Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T04:51:17.992Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

State, Power, Anarchism

A Discussion of The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Anne Clunan
Anne Clunan
Affiliation:
Center on Contemporary Conflict, Naval Postgraduate School
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. By James C. Scott. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. 464p. $35.00.

The book under discussion is James C. Scott's latest contribution to the study of agrarian politics, culture, and society, and to the ways that marginalized communities evade or resist projects of state authority. The book offers a synoptic history of Upland Southeast Asia, a 2.5 million–kilometer region of hill country spanning Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Burma, and China. It offers a kind of “area study.” It also builds on Scott's earlier work on “hidden transcripts” of subaltern groups and on “seeing like a state.” The book raises many important theoretical questions about research methods and social inquiry, the relationship between political science and anthropology, the nature of states, and of modernity more generally. The book is also deeply relevant to problems of “state-building” and “failed states” in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia. As Scott writes, “The huge literature on state-making, contemporary and historic, pays virtually no attention to its obverse: the history of deliberate and reactive statelessness. This is the history of those who got away, and state-making cannot be understood apart from it. This is also what makes it an anarchist history” (p. x).

In this symposium, I have invited a number of prominent political and social scientists to comment on the book, its historical narrative, and its broader theoretical implications for thinking about power, state failure, state-building, and foreign policy. How does the book shed light on the limits of states and the modes of resistance to state authority? Are there limits, theoretical and normative, to this “anarchist” understanding of governance and the “art of being governed”?

—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

Type
Review Symposium: State, Power, Anarchism
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , March 2011 , pp. 99 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Air Force Space Command. 2010. “Cyber Command Achieves Full Operational Capability.” November 3. http://www.afspc.af.mil/pressreleasearchive/story.asp?id=123229293 (accessed November 11, 2010).Google Scholar
Bull, Hedley. 1977. The Anarchical Society. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clunan, Anne L., and Trinkunas, Harold A.. 2010a. “Conceptualizing Ungoverned Spaces: Territorial Statehood, Contested Authority, and Softened Sovereignty.” In Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives to State Authority in an Era of Softened Sovereignty, eds. Clunan, Anne L. and Trinkunas, Harold A.. Stanford: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clunan, Anne L., and Trinkunas, Harold A.. 2010b. “Alternative Governance and Security.” In Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives to State Authority in an Era of Softened Sovereignty, ed. Clunan, Anne L. and Trinkunas, Harold A.. Stanford: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clunan, Anne L., and Trinkunas, Harold A., eds. 2010. Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives to State Authority in an Era of Softened Sovereignty. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Cutler, A. Claire. 2003. Private Authority and Global Authority: Transnational Merchant Law in the Global Political Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deibert, Ronald, and Rohozinski, Rafal. 2010. “Liberation vs. Control: The Future of Cyberspace.” Journal of Democracy 24 (1): 43–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flournoy, Michele. 2009. “Rebalancing the Force: Major Issues for QDR 2010.” Speech by the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, given at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC, April 29. http://csis.org/files/media/csis/events/090501_flournoy.pdf (accessed October 15, 2010).Google Scholar
Friedrichs, Jörg. 2001. “The Meaning of the New Medievalism.” European Journal of International Relations 7 (4): 475–501.Google Scholar
Groh, Ty. 2010. “Fortress without Walls: Alternative Governance Structures on the Afghan-Pakistan Frontier.” In Ungoverned Spaces, ed. Clunan, Anne L. and Trinkunas, Harold A.. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Hall, Rodney Bruce, and Biersteker, Thomas, eds. 2002. The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, Robert H. 1990. Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Third World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jaskoski, Maiah. 2010. “Post-Transition Military Politics: Army Missions in Democratic Peru and Ecuador.” Unpublished manuscript. Copy on file with author.Google Scholar
Keck, Margaret E., and Sikkink, Kathryn. 1998. Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Khanna, Parag. 2009. “Neomedievalism.” Foreign Policy 172 (May/June): 91.Google Scholar
Krasner, Stephen D. 1999. Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Lamb, Robert D. 2008 “Ungoverned Areas and Threats from Safe Havens.” Final report of the Ungoverned Areas Project prepared for the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Department of Defense, Washington DC, January 2008; http://www.cissm.umd.edu/papers/files/ugash_report_final.pdf (accessed December 7, 2010).Google Scholar
Palan, Ronen. 2003. The Offshore World: Sovereign Markets, Virtual Places, and Nomad Millionaires. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Phillips, Andrew. 2010. War, Religion and Empire: The Transformation of International Orders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Phil. 2010. “Dangerous Spaces and International Security.” In Ungoverned Spaces, ed. Clunan, Anne L. and Trinkunas, Harold A.. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar