Routledge
Decoding Subaltern Politics: Ideology, Disguise, and Resistance in Agrarian Politics
Key Metrics
- James C Scott
- Routledge
- Hardcover
- 9780415539753
- 9.21 X 6.14 X 0.44 inches
- 0.94 pounds
- History > Asia - General
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
James C. Scott has researched and written on subaltern groups, and, in particular, peasants, rebellion, resistance, and agriculture, for over 35 years. Yet much of Scott's most interesting work on the peasantry and the state, both conceptually and empirically, has never been published in book form. For the first time Decoding Subaltern Politics: Ideology, Disguise, and Resistance in Agrarian Politics, brings together some of his most important work in one volume.
The book covers three distinct yet interlinked bodies of work. The first lays out a framework for understanding peasant politics and rebellion, much of which is applicable to rural areas of the contemporary global south. Scott then goes on to develop his arguments regarding everyday forms of peasant resistance using the comparative example of the religious tithe in France and Malaysia, and tracing the forms of resistance that cover their own tracks and avoid direct clashes with authorities. For much of the world's population, and for most of its history, this sort of politics was far more common than the violent clashes that dominate the history books, and in this book one can examine the anatomy of such resistance in rich comparative detail. Finally, Scott explores how the state's increasing grip on its population: its identity, land-holding, income, and movements, is a precondition for political hegemony. Crucially, in examining the invention of state-mandated legal identities, especially, the permanent patronym and the vagaries of its imposition on vernacular life, Scott lays bare the micro-processes of state-formation and resistance.
Written by one of the leading social theorists of our age, Decoding Subaltern Politics: Ideology, Disguise, and Resistance in Agrarian Politics is an indispensible guide to the study of subaltern culture and politics and is essential reading for political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists and historians alike.
Author Bio
James Scott, Ph.D., Yale University, 1967, is the Sterling Professor of Political Science and Professor of Anthropology and is co-Director of the Agrarian Studies Program and a mediocre farmer. His research concerns political economy, comparative agrarian societies, theories of hegemony and resistance, peasant politics, revolution, Southeast Asia, theories of class relations and anarchism.
His publications include
- Domination and the Arts of Resistance, Yale Press, 1985
- Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, Yale Press 1980
- Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, Yale Press, 1998
- The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, Yale Press, 2008
- Two Cheers for Anarchism, Princeton Press, 2013
- Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest Agrarian States, Yale Press, 2017
Education
1954-58 B.A. Williams College, Political Economy
1958-59 auditor Rangoon University, Burma; Economics
1959-60 auditeur, Institut des Sciences Politiques, Paris; Political Science
1961-63 M.A. Yale University; Political Science
1963-67 Ph.D. Yale University; Political Science
Source: Yale University
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