The Art of Not Being Governed

Argument

Zomia 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.

As defined by Scott, Zomia includes all the lands above 300 meters, stretching from the Central Highlands of Vietnam to Northeastern India, encompassing parts of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar, as well as four provinces of China. The region measures about 2.5 million square kilometers, roughly the size of Europe. For two thousand years, the disparate groups that now reside in Zomia have defied slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée, and other controls attempted by the nation state societies that surround them. This book is essentially an "anarchist history" which attempts to evaluate why people would deliberately choose to remain stateless.

Scott's main argument is that these people are "barbaric by design": their social organization, geographical location, subsistence practices and culture have been maintained to discourage states from curtailing their freedoms. States want to integrate Zomia peoples and territory to increase their landholdings, resources, and people subject to taxation: in other words, to raise revenue. Scott argues that these many minority groups in the Zomia region are "...using their culture, farming practices, egalitarian political structures, prophet-led rebellions, and even their lack of writing systems to put distance between themselves and the states that wished to engulf them." Tribes today do not live outside history according to Scott, but have "as much history as they require" and deliberately practice "state avoidance".

Scott admits to making "bold claims" in his book, but credits many other scholars, including the French anthropologist Pierre Clastres and the American historian Owen Lattimore, as influences.