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77-468: The notion of the Southeast Asian Massif overlaps geographically with the eastern segment of Van Schendel's notion of Zomia proposed in 2002, while it overlaps geographically with what political scientist James C. Scott called Zomia in 2009. While the notion of Zomia underscores a historical and political understanding of that high region, the Southeast Asian Massif is more appropriately labelled

154-697: A Rotary International Fellowship to study in Burma, where he was recruited by an American student activist who had become an anti-communist organizer for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Scott agreed to do reporting for the agency, and at the end of his fellowship, took a post in the Paris office of the National Student Association , which accepted CIA money and direction in working against communist -controlled global student movements over

231-680: A Southeast Asia specialist teaching during the Vietnam War , he offered popular courses on the war and peasant revolutions . In 1976, having earned tenure at Madison, Scott returned to Yale and settled on a farm in Durham, Connecticut , with his wife. They started with a small farm, then purchased a larger one nearby in the early 1980s, where they sheared sheep and pastured Highland cattle . Though Scott's early and late books were based on interviews and archival investigations, his use of ethnographic and interpretative methods has been influential. He

308-679: A badge of honor ... Published in August 2017, Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States is an account of new evidence for the beginnings of the earliest civilizations that contradict the standard narrative. Scott explores why we avoided sedentism and plow agriculture ; the advantages of mobile subsistence ; the unforeseeable epidemics arising from crowding plants, animals, and grain; and why all early states are based on millets , cereal grains and unfree labor . He also discusses

385-475: A decisive majority. In religious terms, several groups are Animist , others are Buddhist , some are Christian , a good number share Taoist and Confucian values, the Hui are Muslim , while most societies sport a complex syncretism . Throughout history, feuds and frequent hostilities between local groups were evidence of the plurality of cultures. The region has never been united politically, not as an empire, nor as

462-668: A fashion that respects peasant needs (hence the phrase “moral economy” in his title), and they use such leverage as they have to persuade elites to do this. Elites are naturally less enthusiastic about this than peasants are. The processes of modernization often reduce peasant leverage. When peasant leverage becomes inadequate, elites often abandon their traditional moral obligations. Peasants react with shock and outrage, sometimes with riot or rebellion. Samuel Popkin , in his book The Rational Peasant (1979), wanting to refute some ideas he regarded as unfounded, made those ideas seem more influential than they were by 1) Saying that these were

539-534: A higher speed than in any other part of the world. In the short term, this will cause lakes to expand and bring floods and mudflows. In the long run, the glaciers are vital lifelines for Asian rivers, including the Indus and the Ganges . Once they vanish, water supplies in those regions will be in peril. The Tibetan Plateau contains the largest area of low- latitude glaciers and is particularly vulnerable to global warming. Over

616-753: A lifelong interest in Southeast Asia and peasantries, his later works ranged across many topics: quiet forms of political resistance, the failures of state-led social transformation, techniques used by non-state societies to avoid state control, commonplace uses of anarchist principles , and the rise of early agricultural states. His posthumous book, In Praise of Floods , is expected to be published in February 2025. The New York Times described his research as "highly influential and idiosyncratic". Scott received his bachelor's degree from Williams College and his MA and PhD in political science from Yale . He taught at

693-450: A place or a social space . The Tibetan world is not included in the Massif, as it has its own logic: a centralized and religiously harmonised core with a long, distinctive political existence that places it in a "feudal" and imperial category, which the societies historically associated with the Massif have rarely, if ever, developed into. To further qualify the particularities of the Massif,

770-671: A result of this extremely inhospitable environment, the Changtang region (together with the adjoining Kekexili region) is the least populous region in Asia and the third least populous area in the world after Antarctica and northern Greenland. The geological history of the Tibetan Plateau is closely related to that of the Himalayas. The Himalayas belong to the Alpine Orogeny and are therefore among

847-475: A series of core factors can be incorporated: history, languages, religion, customary social structures, economies, and political relationships with lowland states. What distinguishes highland societies may exceed what they have in common: a vast ecosystem, a state of marginality, and forms of subordination. The Massif is crossed by six major language families ( Austroasiatic , Hmong–Mien , Kra–Dai , Sino-Tibetan , Indo-European , Austronesian ), none of which forms

