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REVIEW

James C. Scott writes powerfully in favour of marginalised peoples' refusal to be subjected to extracting rulers in The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia.

THE ART OF NOT BEING GOVERNED An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia by James C. Scott 337 Pages. Yale University Press

At the same time, Scott pinpoints the difficulties of states that have tried to wrest control over people constantly on-the-move. The anthropologist and political scientist draws extensively on works done by other scholars before him. But original and a source of the author's pride is his development of "friction of terrain" _ or the ruggedness of hill peoples' choice of environment and remoteness _ as a major constraint for state-making in pre-modern societies.

Looking back 2,000 years from the time of the Han Chinese state up until World War II, Scott covers people living in a mountainous area stretching from Central Vietnam across Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Burma and four provinces in the southwest of China to India and Bangladesh.

He credits William van Schendel with being the first to call this area Zomia in a paper published in 2002. He dwells at length on Edward Leach's 1954 study of minorities in the highlands of Burma, and pays tribute to Pierre Castre's 1987 paper on frontier peoples in South America. Duly cited is Thongchai Winichaikul's opus on the mapping of Siam.

In Southeast Asia, Scott says the upland peoples evaded rulers "to avoid incorporation into state structures" and escape "peasant status". Those on the move in Zomia included egalitarian Hmong or Miao, as well as the hierarchai Tai or Shan, who were widely dispersed through the area.

He says his discussion of the limits set by hill peoples' choice to stay distant from centres of power and in terrain difficult to reach is intended to generate a new way of understanding state space.

James C. Scott

Scott refuses to refer to the 80 to 100 ethinicities in Zomia as tribes "in the strong sense of the word". The book's longest chapter _ called Ethnogenesis _ spells out why as it elaborates on the hill people's origins and practices. Scott is witty and cites examples that should make sense to specialists and generalists. He emphasises the "symbiosis" of hill and valley peoples, and in particular, their mutual benefits in trade.

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The ultimate freedom