticism was made that the King was inflicting taxes to pay for unpopular wars. That charge haunted every European nation but emerged as the truly explosive issue in England in the 1620s, when Charles I was eager to raise taxes to pay for more wars, and the Parliament absolutely refused, leading Charles I to disband Parliament for an astonishing 13 years, a long period of seething frustration that then set the stage for the Civil War. When Charles I was finally forced to recall Parliament, they members of the Commons and the Lords came back angry and ready to fight.

I don't think the people in the home countries of Europe had enough information to have an opinion whether a particular colony was worth having. Their attitude, for centuries, was something like "War is the sport of kings" and much of the public either left war to the kings or fought against such activities mostly because they hated paying the taxes necessary for war.

"The Art Of Not Being Governed" might interest you:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300169175/ref=ox_sc_saved_image_7?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1

And

That's a great book...from 1977.

Most current studies on anarchist societies tend to be case studies, and they tend to show how anarchist societies interact with hierarchical ones.

James C Scott's <em>The Art of Not Being Governed</em> is a great study of non-state societies in SE Asia, though Scott is a political scientist and not an anthropologist. Another good book on this region is <em>The Last Stand of Asian Autonomies...</em>, an anthology edited by the historian Anthony Reid. For a work by anthropologists in SE Asia, I recommend checking out <em>Anarchic Solidarity: Autonomy, Equality, and Fellowship in Southeast Asia</em>. It's another anthology, and was put together by a couple of European anthropologists.

The Pacific Northwest and Northern California is also another hotspot for anarchist societies. Bill Angelbeck and Colin Grier, both archaeologists, have an influential article titled "Anarchism and the Archaeology of Anarchic Societies: Resistance to Centralization in the Coast Salish Region of the Pacific Northwest Coast" that's worth checking out. And archaeologist Robert Bettinger's <em>Orderly Anarchy: Sociopolitical Evolution in Aboriginal California</em> has received tons of plaudits.

Jean-Loup Amselle's <em>Mestizo Logics: Anthropology of Identity in Africa and Elsewhere</em> and Edwin Wilmsen's <em>Land Filled with Flies: A Political Economy of the Kalahari</em> are good starting points for west and south Africa, respectively, while Nancy Levine's <em>The Dynamics of Polyandry: Kinship, Domesticity, and Population on the Tibetan Border</em> or historian Justin Ritzinger's <em>Anarchy in the Pure Land: Reinventing the Cult of Maitreya in Modern Chinese Buddhism</em> are great starting points for central Asia.

There is a TON of opportunity for anarchism in ethnographic fieldwork, but a big part of the problem is being able to situate anarchic societies is a proper theoretical framework. Until anthropologists get out of the mindset that anarchic societies are isolated from other societies (ie Clastres), they'll never quite be as influential as other social scientists when it comes to understanding human society.

It's just inaccurate to say that mass culture frees us. I'll agree that mass culture helps expose us to find people and ideas we wouldn't see otherwise, but all the while keeping us enslaved, you can't enjoy the same freedoms as a rule under mass society that you can enjoy in smaller groups and decentralized systems. You're falsely associating the idea of group affinity and loyalty with fascists and nationalism. Sure there are commonalities between dignity's kind who wants a smaller more closely knit group, and with nationalist fascists. But that's only in the sense that there are commonalities between anarchists and "anarcho capitalists." One of these commonalities being that we both breathe air. In order to have mass society and the metropolis, you must give up all real autonomy over the land upon which you live. You must be governed. One of anarchism's primary tenets is that we do not want to be governed. The more important points you're talking about are covered in great detail in this book, I highly recommend it to you. http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Not-Being-Governed/dp/0300169175 It talks about how people who have successfully avoided assimilation into states have broken up into smaller decentralized groups and changed their life ways with the primary objects of not being forced into a state and maintaining the maximum amount of autonomy. "But these small social groups damn well better be interconnected with mass society so their members have the freedom to connect with other different groups, preventing the kind of isolation that cults prey upon rely on to maintain control over members." This isn't the standard outcome of any group of people living away from the metropolis. This is the exception, not the rule. I don't understand why you insist that anyone living away from civilization will inevitably self organize into some kind of blood cult from The Road, I think that's a misunderstanding based off of the inherent bias against the civilized, and for civilization that is pounded into our heads since a very young age. I really think you should read more about uncivilized peoples and you might change your mind there. A great easy to read book on this subject is Wade Davis' The Wayfinders. Lastly, I still insist that you're redefining anarchism. YOUR interperetation of anarchism is different than mine, that's fine we can disagree. But to say that Peter Kropotkin's anarchism isn't real anarchism is just nutters. He was one of the founders of this philosophy, and he was all about the commune. Anarchism is in my understanding a rejection of other peoples' power and coercion over you. That does not mandate mass society or a rejection of it, either. It's another matter entirely which of those perspectives works better.

I'm drawn to the spirit of libertarians, feel like their hearts are in the right place (sans the neoreactionary bigoted elements that often infiltrate). Paleo is becoming very popular with that crowd, most resistance being from people that either haven't heard about it or people who tend towards naive scientism/technophilia and are hostile to anything outside of the mainstream when it comes to science. I've integrated paleo into my own beliefs (radical decentralist with sympathies that could be called libertarian, anarchist, pro-market, anti-capitalist, and primitivist). A few points:

I want my people to be healthy, strong, fertile, happy, and beautiful. Paleo does that. Paleo is power.

