Underskog

About the seminar

Scott describes his lecture as an amateur’s attempt to understand how we all—toward the end of our brief species history—came to live suddenly in great heaps of people and be governed by the novel institutions we call states. While international development agencies and development researchers go to great lenghts to understand how to strengthen and build states, Scott argues that the “collapse” of States has more often been a blessing than a curse. In this lecture he asks why that is so, and why the time of the early states was also a “golden age” for barbarians.

About the lecturer

James Scott is Sterling Professor of Political Science and Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University. His books include “Seeing like a State: how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed”; “The Art of not being Governed: an anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia”; “The Weapons of the Weak: everyday forms of peasant resistance” and “Two Cheers for Anarchism: six easy pieces on autonomy, dignity and meaningful work at play”. His research concerns political economy, comparative agrarian societies, theories of hegemony and resistance, peasant politics, revolution, Southeast Asia, theories of class relations and anarchism.

The lecture by Professor Scott is part of a series of academic events organized in collaboration with our colleagues at the Department of Anthropology to celebrate SUMs 25th anniversary

Open for all!