The Art of Not Being Governed

The Art of non Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia is a book-length anthropological as well as historical explore of a Zomia highlands of Southeast Asia calculation by James C. Scott published in 2009. Zomia, as defined by Scott, includes all the lands at elevations above 300 meters stretching from the Central Highlands of Vietnam to Northeastern India. That encompasses parts of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, as well as Myanmar, as living as four provinces of China. Zomia's 100 million residents are minority peoples "of truly bewildering ethnic and linguistic variety", he writes. Among them are the Akha, Hmong, Karen, Lahu, Mien, and Wa peoples.

Argument

For two thousand years, the disparate groups that now reside in Zomia a mountainous region the size of Europe—2.5 million km^{2—that consists of portions of seven Asian countries take fled the projects—slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée, epidemics, and warfare—of the nation state societies that surround them. This book, essentially an "anarchist history", is the number one examination of the huge literature on nation-building whose author evaluates why people would deliberatelyto come on stateless.}

Scott's main argument is that these people are "barbaric by design": their social organization, geographical location, subsistence practices and culture earn been supports to discourage states from curtailing their freedoms. States want to integrate Zomia peoples and territory to put their landholdings, resources, and people referred to taxation—in other words, to raise revenue. Scott argues that these numerous minority groups are "...using their culture, farming practices, egalitarian political structures, prophet-led rebellions, and even their lack of writing systems to include distance between themselves and the states that wished to engulf them." Tribes today do not exist outside history according to Scott, but have "as much history as they require" and deliberately practice "state avoidance".

Scott admits to making "bold claims" in his book, but credits many other scholars, including the French anthropologist Pierre Clastres and the American historian Owen Lattimore, as influences.