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Archaeological Perspectives on Scott's Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States

Review products

James C.Scott, Against the Grain: A deep history of the earliest states, 2017. London/New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-18291-0, $26.00, xvii + 312 pp., 13 figures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2019

Thomas P. Leppard*
Affiliation:
Department of AnthropologyFlorida State UniversityJohnson Building 2035 E. Paul Dirac Drive Tallahassee, FL 32310USA Email: [email protected]

Extract

James C. Scott's Against the Grain has immense relevance for how archaeologists view the dynamics of early states and complex polities. In this volume, Scott—already established as a leading theorist of states and statecraft (e.g. Scott 1997; 2009)—brings his analytic power and capacity to turn a phrase to bear on the topic of the ‘earliest states’.

Type
Review Symposium
Copyright
Copyright © McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research 2019 

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References

Blanton, R.E. & Fargher, L.F., 2016. How Humans Cooperate: Confronting the challenges of collective action. Boulder (CO): University Press of Colorado.Google Scholar
Glaeser, E., 2011. Triumph of the City. London/New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Scott, J.C., 1997. Seeing Like a State: How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. London/New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, J.C., 2009. The Art of Not Being Governed: An anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia. London/New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Yoffee, N., 2016. The power of infrastructures: a counternarrative and a speculation. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 23(4), 1053–65.Google Scholar