The art of not being governed: An anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia

摘要

With the bold assertion that virtually everything about the livelihood of Southeast Asian hill people can be read as strategic positioning designed to keep the valley-based state at arm's length, James C. Scott has once again presented a piece of work which almost certainly will rank among the classics within the field of Southeast Asian studies. Instead of the usual state-centric focus, Scott argues for the importance of understanding the co-evolution of hill and valley cultures. Zomia, the region covering the hilly areas in mainland Southeast Asia, is home to a range of cultures that all shared a common interest, Scott claims, in resisting the state. Many of these people were actually refugees who had chosen to escape from the increasing impositions laid upon them by the valley states, and, by settling in the hills, they had designed a way of living that purposely evaded state control. Their mode of subsistence-mainly slash-and-burn agriculture - is therefore a form of escape agriculture, and their social structure-unstable and egalitarian - is an escape social structure, Scott argues. The dialectic between hills and valleys that this perspective represents is not a new one, but Scott's book is a remarkably well-argued contribution to our understanding of historical change in the area.