James C. Scott

The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia is a book-length anthropological and historical study of the Zomia highlands of Southeast Asia written by James C. Scott published in 2009. Zomia, as defined by Scott, includes all the lands at elevations above 300 meters stretching from the Central Highlands of Vietnam to northeastern India. That encompasses parts of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar, as well as four provinces of China. Zomia's 100 million residents are minority peoples "of truly bewildering ethnic and linguistic variety", he writes. Among them are the Akha, Hmong, Karen, Lahu, Mien, and Wa peoples. (Source: [Wikipedia](

Examines how (sometimes quasi-) authoritarian central planning fails to deliver the goods, be they increased resources for the state or a better life for the people.

A wonderful Biography of Douglas Bader, RAF pilot and ace of the Battle of Britain. He was extraordinary because both legs had to be amputated after a crash before the start of WWII and his tremendous wartime exploits and lifetime of accomplishments were with 2 artificial legs. I first read this book from my Jr high library and it has been a lifetime favorite I have re-read several times.

Confrontations between the powerless and the powerful are laden with deception--the powerless feign deference and the powerful subtly assert their mastery. Peasants, serfs, untouchables, slaves, labourers, and prisoners are not free to speak their minds in the presence of power. These subordinate groups instead create a secret discourse that represents a critique of power spoken behind the backs of the dominant. At the same time, the powerful also develop a private dialogue about practices and goals of their rule that cannot be openly avowed. In this book, the author, a social scientist, offers a discussion both of the public roles played by the powerful and powerless and the mocking, vengeful tone they display off stage--what he terms their public and hidden transcripts. Using examples from the literature, history, and politics of cultures around the world, the author examines the many guises this interaction has taken throughout history and the tensions and contradictions it reflects. The author describes the ideological resistance of subordinate groups--their gossip, folktales, songs, jokes, and theater--their use of anonymity and ambiguity. He also analyzes how ruling elites attempt to convey an impression of hegemony through such devices as parades, state ceremony, and rituals of subordination and apology. Finally he identifies--with quotations that range from the recollections of American slaves to those of Russian citizens during the beginnings of Gorbachev's glasnost campaign--the political electricity generated among oppressed groups when, for the first time, the hidden transcript is spoken directly and publicly in the face of power.

"James C. Scott places the critical problem of the peasant household -- subsistence -- at the center of this study. The fear of food shortages, he argues persuasively, explains many otherwise puzzling technical, social, and moral arrangements in peasant society, such as resistance to innovation, the desire to own land even at some cost in terms of income, relationships with other people, and relationships with institutions, including the state. Once the centrality of the subsistence problem is recognized, its effects on notions of economic and political justice can also be seen. Scott draws from the history of agrarian society in lower Burma and Vietnam to show how the transformations of the colonial era systematically violated the peasants' 'moral economy' and created a situation of potential rebellion and revolution. Demonstrating keen insights into the behavior of people in other cultures and a rare ability to generalize soundly from case studies, Scott offers a different perspective on peasant behavior that will be of interest particularly to political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, and Southeast Asianists."--Publisher description.

"This collection by an international array of historians examines agrarian radicalism in comparative context from 1500 to the present. What unifies the studies presented here is a shared interest in the ways in which agrarian people in the Atlantic world interacted with each other; transmitted and translated ideas; developed new crops or methods; or formulated critiques of the existing social, economic, and political order. All agree, to varying extents, that the Atlantic world is best conceptualized not as a rigid barrier between nations, peoples, and cultures, but rather a frontier, a permeable space with eddies and currents of ideas, cultivars, and human beings. And, as these essays indicate, "radicalism" can be found not only in the political realm, but also in the rate and extent of social, economic, and environmental change."--Jacket.