James C Scott Popular Books
James C Scott Biography & Facts
James C. Scott (born December 2, 1936) is an American political scientist and anthropologist specializing in comparative politics. He is a comparative scholar of agrarian and non-state societies, subaltern politics, and anarchism. His primary research has centered on peasants of Southeast Asia and their strategies of resistance to various forms of domination. The New York Times described his research as "highly influential and idiosyncratic". Scott received his bachelor's degree from Williams College and his MA and PhD in political science from Yale. He taught at the University of Wisconsin–Madison until 1976 and then at Yale, where he is Sterling Professor of Political Science. Since 1991 he has directed Yale's Program in Agrarian Studies. He lives in Durham, Connecticut. Early life and career Scott was born in Mount Holly, New Jersey, in 1936. He attended the Moorestown Friends School, a Quaker Day School, and in 1953 matriculated at Williams College in Massachusetts. On the advice of Indonesia scholar William Hollinger he wrote an honors thesis on the economic development of Burma. Scott received his bachelor's degree from Williams College in 1958, and his PhD in political science from Yale University in 1967. Upon graduation, Scott received a Rotary International Fellowship to study in Burma, where he was recruited by an American student activist who had become an anti-communist organizer for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Scott agreed to do reporting for the agency, and at the end of his fellowship, took a post in the Paris office of the National Student Association, which accepted CIA money and direction in working against communist-controlled global student movements over the next few years. Scott began graduate study in political science at Yale in 1961. His dissertation on political ideology in Malaysia, which was supervised by Robert E. Lane, analysed interviews with Malaysian civil servants. In 1967, he took a position as an assistant professor in political science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His early work focused on corruption and machine politics. As a Southeast Asia specialist teaching during the Vietnam War, he offered popular courses on the war and peasant revolutions. In 1976, having earned tenure at Madison, Scott returned to Yale and settled on a farm in Durham, Connecticut, with his wife. They started with a small farm, then purchased a larger one nearby in the early 1980s and began raising sheep for their wool. Since 2011, the pastures on the farm have been grazed by two Highland cattle, named Fife and Dundee. Scott's first books were based on archival research. He is an influential scholar of ethnographic fieldwork. He is unusual for conducting his primary ethnographic fieldwork only after receiving tenure. To research his third book, Weapons of the Weak, Scott spent fourteen months in a village in Kedah, Malaysia between 1978 and 1980. When he had finished a draft, he returned for two months to solicit villagers' impressions of his depiction, and significantly revised the book based on their criticisms and insight. In 2011, Scott, along with other Burmese and Western scholars, convened at Yale University with the goal of re-establishing the Journal of the Burma Research Society for scholars. The journal's successor, named the Independent Journal of Burmese Scholarship (IJBS), published its first issue in August 2016. Major works James Scott's work focuses on the ways that subaltern people resist domination. The Moral Economy of the Peasant During the Vietnam War, Scott took an interest in Vietnam and wrote The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (1976) about the ways peasants resisted authority. His main argument is that peasants prefer the patron-client relations of the "moral economy", in which wealthier peasants protect weaker ones. When these traditional forms of solidarity break down due to the introduction of market forces, rebellion (or revolution) is likely. Samuel Popkin, in his book The Rational Peasant (1979), tried to refute this argument, showing that peasants are also rational actors who prefer free markets to exploitation by local elites. Scott and Popkin thus represent two radically different positions in the formalist–substantivist debate in political anthropology. Weapons of the Weak In Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (1985) Scott expanded his theories to peasants in other parts of the world. Scott's theories are often contrasted with Gramscian ideas about hegemony. Against Gramsci, Scott argues that the everyday resistance of subalterns shows that they have not consented to dominance. Domination and the Arts of Resistance In Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (1990) argues that subordinate groups employ strategies of resistance that go unnoticed. He terms this "infrapolitics." Scott describes the public interactions between dominators and oppressed as a "public transcript" and the critique of power that goes on offstage as a "hidden transcript." Groups under domination—from bonded labor to sexual violence—thus cannot be understood merely by their outward appearances. In order to study the systems of domination, careful attention is paid to what lies beneath the surface of evident, public behavior. In public, those that are oppressed accept their domination, but they always question their domination offstage. On the event of a publicization of this "hidden transcript", oppressed classes openly assume their speech, and become conscious of its common status. Seeing Like a State Scott's book Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (1998) saw his first major foray into political science. In it, he showed how central governments attempt to force legibility on their subjects, and fail to see complex, valuable forms of local social order and knowledge. Scott argues that in order for schemes to improve the human condition to succeed, they must take into account local conditions, and that the high-modernist ideologies of the 20th century have prevented this. He highlights collective farms in the Soviet Union, the building of Brasilia, and Prussian forestry techniques as examples of failed schemes. The Art of Not Being Governed In The Art of Not Being Governed, Scott addresses the question of how certain groups in the mountainous jungles of Southeast Asia managed to avoid a package of exploitation centered around the state, taxation, and grain cultivation. Certain aspects of their society seen by outsiders as backward (e.g., limited literacy and use of written language) were in fact part of the "Arts" referenced in the title: limiting literacy meant lower visibility to the state. Scott's main argument is that these people are "barbaric by design": their social organization, geographical location, subsistence practices and culture have been carved to discourage states.... Discover the James C Scott popular books. Find the top 100 most popular James C Scott books.