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924-437: A space shared among a few feuding kingdoms, not even as a zone with harmonised political systems. Forms of distinct customary political organisations, chiefly lineage based versus " feudal ", have long existed. Along with other transnational highlands around the Himalayas and around the world, the Southeast Asian Massif is marginal and fragmented in historical, economic, as well as cultural terms. It may thus be seen as lacking

1001-515: A state of marginality that is connected to political and economic distance from regional seats of power. In cultural terms, these highland societies are like a cultural mosaic with contrasting colours, rather than an integrated picture in harmonized shades – what Terry Rambo, talking from a Vietnam perspective, has dubbed "a psychedelic nightmare". Historically, these highlands have been used by lowland empires as reserves of resources (including slaves), and as buffer spaces between their domains. Zomia

1078-415: A steady wind to blow toward the land, which brings the moist air over the ocean surface with it. Rainfall is then increased by the presence of the moist ocean air. The rainfall is stimulated by a variety of mechanisms, such as low-level air being lifted upwards by mountains, surface heating, convergence at the surface, divergence aloft, or from storm-produced outflows near the surface. When such lifting occurs,

1155-621: A term usually referring to the localized, diurnal cycle of circulation near coastlines everywhere, but they are much larger in scale, stronger and seasonal. The seasonal monsoon wind shift and weather associated with the heating and cooling of the Tibetan plateau is the strongest such monsoon on Earth. Today, Tibet is an important heating surface of the atmosphere. However, during the Last Glacial Maximum , an approximately 2,400,000 square kilometres (930,000 sq mi) ice sheet covered

1232-492: Is a geographical term coined in 2002 by historian Willem van Schendel of the University of Amsterdam to refer to the huge mass of mainland Southeast Asia that has historically been beyond the control of governments based in the population centers of the lowlands . It largely overlaps with the geographical extent of the Southeast Asian Massif, although the exact boundaries of Zomia differ among scholars: all would include

1309-424: Is a gamble that might drop them below subsistence level if it did not work out, they will almost always reject that gamble. Scott asserted that in traditional societies, many (though by no means all) peasants have relationships with the elite that provide some degree of assurance that the peasants will not fall below subsistence level. The peasants believe that elites are under a strong moral obligation to behave in

1386-399: Is coming to an end. While Zomia is exceptionally diverse linguistically, the languages spoken in the hills are distinct from those spoken in the plains. Kinship structures, at least formally, also distinguish the hills from the lowlands. Hill societies do produce "a surplus", but they do not use that surplus to support kings and monks. Distinctions of status and wealth abound in the hills, as in

1463-409: Is distributed vertically through a "mixed layer" that may be 50 meters deep through the action of wind and buoyancy-generated turbulence , whereas the land surface conducts heat slowly, with the seasonal signal penetrating only a meter or so. Additionally, the specific heat capacity of liquid water is significantly greater than that of most materials that make up land. Together, these factors mean that

1540-427: Is incorrect to characterize upland Southeast Asia as "state-repelling" "zones of refuge/asylum" to which people voluntarily migrate. This is, he argues, an idealization consistent with the "new" populist postmodernism, but not supported by ethnographic evidence. The latter suggests that populations neither choose to migrate to upland areas (but go because they are forced off valley land), nor – once there – are they beyond

1617-854: Is located to the north of Himalayas and the Indian subcontinent , and to the south of Tarim Basin and Mongolian Plateau . Geopolitically, it covers most of the Tibet Autonomous Region , most of Qinghai , western half of Sichuan , Southern Gansu provinces in Western China , southern Xinjiang , Bhutan , the Indian regions of Ladakh and Lahaul and Spiti ( Himachal Pradesh ) as well as Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan , northwestern Nepal , eastern Tajikistan and southern Kyrgyzstan . It stretches approximately 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) north to south and 2,500 kilometres (1,600 mi) east to west. It

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1694-452: Is overestimating the importance of manpower as a determinant in military success. While the bulk of Scott's argument rests on the efforts of lowland states to dominate the highlands, Lieberman shows the importance of maritime commerce as an equally contributing factor. Lieberman also says that examples not included in Scott's analysis need to be taken into consideration. Scott firmly believes that

