The Art of Not Being Governed

The Art of Not Being Governed PDF Author: James C. Scott
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300156529
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 465

Get Book

Book Description
From the acclaimed author and scholar James C. Scott, the compelling tale of Asian peoples who until recently have stemmed the vast tide of state-making to live at arm’s length from any organized state society For two thousand years the disparate groups that now reside in Zomia (a mountainous region the size of Europe that consists of portions of seven Asian countries) have fled the projects of the organized state societies that surround them—slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée labor, epidemics, and warfare. This book, essentially an “anarchist history,” is the first-ever examination of the huge literature on state-making whose author evaluates why people would deliberately and reactively remain stateless. Among the strategies employed by the people of Zomia to remain stateless are physical dispersion in rugged terrain; agricultural practices that enhance mobility; pliable ethnic identities; devotion to prophetic, millenarian leaders; and maintenance of a largely oral culture that allows them to reinvent their histories and genealogies as they move between and around states. In accessible language, James Scott, recognized worldwide as an eminent authority in Southeast Asian, peasant, and agrarian studies, tells the story of the peoples of Zomia and their unlikely odyssey in search of self-determination. He redefines our views on Asian politics, history, demographics, and even our fundamental ideas about what constitutes civilization, and challenges us with a radically different approach to history that presents events from the perspective of stateless peoples and redefines state-making as a form of “internal colonialism.” This new perspective requires a radical reevaluation of the civilizational narratives of the lowland states. Scott’s work on Zomia represents a new way to think of area studies that will be applicable to other runaway, fugitive, and marooned communities, be they Gypsies, Cossacks, tribes fleeing slave raiders, Marsh Arabs, or San-Bushmen.

The Art of Not Being Governed

The Art of Not Being Governed PDF Author: James C. Scott
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300156529
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 465

Get Book

Book Description
From the acclaimed author and scholar James C. Scott, the compelling tale of Asian peoples who until recently have stemmed the vast tide of state-making to live at arm’s length from any organized state society For two thousand years the disparate groups that now reside in Zomia (a mountainous region the size of Europe that consists of portions of seven Asian countries) have fled the projects of the organized state societies that surround them—slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée labor, epidemics, and warfare. This book, essentially an “anarchist history,” is the first-ever examination of the huge literature on state-making whose author evaluates why people would deliberately and reactively remain stateless. Among the strategies employed by the people of Zomia to remain stateless are physical dispersion in rugged terrain; agricultural practices that enhance mobility; pliable ethnic identities; devotion to prophetic, millenarian leaders; and maintenance of a largely oral culture that allows them to reinvent their histories and genealogies as they move between and around states. In accessible language, James Scott, recognized worldwide as an eminent authority in Southeast Asian, peasant, and agrarian studies, tells the story of the peoples of Zomia and their unlikely odyssey in search of self-determination. He redefines our views on Asian politics, history, demographics, and even our fundamental ideas about what constitutes civilization, and challenges us with a radically different approach to history that presents events from the perspective of stateless peoples and redefines state-making as a form of “internal colonialism.” This new perspective requires a radical reevaluation of the civilizational narratives of the lowland states. Scott’s work on Zomia represents a new way to think of area studies that will be applicable to other runaway, fugitive, and marooned communities, be they Gypsies, Cossacks, tribes fleeing slave raiders, Marsh Arabs, or San-Bushmen.

How Not to Be Governed

How Not to Be Governed PDF Author: Jimmy Casas Klausen
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739150367
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Get Book

Book Description
How Not to Be Governed explores the contemporary debates and questions concerning anarchism in our own time. The authors address the political failures of earlier practices of anarchism, and the claim that anarchism is impracticable, by examining the anarchisms that have been theorized and practiced in the midst of these supposed failures. The authors revive the possibility of anarchism even as they examine it with a critical lens. Rather than breaking with prior anarchist practices, this volume reveals the central values and tactics of anarchism that remain with us, practiced even in the most unlikely and 'impossible' contexts.

Studying the Agency of Being Governed

Studying the Agency of Being Governed PDF Author: Stina Hansson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317624483
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Get Book

Book Description
This edited volume seeks to provide guidance on how we can approach questions of governing and agency—particularly those who endeavour to embark on grounded empirical research— by rendering explicit some key challenges, tensions, dilemmas, and confluences that such endeavours elicit. Indeed, the contributions in this volume reflect the growing tendency in governmentality studies to shift focus to empirically grounded studies. The volume thus explicitly aims to move from theory to practice, and to step back from the more top-down governmentality studies approach to one that examines how one can/does study how relations of power affect lives, experience and agency. This book offers insight into the intricate relations between the workings of governing and (the possibility for) people’s agency on the one hand, and about the possible effects of our attempts to engage in such studies on the other. In numerous ways, and from different starting points, the contributions to this volume provide thoughtful insights into, and creative suggestions for, how to work with the methodological challenges of studying the agency of being governed. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, global governance and research methods.

