![]() Such landscapes include rugged mountains, deserts, mangrove coasts, swamps, marshes, and fens-such as those nearby you! I will aim to give a brief description of such “non-state spaces” as well as the history of efforts to reinforce them and efforts by states to eliminate them (e.g. Certain other landscapes are resistant to state-making and therefore attractive to peoples wishing to evade or escape state control (taxes, conscription, corvée, enslavement). Scott's argument is all the more persuasive for the wealth of cases he brings under his magnifying-glass and for the vibrancy and liveliness of his style. From his vantage point it is easy to see through many standard illusions of social science. flood plains, river junctions, protected coastal zones. 'Scott argues his thesis uncompromisingly and with relentless power. Places of Refuge: high and dry, low and wetĭistinguished International Visiting Fellow SeminarĬertain landscapes are well-suited to early state-making: e.g. The simplification of river hydrology has set the stage for “iatrogenic” (illness caused by previous ‘treatment’) river ailments including massive floods. Disturbance ecology teaches us, on the contrary, how the ‘edge environments’ and ‘eco-tones’ created by naturally occurring floods and fires promote bio-diversity. Human engineering has radically simplified river hydrology, the way taxidermy or amputations might destroy a living being, so that rivers can be navigation canals, water storage, sewage conduits, hydroelectric sites, irrigation reservoirs, and flood free. Virtually all civilizations are dependent on the ever-renewed fertility of floodplain soils. An examination of the “flood pulse” as a river’s lungs and the nutrition it provides to all riverine creatures. Large Lecture Theatre, Department of Geography, Downing SiteĪn ecological and social hymn to the good work floods do for non-humans and for Homo sapiens alike. In Praise of Floods: homo sapiens and riversĭistinguished International Visiting Fellow Lecture He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Science, Science, Technology and Society Programme at M.I.T., and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He is currently teaching Agrarian Studies and Rebellion, Resistance and Repression. His research concerns political economy, comparative agrarian societies, theories of hegemony and resistance, peasant politics, revolution, Southeast Asia, theories of class relations and anarchism. James Scott is the Sterling Professor of Political Science, Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University. ![]()
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