1771-411: Is that if you put on anarchist glasses and look at the history of popular movements, revolutions, ordinary politics, and the state from that angle, certain insights will appear that are obscured from almost any other angle. It will also become apparent that anarchist principles are active in the aspirations and political action of people who have never heard of anarchism or anarchist philosophy ." Scott

1848-776: Is the Qilian Mountains. The line of mountains continues east of the plateau as the Qinling , which separates the Ordos Plateau from Sichuan. North of the mountains runs the Gansu or Hexi Corridor which was the main silk-road route from China proper to the West. The plateau is a high-altitude arid steppe interspersed with mountain ranges and large brackish lakes. Annual precipitation ranges from 100 to 300 millimetres (3.9 to 11.8 in) and falls mainly as hail . The southern and eastern edges of

1925-519: Is the world's highest and largest plateau above sea level, with an area of 2,500,000 square kilometres (970,000 sq mi). With an average elevation exceeding 4,500 metres (14,800 ft) and being surrounded by imposing mountain ranges that harbor the world's two highest summits, Mount Everest and K2 , the Tibetan Plateau is often referred to as "the Roof of the World ". The Tibetan Plateau contains

2002-594: Is unusual for conducting his primary ethnographic fieldwork only after receiving tenure. To research his third book, Weapons of the Weak , Scott spent fourteen months in a village in Kedah, Malaysia between 1978 and 1980. When he had finished a draft, he returned for two months to solicit villagers' impressions of his depiction, and significantly revised the book based on their criticisms and insight. In 2011, Scott, along with other Burmese and Western scholars, convened at Yale with

2079-730: The Journal of Global History published a special issue, "Zomia and Beyond". In this issue, contemporary historians and social scientists of Southeast Asia respond to Scott's arguments. For example, although Southeast Asian expert Victor Lieberman agrees that the highland people crafted their own social worlds in response to the political and natural environments that they encountered, he also finds Scott's documentation to be very weak, especially its lack of Burmese-language sources, saying that not only does this undermine several of Scott's key arguments, but it brings some of his other theories about Zomia into question. Furthermore, Lieberman argues that Scott

2156-549: The Changtang , is generally too high and cold to support permanent population. One of the most notable civilizations to have developed on the Tibetan Plateau is the Tibetan Empire from the 7th century to the 9th century AD. Monsoons are caused by the different amplitudes of surface temperature seasonal cycles between land and oceans. This differential warming occurs because heating rates differ between land and water. Ocean heating

2233-525: The Eurasian Plate . About 50 million years ago, this fast-moving Indo-Australian plate had completely closed the Tethys Ocean , the existence of which has been determined by sedimentary rocks settled on the ocean floor, and the volcanoes that fringed its edges. Since these sediments were light, they crumpled into mountain ranges rather than sinking to the floor. During this early stage of its formation in

2310-922: The Kunlun Mountains separate the plateau from the Tarim Basin. About halfway across the Tarim the bounding range becomes the Altyn-Tagh and the Kunluns, by convention, continue somewhat to the south. In the 'V' formed by this split is the western part of the Qaidam Basin . The Altyn-Tagh ends near the Dangjin pass on the Dunhuang – Golmud road. To the west are short ranges called the Danghe, Yema, Shule, and Tulai Nanshans. The easternmost range

2387-538: The Moorestown Friends School , a Quaker Day School, and in 1953 matriculated at Williams College in Massachusetts. On the advice of Indonesia scholar William Hollinger he wrote an honors thesis on the economic development of Burma . Scott received his bachelor's degree from Williams College in 1958, and his PhD in political science from Yale University in 1967. Upon graduation, Scott received

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2464-588: The University of Wisconsin–Madison until 1976 and then at Yale, where he was Sterling Professor of Political Science . In 1991, he became director of Yale's Program in Agrarian Studies. At the time of his death, The New York Times described Scott as among the most widely read social scientists. Scott was born in Mount Holly, New Jersey , on December 2, 1936. He grew up in Beverly, New Jersey . Scott attended

2541-563: The headwaters of the drainage basins of most of the streams and rivers in surrounding regions . This includes the three longest rivers in Asia (the Yellow , Yangtze , and Mekong ). Its tens of thousands of glaciers and other geographical and ecological features serve as a " water tower " storing water and maintaining flow . It is sometimes termed the Third Pole because its ice fields contain

2618-530: The highlands of north Indochina (north Vietnam and all Laos ), Thailand , the Shan Hills of northern Myanmar , and the mountains of Southwest China ; some extend the region as far west as Tibet , Northeast India , Pakistan , and Afghanistan . These areas share a common elevated, rugged terrain , and have been the home of ethnic minorities that have preserved their local cultures by residing far from state control and influence. Other scholars have used

2695-672: The thermal low pressure caused by the heating, there was no monsoon over the Indian subcontinent . This lack of monsoon caused extensive rainfall over the Sahara , expansion of the Thar Desert , more dust deposited into the Arabian Sea , and a lowering of the biotic life zones on the Indian subcontinent. Animals responded to this shift in climate, with the Javan rusa migrating into India. In addition,

2772-441: The "barbarians" who long evaded state control, as a way of understanding continuing tension between states and non-subject peoples. In Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play (2012), Scott says that "Lacking a comprehensive anarchist worldview and philosophy, and in any case wary of nomothetic ways of seeing, I am making a case for a sort of anarchist squint. What I aim to show

2849-638: The Chinese lowlands. Ice of the plateau provides a valuable window to the past. In 2015, researchers studying the Plateau reached the top of the Guliya glacier , with ice thickness of 310 m (1,020 ft), and drilled to a depth of 50 m (160 ft) in order to recover ice core samples. Due to the extremely low biomass in those 15,000-year-old samples, it had taken around 5 years of research to extract 33 viruses, of which 28 were new to science. None had survived

2926-675: The Introduction, he wrote: ...  All identities, without exception, have been socially constructed: the Han, the Burman, the American, the Danish, all of them ... To the degree that the identity is stigmatized by the larger state or society, it is likely to become for many a resistant and defiant identity. Here invented identities combine with self-making of a heroic kind, in which such identifications become

3003-874: The Late Palaeogene, Tibet consisted of a deep palaeovalley bounded by multiple mountain ranges rather than the more topographically uniform elevated flatland that it is today. The Tibetan Plateau's mean elevation continued to vary since its initial uplift in the Eocene; isotopic records show the plateau's altitude was around 3,000 metres above sea level around the Oligocene-Miocene boundary and that it fell by 900 metres between 25.5 and 21.6 million years ago, attributable to tectonic unroofing from east–west extension or to erosion from climatic weathering. The plateau subsequently rose by 500 to 1,000 metres between 21.6 and 20.4 million years ago. Palaeobotanical evidence indicates that

3080-739: The Nujiang Suture Zone and the Yarlung-Zangpo Suture Zone remained tropical or subtropical lowlands until the latest Oligocene or Early Miocene , enabling biotic interchange across Tibet. The age of east–west grabens in the Lhasa and Himalaya terranes suggests that the plateau's elevation was close to its modern altitude by around 14 to 8 million years ago. Erosion rates in Tibet decreased significantly around 10 million years ago. The Indo-Australian plate continues to be driven horizontally below

3157-428: The Tibetan Plateau, which forces the plateau to move upwards; the plateau is still rising at a rate of approximately 5 mm (0.2 in) per year (although erosion reduces the actual increase in height). Much of the Tibetan Plateau is of relatively low relief. The cause of this is debated among geologists. Some argue that the Tibetan Plateau is an uplifted peneplain formed at low altitude, while others argue that

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3234-523: The Tibetan plateau from around 200,000 to 40,000 years ago, according to a study published in Nature . Nomads on the Tibetan Plateau and in the Himalayas are the remainders of nomadic practices historically once widespread in Asia and Africa. Pastoral nomads constitute about 40% of the ethnic Tibetan population. The presence of nomadic peoples on the plateau is predicated on their adaptation to survival on

3311-568: The actual James Scott, romanticized the traditional elites, suggesting that the elites often would act benevolently without much regard for their own self-interest. Popkin gave an impression that he and Scott represented two radically different positions in the formalist–substantivist debate in political anthropology. In fact both Popkin and Scott were formalists. In Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (1985) Scott expanded his theories to peasants in other parts of

