Yale University Press
The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia
Key Metrics
- James C Scott
- Yale University Press
- Paperback
- 9780300021905
- 7.86 X 5.16 X 0.51 inches
- 0.59 pounds
- Business & Economics > General
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Vital to an understanding of peasant politics.--Library Journal
James C. Scott places the critical problem of the peasant household--subsistence--at the center of this study. The fear of food shortages, he argues persuasively, explains many otherwise puzzling technical, social, and moral arrangements in peasant society, such as resistance to innovation, the desire to own land even at some cost in terms of income, relationships with other people, and relationships with institutions, including the state.
Once the centrality of the subsistence problem is recognized, its effects on notions of economic and political justice can also be seen. Scott draws from the history of agrarian society in lower Burma and Vietnam to show how the transformations of the colonial era systematically violated the peasants' moral economy and created a situation of potential rebellion and revolution.
Demonstrating keen insights into the behavior of people in other cultures and a rare ability to generalize soundly from case studies, Scott offers a different perspective on peasant behavior that will be of interest particularly to political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, and Southeast Asianists.
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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