Books by James C. Scott
Found 5 books
Scott was a great man and scholar, and this book reminds you that many such people are really quite weird, in the good sense of course. You can pre-order it here .
That is the new James C. Scott book , and so far it is the most interesting non-fiction read of the year (I am about halfway through). You can think of it as an extended essay on which technologies actually gave rise to economies of scale, expressed through governance but not only. Ultimately the focus settles on Mesopotamia, but the discussion is wide-ranging and the lessons are applicable to much of human history. Here is an opening summary bit:
3. I fear what I call “ the James C. Scott dead end ,” namely that many territories will develop strong enough “state capacity-resistant” units that further Chinas and Romes will be difficult to achieve in terms of the size of the political unit. Imagine a world like Laos or northern Thailand. You may think that is a “mountains effect,” but neither the Great Plains nor Africa developed a China or Rome equivalent in earlier times, or much in the way of a very large or effective political unit. ...
3. I fear what I call “ the James C. Scott dead end ,” namely that many territories will develop strong enough “state capacity-resistant” units that further Chinas and Romes will be difficult to achieve in terms of the size of the political unit. Imagine a world like Laos or northern Thailand. You may think that is a “mountains effect,” but neither the Great Plains nor Africa developed a China or Rome equivalent in earlier times, or much in the way of a very large or effective political unit. ...
3. James C. Scott, Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, Meaningful Work and Play . He really is an anarchist, left-wing at that, but I couldn’t quite find a central core here, much as I admire his other books.
The subtitle is An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia and the author is James C. Scott of Yale University. Here is a summary from the Preface: