The document discusses James C. Scott's concept of "Zomia", a vast highland region in Southeast Asia inhabited by over 100 million people who have largely escaped control by nation-states. Scott argues that Zomians have used strategies like shifting cultivation, oral tradition, and mobility to remain stateless by choice. While nation-states dominated the 20th century, some highland regions remain zones of refuge where people reject state incorporation and control. The document examines how highland peoples organized without states and challenges the view that states embody progress, arguing statelessness was and remains a viable alternative form of social organization for many.

1. Global Anarchism: Communes,
Cooperation, and Communism
The “Scott Debate” and a place called Zomia

3. The “Scott Debate” and a place called Zomia
A history of those who “got away”
Or Head for them thar hills!

4. Zomia geographical term for “ all the lands at
altitudes above roughly three hundred meters
all the way from the Central Highlands of
Vietnam to northeastern India and traversing
five Southeast Asian nations (Vietnam,
Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Burma) and
four provinces of China (Yunnan, Guizhou,
Guangxi Sichuan).” (Scott, ix)
Some 2.5 million square kilometers
with about one hundred million
minority peoples (Scott, ix)
“Southeast Asian mainland massif”

5. Zomia as a geographical term (2002) created
from Zomi, a term for highlander common to
several related Tibeto-Burman languages
spoken in the India-Bangladesh-Burma border
area.
Highlander v. lowlander distinction embodied
in term
Transnational v. national distinction embodied
in this tem
About vast region and not “created nations”
About periphery v. center
About state centric v. people focused
Those who evaded the state v. those who
came under its control

7. Resources, economic relationships, and the State:
Rice crop near Ambositra, Madagascar, 2007

8. The “Scott Debate” and a place called Zomia
Scott’s thesis “simple, suggestive, and controversial.
Zomiza is the largest region of the world whose
peoples have not yet been fully incorporated into
nation-states” (Scott, ix)
Scott argues that self-governing peoples were the
vast majority of humanity until fairly recently and that
the “hill peoples” of Zomia have used a variety of
strategies to escape low land states.
Used conscious strategies to escape slavery, taxes,
conscription, and a host of state demands.
Chose to “evade” the state and to embrace “statelessness”
or “self-barbarism”

9. The “Scott Debate” and a place called Zomia
Evaders of the Modern State continue in efforts
Nation-state “won” (especially after 1945) but at what cost?
Remain “zones of refuge” and “shatter zones”
States use “strategies of ‘engulfment’” (military, technologies)
Selling of the state: Created “hegemonic narrative” of state as embodiment of
progress/civilization/enlightenment/order but flipside to this story (Scott, 31)
Living outside of the state a viable alternative, people have chosen to be ungoverned
“The larger the pile of rubble you leave behind, the larger your place in the historical
record.” (Scott, 33)
“The job of peasants, you might say, is to stay out of the archives.” (Scott, 34)

10. A scene depicting the Chinese Empire (Qing
Dynasty)'s campaign against the Miao people
at Lancaoping in 1795.

11. The “Scott Debate” and a place called Zomia
State needs population (“manpower”) but population can deny the state itself
State appropriates and integrates resources, brings in periphery to center to serve
interests, a state hates a vacuum
States colonize not just people but nature. Landscape transformed, remade, ordered
States dislike disorder (diversity) strive for uniformity (“sameness”): Language, law, identity
Zomians resist incorporation, “zone of cultural refusal”
"Departure Herald” (1425-1435 AD

12. “Barbarism by Design”:
About choice to be stateless
Hill peoples made choices to:
• Move from valleys to high lands to be out of state’s reach):
Location key!
• Engage in ”escape agriculture” or forest farming (swidden
agriculture)—roots v. rice (grain/rice production visible
hence taxable)
• “Forget” history (be outside of the state’s narrative). Travel
light: “They have just as much history as they require.”
(Scott, 330)
• “Forget” writing and loss of literacy (record keeping a tool
of the state and oral tradition more flexible, transportable,
democratic—no “orthodox text”)
• Be “not-a-state subject” instead of a state subject

13. Japanese mountain yam

14. Terrace rice fields in Yunnan Province, China 2003
Reject mono-culturalism: Padi-states foster uniformity in crops, work, leisure, identity.
Easier to monitor, assess, tax. Diseases spread more readily.

15. Rice paddies in Dili/East Timor (2011)
but what is happening in the higher elevations?

16. Self-Autonomy and Statelessness
• Three themes in hill peoples’ narratives: equality,
autonomy, mobility (Scott, 217)
• States have rulers and hill peoples have leaders? (Scott,
113)
• States make tribes rather than tribes make states
(Scott, 257) and tribes require chiefs
• “states make wars and wars make states” (Tilly, in
Scott, 146)

17. Rural landscape, Shan State, Burma, 2001

18. States and Nationalism
• “Stateless” through war or by choice very
different.
• “Ethnic Cleansing”
Nationalism and patriotism?

19. Mae La camp for Burmese (Myanmar)
refugees, Tak, Thailand, with over 700,000
refugees (2007)

20. Rohingya refugees boarding boats to flee to
Bangladesh (Sept. 2017).
Credit Adam Dean for The New York Times

21. Karen boy with traditional costume for
Karen New Year, 2013
The “Scott Debate” and a place called Zomia
Scott concludes: “The valley imagination has its history wrong.
Hill peoples are not pre- anything. In fact, they are better
understood as post-irrigated rice, postsedentary, postsubject,
and perhaps postliterate. They represent, in the longue durée,
a reactive and purposeful statelessness of peoples who have
adapted to a world of states while remaining outside their
firm grasp.” (Scott, 337)
What makes it an “anarchist history”?