3388-689: The age of 87. Scott's work focuses on the ways that subaltern people resist domination. During the Vietnam War , Scott took an interest in Vietnam and wrote The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (1976) about the ways peasants resisted authority. Scott asserted that the highest priority for most peasants is ensuring that their incomes will not fall below minimal subsistence level. They desire higher income levels, and will pursue them aggressively under some circumstances, but if their only path toward higher incomes

3465-433: The air cools due to expansion in lower pressure, which in turn produces condensation and precipitation. In winter, the land cools off quickly, but the ocean maintains the heat longer. The hot air over the ocean rises, creating a low-pressure area and a breeze from land to ocean while a large area of drying high pressure is formed over the land, increased by wintertime cooling. Monsoons are similar to sea and land breezes ,

3542-588: The continuity of the ethnic cultures living there provides a counter-narrative to the traditional story about modernity : namely, that once people are exposed to the conveniences of modern technology and the modern state, they will assimilate . Rather, the tribes in Zomia are conscious refugees from state rule and state-centered economies. From his preface: [Hill tribes] seen from the valley kingdoms as "our living ancestors", "what we were like before we discovered wet-rice cultivation, Buddhism , and civilization [are on

3619-414: The contrary] best understood as runaway, fugitive, maroon communities who have, over the course of two millennia, been fleeing the oppressions of state-making projects in the valleys—slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée labor , epidemics, and warfare. Scott goes on to add that Zomia is the biggest remaining area of earth whose inhabitants have not been completely absorbed by nation-states, although that time

3696-529: The culture took shape as a defensive mechanism, as a reaction to surrounding political and social environments. Lieberman, however, argues that the highland peoples of Borneo / Kalimantan had virtually the same cultural characteristics as the Zomians, such as the proliferation of local languages and swidden cultivation , which were all developed without a lowland predatory state. More recently, Scott's claims have been questioned by Tom Brass . Brass maintains that it

3773-581: The elevation and low precipitation. The Tibetan Plateau hosts the Tibetan wolf , and species of snow leopard , wild yak , wild ass , cranes, vultures, hawks, geese, snakes, and water buffalo . One notable animal is the high-altitude jumping spider , that can live at elevations of over 6,500 metres (21,300 ft). Ecoregions found on the Tibetan Plateau, as defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature , are as follows: Extinct humans ( Denisovans ) lived on

3850-645: The event of a publicization of this "hidden transcript," oppressed classes openly assume their speech and become conscious of its common status. Scott's book Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (1998) saw his first major foray into political science. In it, he showed how central governments attempt to force legibility on their subjects, and fail to see complex, valuable forms of local social order and knowledge. Scott argues that in order for schemes to improve

3927-583: The extraction process. Phylogenetic analysis suggests those viruses infected plants or other microorganisms. The Tibetan Plateau contains the world's third-largest store of ice. Qin Dahe, the former head of the China Meteorological Administration , issued the following assessment in 2009: Temperatures are rising four times faster than elsewhere in China, and the Tibetan glaciers are retreating at

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4004-529: The glaciers in Tibet created meltwater lakes in the Qaidam Basin , the Tarim Basin , and the Gobi Desert , despite the strong evaporation caused by the low latitude. Silt and clay from the glaciers accumulated in these lakes; when the lakes dried at the end of the ice age, the silt and clay were blown by the downslope wind off the Plateau. These airborne fine grains produced the enormous amount of loess in

4081-686: The goal of re-establishing the Journal of the Burma Research Society for scholars. The journal's successor, named the Independent Journal of Burmese Scholarship ( IJBS ), published its first issue in August 2016. Scott retired from teaching in 2022. In 1961, Scott married Louise Glover Goehring; they had three children and were married until her death in 1997. In 1999, he began a relationship with anthropologist Anna Tsing , which lasted until his death. Scott lived in Durham, Connecticut . He died at his home on July 19, 2024, at

4158-400: The heat capacity of the layer participating in the seasonal cycle is much larger over the oceans than over land, with the consequence that the land warms and cools faster than the ocean. In turn, air over the land warms faster and reaches a higher temperature than does air over the ocean. The warmer air over land tends to rise, creating an area of low pressure . The pressure anomaly then causes