Best Seller James C Scott Books of 2024
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Red Sky Morning
Joe PappalardoThe explosive and bloody true history of Texas Rangers Company F, made up of hard men who risked their lives to bring justice to a lawless frontier.Between 1886 and 1888, Sergeant ...
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Siege of Heaven
Tom HarperIf you love Conn Iggulden, Lindsey Davis and Steven Pressfield, you will love this breathtaking historical adventure, brimming with murder, betrayal, bloodshed and romance, from th...
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Until the Darkness Comes
Kevin BrooksPI John Craine has come to Hale Island to get away from it all the memories and the guilt, and a past that just won't let go. But within hours he stumbles across the dead body of ...
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The Mosaic Of Shadows
Tom HarperPerfect for fans of Conn Iggulden, Lindsey Davis, Steven Pressfield, this breathtaking and captivating novel brings the Crusades to life in all their triumphant and tragic glory.'G...
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True Believer
Jack CarrINSTANT BESTSELLER “Take my word for it, James Reece is one rowdy motherfer. Get ready!” Chris Pratt, star of the #1 Amazon Prime series The Terminal List“Jack Carr and his altereg...
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Decade of Disunion
Robert W. MerryExploring a critical lesson about our nation that is as timely today as ever, Decade of Disunion shows how the country came apart during the enveloping slavery crisis of the 1850s....
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Remembering Peasants
Patrick JoyceA New York Times Book Review Editors' ChoiceA landmark new history of the peasant experience, exploring a now neglected way of life that once encompassed most of humanity but is va...
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The Conservative Mind
Russell Kirk"It is inconceivable even to imagine, let alone hope for, a dominant conservative movement in America without Kirk's labor." WILLIAM F BUCKLEY "A profound critique of co...
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Red Sky Mourning
Jack CarrWith the walls closing in, Navy SEAL sniper James Reece is on a race to dismantle a conspiracy that has forced America to her knees in the latest highoctane pageturner that seems r...
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James C. Scott Et Al v. Board Adjustment Et Al
Court of Criminal Appeals of TexasThree taxpayers, Petitioners here, brought an injunction proceeding against the City of Corpus Christi, its Board of Adjustment, and the Greater Corpus Enterprises, Inc., operator ...
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The Lessee of Robert G. Scott, And Susannah His Wife and James C. Madison, Plaintiffs in Error v. Silas Ratliffe
United States Supreme CourtThis is a writ of error to a judgment rendered in favour of the defendants, in an ejectment brought by the plaintiffs in the court of the United States, for the seventh circuit, an...
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The Birds That Audubon Missed
Kenn KaufmanRenowned naturalist Kenn Kaufman examines the scientific discoveries of John James Audubon and his artistic and ornithologist peers to show how what they saw (and what they missed)...
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Jack Carr Boxed Set
Jack CarrA whiteknuckled boxed set featuring the first three “absolutely awesome” (Brad Thor, #1 New York Times bestselling author) thrillers in the instant #1 New York Times bestselling Te...
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Savage Son
Jack Carr“Take my word for it, James Reece is one rowdy motherfer. Get ready!”Chris Pratt, star of the #1 Amazon Prime series The Terminal List “A rare gutpunch writer, full of grit and ins...
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Half-Sick Of Shadows
David LoganOn the eve of Granny Hazel’s burial in the back garden, a stranger in his time machine – a machine that bears an uncanny resemblance to a Morris Minor – visits five yearold Edward ...
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Betrayal
Stewart Binns'Brilliant. An explosive thriller with true authenticity' Tom Marcus, bestselling author of Soldier Spy January, 1981. They're undercover in Belfast.Determined to put an end to a w...
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William Neves and James C. Neves, Appellants v. William H. Scott and Thomas N. Beall
United States Supreme CourtMr. Cone, for the appellees made the following points: 1st. The marriage contract is executory; it conveys no titles, and creates no trusts, nor does it impair or abridge the right...
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Knights Of The Cross
Tom HarperPerfect for fans of Conn Iggulden, Lindsey Davis, Steven Pressfield, this breathtaking and captivating novel brings the Crusades to life in all their triumphant and tragic glory.'G...