About James C. Scott
American political scientist and anthropologist (b. 1936), Sterling Professor at Yale and a self-described 'crude Marxist' turned anarchist sympathiser. Scott's books — Seeing Like a State, Weapons of the Weak, Two Cheers for Anarchism — reshaped how scholars think about peasants, states, and resistance, and made him one of the most widely read social scientists of his generation.
Books by James C. Scott
Seeing Like a State
A modern classic on why grand schemes to improve the human condition so often fail. Scott argues that states are driven to make society 'legible' — to simplify and standardize it for taxation, control, and planning — an…
Read about this book →The Art of Not Being Governed
A landmark of 'anarchist anthropology' that overturns the story civilisations tell about themselves. Scott studies 'Zomia,' the vast highland region of Southeast Asia, and argues its peoples were not backward stragglers…
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