Times are hard. Several of our friends died this summer. This is the
case for James Campbell Scott, who passed away on July 19, 2024, an
anthropologist of anarchist sensibility like David Graeber. Professor
emeritus of political science and anthropology, he devoted his entire
life to the study of the State, the instruments of power over
individuals and groups, and the means developed by them to escape it. As
part of his studies, he went to Burma. He would become passionate about
this Southeast Asia. ---- In 1976, he published his first book on
peasant revolts in Vietnam and Burma. For him, the breakdown of social
ties in the peasant world after the authoritarian transformation of
economies and practices can lead to revolts. The peasant class will be
the subject of his studies because it is the most numerous social class,
in his eyes. He will go to live in a community of rice farmers in
Malaysia. He returns with the elements of a book published much later in
France, La Domination et les arts de la résistance, published by
Amsterdam/Multitudes in 2019. From his experience, he explains the means
implemented by peasants to escape the means of coercion developed by the
administration.
Following in the footsteps of David Graeber, he published Zomia or the
art of not being governed in France in 2013. This mountainous region of
Southeast Asia has been home to individuals rejecting the authority of
the plains states for 2,000 years; they cultivate practices of social
organization in order to escape bureaucracy, the army and other coercive
devices of the state apparatus. A fascinating approach that combines
ethnography, history and politics.
With Homo domesticus. A profound history of the first States, published
by La Découverte in 2019, he questions the centralizing States of the
Fertile Crescent (Near and Middle East) and their construction which
does not arise from a historical automatism but rather from a
conjunctural approach and violent social constraints exercised by a
minority, sometimes called an elite. Another history was perhaps
possible. Let us reread David Graeber and David Wengrow, In the
beginning was... A new history of humanity Ed. Les Liens qui Libèrent, 2021.
In his book The Eye of the State. Modernize, simplify, destroy,
published by La Découverte in 2021, he demonstrates the planning
strategies, their consequences developed by States to control
territories and populations. And above all, he explains the headlong
rush of these same States incapable of controlling the environmental
crisis that we know and of which they are the initiators. His words are
an updated echo of those of Elisée Reclus who denounced, a century ago,
this rupture between man and nature. With this great anarchist
geographer, "one cannot help but regret the brutality with which this
taking possession" of nature by man is accompanied.
He also gives us a premonitory warning: "A secret harmony is established
between the earth and the people it nourishes, and when imprudent
societies allow themselves to lay hands on what makes the beauty of
their domain, they always end up repenting." (Du sentiment de la nature
dans les sociétés modernes, Elisée Reclus, Ed. Bartillat, 2020).
The terms used, the style, in Reclus, stand the test of time but the
analysis remains lucid.
We still have to wait for Scott's last work published posthumously in
2025, In Praise of the Flood, the Untamed River and the Life It Brings,
and to feed on his analyses to build our action. He who in a Little
Praise of Anarchism celebrates the ability to exercise one's moral
judgment and creativity in complete freedom (Ed. Lux, 2019).
https://monde-libertaire.fr/?articlen=8008
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
case for James Campbell Scott, who passed away on July 19, 2024, an
anthropologist of anarchist sensibility like David Graeber. Professor
emeritus of political science and anthropology, he devoted his entire
life to the study of the State, the instruments of power over
individuals and groups, and the means developed by them to escape it. As
part of his studies, he went to Burma. He would become passionate about
this Southeast Asia. ---- In 1976, he published his first book on
peasant revolts in Vietnam and Burma. For him, the breakdown of social
ties in the peasant world after the authoritarian transformation of
economies and practices can lead to revolts. The peasant class will be
the subject of his studies because it is the most numerous social class,
in his eyes. He will go to live in a community of rice farmers in
Malaysia. He returns with the elements of a book published much later in
France, La Domination et les arts de la résistance, published by
Amsterdam/Multitudes in 2019. From his experience, he explains the means
implemented by peasants to escape the means of coercion developed by the
administration.
Following in the footsteps of David Graeber, he published Zomia or the
art of not being governed in France in 2013. This mountainous region of
Southeast Asia has been home to individuals rejecting the authority of
the plains states for 2,000 years; they cultivate practices of social
organization in order to escape bureaucracy, the army and other coercive
devices of the state apparatus. A fascinating approach that combines
ethnography, history and politics.
With Homo domesticus. A profound history of the first States, published
by La Découverte in 2019, he questions the centralizing States of the
Fertile Crescent (Near and Middle East) and their construction which
does not arise from a historical automatism but rather from a
conjunctural approach and violent social constraints exercised by a
minority, sometimes called an elite. Another history was perhaps
possible. Let us reread David Graeber and David Wengrow, In the
beginning was... A new history of humanity Ed. Les Liens qui Libèrent, 2021.
In his book The Eye of the State. Modernize, simplify, destroy,
published by La Découverte in 2021, he demonstrates the planning
strategies, their consequences developed by States to control
territories and populations. And above all, he explains the headlong
rush of these same States incapable of controlling the environmental
crisis that we know and of which they are the initiators. His words are
an updated echo of those of Elisée Reclus who denounced, a century ago,
this rupture between man and nature. With this great anarchist
geographer, "one cannot help but regret the brutality with which this
taking possession" of nature by man is accompanied.
He also gives us a premonitory warning: "A secret harmony is established
between the earth and the people it nourishes, and when imprudent
societies allow themselves to lay hands on what makes the beauty of
their domain, they always end up repenting." (Du sentiment de la nature
dans les sociétés modernes, Elisée Reclus, Ed. Bartillat, 2020).
The terms used, the style, in Reclus, stand the test of time but the
analysis remains lucid.
We still have to wait for Scott's last work published posthumously in
2025, In Praise of the Flood, the Untamed River and the Life It Brings,
and to feed on his analyses to build our action. He who in a Little
Praise of Anarchism celebrates the ability to exercise one's moral
judgment and creativity in complete freedom (Ed. Lux, 2019).
https://monde-libertaire.fr/?articlen=8008
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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