This book…Huh? Oh hardy har-har; no, it is not a book about me. I’m governable…What?..., subtitled “An Anarchist…Shhh!...History of Upland Southeast Asia” is by
It is Professor Scott’s thesis that the people of the region described are not, for example, illiterate because government or civilization has not reached them and taught them to read and write, but rather that they have consciously (“the art”) decided not to learn in order to avoid some of the advantages of being governed, like, for example, TAXES. Huh? Pretty clever, non? Tea Party enthusiasts read on.
It’s a controversial thesis. Parenthetically, oh (Parenthetically, Professor Scott writes in the preface, “I’m the only one to blame for this book. I did it.” Huh! Like this guy.) On the one hand, the thesis “empowers” the Southeast Asian Uplanders, attributing to them a full share of the endowments with which their Creator…endowed them. Thus, Professor Scott flummoxes those who become ungovernable when there is a whiff in the academic air that certain subgroups of the species homo sapiens are “primitive” and that to be “civilized” is “better.” On the other hand, it’s a peculiar endowment. To be so differently-abled that one, or in this case 100,000,000 ones, flummox all government and all its beneficence—down to and including literacy—really? One hundred million homos consciously decided to do that? No. How would they have done that, Twitter? Ahh well, maybe.
Beyond—and above—controversial, this book is provocative and that is nearly the highest praise that can be given any intellectual work. James C. Scott travels in that thinly populated Upland of high academic achievement where he keeps good company with fellow anthropologists Claude Levi-Strauss and Clifford Geertz.
Image: Among the Hmong people of Laos.
