American Writers (One Hundred Pages at a Time)

In this episode I close our my review of James C. Scott's works with a reading of his final book In Praise of Floods. It is a good summary of many of his major arguments but shows where some of his thinking had he lived longer. 

In this second half of my review of James C. Scott's Against the Grain, I explore his arguments about the origin of the state and the "golden age for barbarians". 

After enjoying Scott's take on anarchism we can move onto his penultimate book, a text exploring the origins of agriculture and the impact it has on human beings. We will be taking a closer look at his arguments and other perspectives on early agricultural societies when we read The Dawn of Everything, but for now let's enjoy the first half of Against the Grain.

My review of James C. Scott's short book Two Cheers for Anarchism. The book is a great introduction to Scott's ideas and a useful guide to putting an anarchist perspective on the world we live in. 

The finale of my review of James C. Scott's "The Art of Not Being Governed". This part of the book focuses on kinship and the role of leadership in millenarian movements as part of the strategy of state evasion. 

Part two of my review of James C. Scott's history of upland Southeast Asia (Zomia), from the perspective of those who intentionally evaded states. In this part of the book we move from the strategies of states to the strategies of evasion. What do you think the most useful strategies for evading states in today's world. 

The first part of my review of Scott's masterpiece on upland Southeast Asia, The Art of Not Being Governed. So many of his ideas come together into this indispensable book. In this first part we will learn about Zomia and the creation of geographical spaces outside of the machinations of states. 

The finale of my review of James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State. The last few chapters of this excellent book explore the experiments in agrarian high modernism and then explores metis, or embedded knowledge and the capacity of resilience against the designs of high modernist states. 

In part two of my review of Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott, I explore the dangers of high modernism and some of the case studies of failed experiments he examines. What is your favorite example of high modernism going wrong, besides the opening night of The Rites of Spring?

As we continue our exploration of the works of James C. Scott, we move from the arts of resistance to the designs of a state with faulty vision. How do states see, how do they envision transformation, and how do these two things together fail us?