4235-462: The human condition to succeed, they must take into account local conditions, and that the high-modernist ideologies of the 20th century have prevented this. He highlights collective farms in the Soviet Union , the building of Brasília , and Prussian forestry techniques as examples of failed schemes. In The Art of Not Being Governed , Scott addresses the question of how certain groups in

4312-499: The ideas of a group he called the "moral economists." 2) Making it clear that he regarded Scott, an influential and highly respected scholar, as the most conspicuous spokesman for the "moral economists." Popkin's "moral economists," unlike the actual James Scott, believed "that peasants have a fixed view of a proper income, that they will not strive to raise their income beyond that level, and that they are not interested in new forms of consumption." Popkin's "moral economists," unlike

4389-405: The largest reserve of fresh water outside the polar regions. The impact of climate change on the Tibetan Plateau is of ongoing scientific interest. The Tibetan Plateau is surrounded by the massive mountain ranges of high-mountain Asia . The plateau is bordered to the south by the inner Himalayan range , to the north by the Kunlun Mountains , which separate it from the Tarim Basin , and to

4466-404: The latter, the plateau is affected by distributed deformation resulting from flow within the crust. The Tibetan Plateau supports a variety of ecosystems, most of them classified as montane grasslands. While parts of the plateau feature an alpine tundra -like environment, other areas feature monsoon-influenced shrublands and forests. Species diversity is generally reduced on the plateau due to

4543-428: The low relief stems from erosion and infill of topographic depressions that occurred at already high elevations. The current tectonics of the plateau are also debated. The best-regarded explanations are provided by the block model and the alternative continuum model. According to the former, the crust of the plateau is formed of several blocks with little internal deformation separated by major strike-slip faults . In

4620-622: The mountainous jungles of Southeast Asia managed to avoid a package of exploitation centered around the state, taxation, and grain cultivation. Certain aspects of their society seen by outsiders as backward (e.g., limited literacy and use of written language) were in fact part of the "Arts" referenced in the title: limiting literacy meant lower visibility to the state. Scott's main argument is that these people are "barbaric by design": their social organization, geographical location, subsistence practices and culture have been carved to discourage states to annex them to their territories. Addressing identity in

4697-413: The necessary significance in the larger scheme of things to be proposed as a promising area subdivision of Asian studies . However, it is important to rethink country based research when addressing trans-border and marginal societies . Inquiries on the ground throughout the Massif show that these peoples share a sense of being different from the national majorities, a sense of geographical remoteness, and

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4774-470: The next few years. Scott began graduate study in political science at Yale in 1961, though originally intended to study economics. His dissertation on political ideology in Malaysia , which was supervised by Robert E. Lane , analysed interviews with Malaysian civil servants. In 1967, he took a position as an assistant professor in political science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison . His early work focused on corruption and machine politics . As

4851-438: The northeast by the Qilian Mountains , which separate the plateau from the Hexi Corridor and Gobi Desert . To the east and southeast the plateau gives way to the forested gorge and ridge geography of the mountainous headwaters of the Salween , Mekong , and Yangtze rivers in northwest Yunnan and western Sichuan (the Hengduan Mountains ). In the west, the curve of the rugged Karakoram range of northern Kashmir embraces

4928-452: The plateau. Due to its great extent, this glaciation in the subtropics was an important element of radiative forcing . With a much lower latitude, the ice in Tibet reflected at least four times more radiation energy per unit area into space than ice at higher latitudes . Thus, while the modern plateau heats the overlying atmosphere, during the Last Ice Age it helped to cool it. This cooling had multiple effects on regional climate. Without

5005-406: The plateau. The Indus River originates in the western Tibetan Plateau in the vicinity of Lake Manasarovar . The Tibetan Plateau is bounded in the north by a broad escarpment where the altitude drops from around 5,000 metres (16,000 ft) to 1,500 metres (4,900 ft) over a horizontal distance of less than 150 kilometres (93 mi). Along the escarpment is a range of mountains. In the west,