Ruling But Not Governing

Ruling But Not Governing PDF Author: Steven A. Cook
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801896061
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Get Book

Book Description
Ruling But Not Governing highlights the critical role that the military plays in the stability of the Egyptian, Algerian, and, until recently, Turkish political systems. This in-depth study demonstrates that while the soldiers and materiel of Middle Eastern militaries form the obvious outer perimeter of regime protection, it is actually the less apparent, multilayered institutional legacies of military domination that play the decisive role in regime maintenance. Steven A. Cook uncovers the complex and nuanced character of the military’s interest in maintaining a facade of democracy. He explores how an authoritarian elite hijack seemingly democratic practices such as elections, multiparty politics, and a relatively freer press as part of a strategy to ensure the durability of authoritarian systems. Using Turkey’s recent reforms as a point of departure, the study also explores ways external political actors can improve the likelihood of political change in Egypt and Algeria. Ruling But Not Governing provides valuable insight into the political dynamics that perpetuate authoritarian regimes and offers novel ways to promote democratic change.

To Govern China

To Govern China PDF Author: Vivienne Shue
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107193524
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 335

Get Book

Book Description
This book presents a uniquely dynamic and fluid model of political evolution in the world's largest and most powerful authoritarian regime.

The Dissent of the Governed

The Dissent of the Governed PDF Author: Stephen L. Carter
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674212664
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Get Book

Book Description
This text portrays America as dying from a refusal to engage a dialogue, a policy where everybody speaks but nobody listens. From this ailment the author provides a diagnosis which defends dialogue, negotiating conflict and keeping democracy alive.

Governing the Commons

Governing the Commons PDF Author: Elinor Ostrom
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107569788
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Get Book

Book Description
Tackles one of the most enduring and contentious issues of positive political economy: common pool resource management.

Consent of the Governed

Consent of the Governed PDF Author: Gerald P. Balcar
Publisher: Olin Frederick
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 750

Get Book

Book Description
Citing fear that the false perceptions propagated by interest groups, advocate groups, and reckless partisanship will destabilise American Government, 25 of the largest multinational corporations form POLACO. Their avowed purpose with this secret group is to take a greater role in government and appeal to the people to increase competence in political leadership. The apparent plan, termed 'nurturing democracy', is to establish new media to forward their concepts; to win popular support; and to recruit, train and elect candidates for state offices and the Congress. Unknown even to their excellent staff, operating from a partially underground headquaters on Harbour Island in the Bahamas, the deep purpose is to subvert the Constitution and to change America into a 'corporate state'. The star company of the Dow Jones Average, PENMET, is invited to join POLACO, but its multibillionaire builder and CEO, Ian MacAulliffe, calls in advisors who surmise POLACO's real intent. Ian then resolves to defend the Constitution. His advisors recommend fixing the American political system to eliminate POLACO's reason to exist. Ian agrees and they determine to elect a competent and charismatic president in a campaign that speaks of reality against perceptions and tackles the tough issues, which are being ignored. Adrian Daggett, an outstanding business leader and popular governor of Illinois becomes the candidate to reverse America's political decomposition. POLACO discovers PENMET's intervention and rushes massive support to the opposition. The presidential campaign becomes a titanic conflict which only a few know will decide the future. The story is of characters who struggle to tell the American people the truth, however painful, and their opponent who devise perceptions which they try to make into reality; and use smears, bribes, moles, and violence.

Seeing Like a State

Seeing Like a State PDF Author: James C. Scott
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300252986
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 462

Get Book

Book Description
“One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades.”—John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as “a magisterial critique of top-down social planning” by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail—sometimes catastrophically—in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. “Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”—New Yorker “A tour de force.”— Charles Tilly, Columbia University

Who Controls the Internet?

Who Controls the Internet? PDF Author: Jack Goldsmith
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198034803
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Get Book

Book Description
Is the Internet erasing national borders? Will the future of the Net be set by Internet engineers, rogue programmers, the United Nations, or powerful countries? Who's really in control of what's happening on the Net? In this provocative new book, Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu tell the fascinating story of the Internet's challenge to governmental rule in the 1990s, and the ensuing battles with governments around the world. It's a book about the fate of one idea--that the Internet might liberate us forever from government, borders, and even our physical selves. We learn of Google's struggles with the French government and Yahoo's capitulation to the Chinese regime; of how the European Union sets privacy standards on the Net for the entire world; and of eBay's struggles with fraud and how it slowly learned to trust the FBI. In a decade of events the original vision is uprooted, as governments time and time again assert their power to direct the future of the Internet. The destiny of the Internet over the next decades, argue Goldsmith and Wu, will reflect the interests of powerful nations and the conflicts within and between them. While acknowledging the many attractions of the earliest visions of the Internet, the authors describe the new order, and speaking to both its surprising virtues and unavoidable vices. Far from destroying the Internet, the experience of the last decade has lead to a quiet rediscovery of some of the oldest functions and justifications for territorial government. While territorial governments have unavoidable problems, it has proven hard to replace what legitimacy governments have, and harder yet to replace the system of rule of law that controls the unchecked evils of anarchy. While the Net will change some of the ways that territorial states govern, it will not diminish the oldest and most fundamental roles of government and challenges of governance. Well written and filled with fascinating examples, including colorful portraits of many key players in Internet history, this is a work that is bound to stir heated debate in the cyberspace community.