Some anthropological literature examines the reciprocal ecological relationship between states and grains. Grains are state fuel for a variety of reasons, states encourage their cultivation quite literally at gunpoint in one example. Growing root crops like cassava and sweet potatoes on the other hand, is a genuine insurrectionist act. "Escape crops", the author called them.

We see the government's subsidies of HFCS, bogus dietary recommendations, SWAT raids on farm to table dinner gatherings and food co-ops, and all the other ways government policy taints our food as some unique modern aberration, but it's what governments have always done. Control food to control people. Paleo will be appearing on a leaked flyer from some police agency or think tank listing signs of extremism any day now.

Diet is culture. Being different for the sake of being different helps minority groups maintain their cultural/ethnic/religious identity. You see it in slurs against them, e.g. cat-eaters, "beaners". You've seen it with the way your friends and family react to your diet. After eating paleo for a few years, there are fundamental differences in your metabolism, the way you smell, the very chemical composition of your flesh. It makes you the other, and that's desirable when you'd like to set yourself apart culturally.

Allowing my imagination to go further... I see a holistic force of decay, control, and permanent death as the driving impulse behind most of our technology since the beginning of the industrial revolution at least. It's glyphosate in your Fruit Loops, fluoride in your water, the endocrine-disrupting plastic incense inside its Wal-Mart temples. Maybe it's just a useful metaphor that ties a number of things I don't like together. Maybe I really believe it is a force that affects our world materially. Most importantly here, Paleo is a rite of purification that removes the taint from our minds and bodies.

>Can you produce enough to overwhelm the examples of large populations living peaceably for an extended period of time WITH a central authority that I can produce?

I'm not quite sure if the following answers this question, but here it goes: I don't think central authorities have either the incentives or the ability to help large populations cooperate.

Centralization of political authority often leads to tyranny because rulers of large populations (and geographical areas) have little to fear from loosing citizens to free surrounding polities. I prefer decentralization to centralization because it leads to a sort of competition between Governments which results in more human freedom. Many historians partially credit the decentralized political order in Europe following the fall of Rome with the rise of an advanced Western Civilization.

See more here

Moreover, when decision making for a large group of people is centralized, the decisions coming from the top usually fail to take into account the practical facts of the situations in which they're applied. Austrian economists refer to this as the economic calculation problem. It was mainly applied to the Socialists, but it applies to basically any centralized group making decisions. I remember hearing my father who worked for Pfizer (a large pharmaceutical corporation) always complaining about his bosses. Listening to him, you'd think Pfizer made it's best efforts to pick the least qualified people for management positions. However this wasn't the case. The reality was that because decision making at Pfizer was centralized, the decisions made by the management made no sense to those further down the line because the management didn't have the ability to take into account all the details that should have been considered in making their decisions. The same principles illustrated above apply both to large corporations and to governments, this is why so many people find Dilbert to be a funny comic.

>How about modern Iceland, which is definitely a state? How about Portugal, New Zealand, Canada, and the Scandanavian nations?

As much as I'd like to claim to be an expert on these countries and their current economic and political climates, I simply do not know much about them, so I'd recommend asking someone else.

>Can you counter the suggestion that a central authority is necessary for the kind of cooperation that produces roadways, a common language, a common economy, higher learning, and all of the benefits that these bring?

With regard to the public goods problem which you allude to in this question, I recommend this video which basically explains that public goods do not have to be funded via governmental compulsion. Roderick T. Long (the guy who wrote the essay read in the video) states that there are other methods, such as appealing to the conscience of people who use the good (he gives the example of church goers), packaging the public good with private goods, and a few others. Regarding language, I don't believe any State can be credited with the creation of a language. From skimming this wikipedia entry it appears that the exact origins are unknown, but that it was developed organically as people evolved and cooperated with one another. Regarding a common economy, all an economy is is the sum total of transactions among a large group of people. Since the division of labor arises naturally, it should surprise no one that an economy will follow. From my limited knowledge of history, it seems that the role of states has generally been to limit the economy by raising tariffs on foreign goods to protect politically connected producers in their respective polities.

>Would you agree that the primary reasons the succeeded for as long as they did was due to isolation and not requiring a defensive stance against invaders? How would we propose to adapt anarcho-capitalism to accommodate non-isolated areas that do have to adopt a defensive stance?

Isolation certainly helps anarchic societies evade states. I recently read a great book on this topic found on amazon which theorizes that the indigenous tribes in Southeast Asia formed their social structures in such a way as to avoid being enslaved and expropriated by the States that existed in the valleys. For example, they preferred to grow root plants which are easy to hide and maintain, as opposed to rice, which is difficult to hide from tax collectors and difficult to maintain. So yes, isolation and the "friction of the terrain" make it easier to avoid State power. Although the author doubts this applies as much in our modern era with all weather roads and aircraft.

With regard to the issues of defense in non-isolated areas, I think the best strategy is to have a well-armed populace which is more difficult to conquer, as well as private security agencies that pose enough of an inconvenience to invaders that the invasion would be too expensive to the invaders. An An-Cap economist, Bob Murphy wrote a couple of essays on this topic found here that deals with this issue (as well as law) in more detail.

i like the suggestion of genghis khan and the making of the modern world a lot! i remember seeing that in the bookstore, and it looks fascinating. just to throw one more idea out there, here's a newish one i haven't read yet but am anxious to get to:

• James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (Yale University Press, 2009)

the publisher's description is too exciting not to quote:

> 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.