5082-535: The public interactions between dominators and oppressed as a "public transcript" and the critique of power that goes on offstage as a "hidden transcript". Groups under domination—from bonded labor to sexual violence —thus cannot be understood merely by their outward appearances. In order to study the systems of domination, careful attention is paid to what lies beneath the surface of evident, public behavior. In public, those that are oppressed accept their domination, but they always question their domination offstage. On

5159-649: The reach of the lowland State. Consequently, they are anything but empowered and safe in such contexts. Edward Stringham and Caleb J. Miles analyzed historical and anthropological evidence from societies in Southeast Asia and concluded that they have avoided states for thousands of years. Stringham further analyzes the institutions used to avoid, repel and prevent would-be states. He further concludes that stateless societies like "Zomia" have successfully repelled states using location, specific production methods, and cultural resistance to states. James C. Scott James Campbell Scott (December 2, 1936 – July 19, 2024)

5236-511: The steppe have grasslands that can sustainably support populations of nomadic herdsmen, although frost occurs for six months of the year. Permafrost occurs over extensive parts of the plateau. Proceeding to the north and northwest, the plateau becomes progressively higher, colder, and drier, until reaching the remote Changtang region in the northwestern part of the plateau. Here the average altitude exceeds 5,000 metres (16,000 ft) and winter temperatures can drop to −40 °C (−40 °F). As

5313-442: The term to discuss the similar ways that Southeast Asian governments have handled minority groups. The name is from Zomi , a term for highlander common to several related Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in the India-Bangladesh- Burma border area. Professor James C. Scott of Yale University used the concept of Zomia in his 2009 book The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia to argue that

5390-504: The valleys. The difference is that in the valleys they tend to be enduring, while in the hills they are both unstable and geographically confined. Jean Michaud explains the many dilemmas that arise from the language used to address the group of people residing in Zomia in his Historical Dictionary of the Peoples of the Southeast Asian Massif . The people of Zomia are often referred to as "national minority groups," and Michaud argues that contention arises with each of these words. In regards to

5467-437: The word " national ," Michaud claims that the peoples of the Southeast Asian Massif are in fact transnational, as many groups span over several countries. According to Michaud, " minority " is not the legitimate way to label the group either, since the populations are so vast. Michaud even claims that the word "group" is problematic because of its connotation with community and “social cohesion” that not all groups share. In 2010,

5544-400: The world's grassland by raising livestock rather than crops, which are unsuitable to the terrain. Archaeological evidence suggests that the earliest human occupation of the plateau occurred between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago. Since colonization of the Tibetan Plateau, Tibetan culture has adapted and flourished in the western, southern, and eastern regions of the plateau. The northern portion,

5621-467: The world. Scott's theories are often contrasted with Gramscian ideas about hegemony . Against Gramsci, Scott argues that the everyday resistance of subalterns shows that they have not consented to dominance. In Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (1990) argues that subordinate groups employ strategies of resistance that go unnoticed. He terms this "infrapolitics". Scott describes

5698-588: The younger mountain ranges on the planet, consisting mostly of uplifted sedimentary and metamorphic rock . Their formation is a result of a continental collision or orogeny along the convergent boundary between the Indo-Australian Plate and the Eurasian Plate . The collision began in the Upper Cretaceous period about 70 million years ago, when the north-moving Indo-Australian Plate , moving at about 15 cm (6 in) per year, collided with

5775-925: Was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was awarded resident fellowships at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences , the Institute for Advanced Study , and the Science, Technology and Society Program at M.I.T. He also received research grants from the National Science Foundation , the National Endowment for the Humanities , and the Guggenheim Foundation , and

5852-400: Was an American political scientist and anthropologist specializing in comparative politics . He was a comparative scholar of agrarian and non-state societies. Trained as a political scientist, Scott's scholarship discussed peasant societies, state power, and political resistance. From 1968 to 1985, Scott wrote influentially on agrarian politics in peninsular Malaysia. While he retained

5929-525: Was president of the Association for Asian Studies in 1997. In 2020 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society . (Note: excludes edited volumes.) Tibetan Plateau The Tibetan Plateau , also known as Qinghai–Tibet Plateau and Qing–Zang Plateau , is a vast elevated plateau located at the intersection of Central , South , and East Asia . . Geographically, it

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