What are some James C. Scott quotes?

"Designed or planned social order is necessarily schematic; it always ignores essential features of any real, functioning social order. This truth is best illustrated in a work-to-rule strike, which turns on the fact that any production process depends on a host of informal practices and improvisations that could never be codified. By merely following the rules meticiously, the workforce can virtually halt production. In the same fashion, the simplified rules animating plans for, say, a city, a village or a collective farm were inadequate as a set of instructions for creating a functional social order, The formal scheme was parasitic on informal processes that, alone, it could not create or maintain." "Not so very long ago, however, such self-governing peoples were the majority of humankind. Today, they are seen from the valley kingdoms as “our living ancestors,” “what we were like before we discovered wet-rice cultivation, Buddhism and civilization.” on the contrary, I argue that hill peoples are best understood as runaway, fugitive, maroon communities who have, over the course of two millennia, been fleeing the oppressions of state-making projects in the valleys — slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée labor, epidemics, and warfare." "The aspiration to such uniformity and order alerts us to the fact that modern statecraft is largely a project of internal colonization, often glossed, as it is in its imperial rhetoric, as a 'civilizing mission'." - James C. Scott

What are some short James C. Scott quotes?

"We must never assume that local practice conforms with state theory." "The larger the pile of rubble you leave behind, the larger your place in the historical record!" "Encouragement of sedentarism is perhaps the oldest "state project," a project related to the second-oldest state project of taxation." - James C. Scott

How many quotes did James C. Scott wrote?

The author James C. Scott wrote around 37 of quotes.

Top 37 James C. Scott Quotes of All time

Q: What is the best James C. Scott quote?

"One day you will be called upon to break a big law in the name of justice and rationality. Everything will depend on it. You have to be ready. How are you going to prepare for that day when it really matters? You have to stay "in shape" so that when the big day comes you will be ready. What you need is "anarchist calisthenics." Every day or so break some trivial law that makes no sense, even if it’s only jaywalking. Use your own head to judge whether a law is just or reasonable. That way, you'll keep trim; and when the big day comes, you'll be ready." - James C. Scott

History and social science, because they are written by an intelligentsia using written records that are also created largely by literate officials, is simply not well equipped to uncover the silent and anonymous forms of class struggle that [Page 37] typify the peasantry.20 Its practitioners implicitly join the conspiracy of the participants, who are themselves, as it were, sworn to secrecy. Collectively, this unlikely cabal contributes to a stereotype of the peasantry, enshrined in both literature and in history, as a class that alternates between long periods of abject passivity and brief, violent, and futile explosions of rage. He had centuries of fear and submission behind him, his shoulders had become hardened to blows, his soul so crushed that he did not recognise his own degradation. You could beat him and starve him and rob him of everything, year in, year out, before he would abandon his caution and stupidity, his mind filled with all sorts of muddled ideas which he could not properly understand; and this went on until a culmination of injustice and suffering flung him at his master’s throat like some infuriated domestic animal who had been subjected to too many thrashings.21

Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance Quotes

Much history as well as popular imagination not only erases their contingency but implicitly attributes to historical actors intentions and consciousness they could not have possibly had...Once a significant historical event is codified, it travels a sort of condensation symbol and, unless we are very careful, takes on a false logic and order that does a grave injustice to how it was experienced at the time.

Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy Quotes Dignity and Meaningful Work and Play Quotes

we are now so prone to confuse great building projects with great social achievements. We will have to admit that it is beyond the scope of anyone’s imagination to create a community. We must learn to cherish the communities we have, they are hard to come by.

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed Quotes

which the sovereign state finds in its interest.19 The nature of the acts themselves

Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance Quotes

Everyday forms of resistance make no headlines.18 Just as millions of anthozoan polyps create, willy-nilly, a coral reef, so do thousands upon thousands of individual acts of insubordination and evasion create a political or economic barrier reef of their own. There is rarely any dramatic confrontation, any moment that is particularly newsworthy. And whenever, to pursue the simile, the ship of state runs aground on such a reef, attention is typically directed to the shipwreck itself and not to the vast aggregation of petty acts that made it possible. It is only rarely that the perpetrators of these petty acts seek to call attention to themselves. Their safety lies in their anonymity. It is also extremely rarely that officials of the state wish to publicize the insubordination. To do so would be to admit that their policy is unpopular, and, above all, to expose the tenuousness of their authority in the countryside—neither of which the sovereign state finds in its interest.19 The nature of the acts themselves and the self-interested muteness of the antagonists thus conspire to create a kind of complicitous silence that all but expunges everyday forms of resistance from the historical record.

Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance Quotes

That frontier operated as a rough and ready homeostatic device; the more a state pressed its subjects, the fewer subjects it had. The frontier underwrote popular freedom.

Civilization Quotes Freedom Quotes / Frontier Quotes Homeostasis Quotes Oppression Quotes State Quotes

Ethnicity and tribe began, by definition, where sovereignty and taxes ended. The ethnic zone was feared and stigmatized by state rhetoric precisely because it was beyond its grasp and therefore an example of defiance and an ever-present temptation to those who might wish to evade the state.

Civil disobedience Quotes Ethnicity Quotes Shatter belt Quotes Statism Quotes Taxes Quotes The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia Quotes

Why the histories of states should have so persistently insinuated themselves in the place that might have been occupied by peoples merits reflection.

History Quotes / Hill people Quotes Statism Quotes

The great flaw of all these administrative techniques is that, in the name of equality and democracy, they function as a vast "antipolitics machine", sweeping vast realms of legitimate public debate out of the public sphere and into the arms of technical, administrative committees. They stand in the way of potentially bracing and instructive debates about social policy, the meaning of intelligence, the selection of elites, the value of equity and diversity, and the purpose of economic growth and development. They are, in short, the means by which technical and administrative elites attempt to convince a skeptical public--while excluding the public from debate--that they play no favorites, take no obscure discretionary action, and have no biases but are merely taking transparent technical calculations.

Who could anticipate or provide for such a succession of hopes and services?” Her answer is simple: “Only an unimaginative man would think he could; only an arrogant man would want to.

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed Quotes

The cultivation of a single staple grain was, in itself, an important step in legibility and hence, appropriation. Monoculture fosters uniformity at many different levels. . .A society shaped powerfully by monoculture was easier to monitor, assess, and tax than one shaped by agricultural diversity.

Agriculture Quotes Centralization Quotes Homogeneity Quotes Monoculture Quotes Taxation Quotes

What is inadmissible, both morally and scientifically, is the hubris that pretends to understand the behavior of human agents without for a moment listening systematically to how they understand what they are doing and how they explain themselves.

Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy Quotes Dignity Quotes and Meaningful Work and Play Quotes

The petite bourgeoise and small property in general represent a precious zone of autonomy and freedom in state systems increasingly dominated by large public and private bureaucracies.

Freedom Quotes Work Quotes / Autonomy Quotes Bureaucracy Quotes Capitalism Quotes Life Quotes Petite bourgeoise Quotes Private sector Quotes

Center for Disease Control in Atlanta is a striking case in point. Its network of sample hospitals allowed it to first “discover”—in the epidemiological sense—such hitherto unknown diseases as toxic shock syndrome, Legionnaire’s disease, and AIDS.

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed Quotes

It is time someone put in a good word for the petite bourgeoise. Unlike the working class and capitalists, who have never lack for spokespersons, the petite bourgeoise rarely, if ever, speaks for itself.

Freedom Quotes Work Quotes / Capitalism Quotes Life Quotes Petite bourgeoise Quotes Trade unions Quotes Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy Quotes Dignity and Meaningful Work and Play Quotes

Slums were the first foothold of poor migrants to the city.

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed Quotes

Planners frequently destroyed “unslumming slums” because these areas violated their doctrines

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed Quotes

results of such profound confusion between art and life are neither life nor art. They are taxidermy.

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed Quotes

After seizing state power, the victors have a powerful interest in moving the revolution out of the streets and into the museums and schoolbooks as quick as possible, lest the people decide to repeat the experience.

Anarchy revolution scott Quotes Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed Quotes

modern statecraft is largely a project of internal colonization, often glossed, as it is in imperial rhetoric, as a “civilizing mission.

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed Quotes

Gossip is perhaps the most familiar and elementary form of disguised popular aggression. Though its use is hardly confined to attacks by subordinates on their superiors, it represents a relatively safe social sanction. Gossip, almost by definition has no identifiable author, but scores of eager retailers who can claim they are just passing on the news. Should the gossip—and here I have in mind malicious gossip—be challenged, everyone can disavow responsibility for having originated it. The Malay term for gossip and rumor, khabar angin (news on the wind), captures the diffuse quality of responsibility that makes such aggression possible. The character of gossip that distinguishes it from rumor is that gossip consists typically of stories that are designated to ruin the reputation of some identifiable person or persons. If the perpetrators remain anonymous, the victim is clearly specified. There is, arguably, something of a disguised democratic voice about gossip in the sense that it is propagated only to the extent that others find it in their interest to retell the story.13 If they don’t, it disappears. Above all, most gossip is a discourse about social rules that have been violated. A person’s reputation can be damaged by stories about his tightfistedness, his insulting words, his cheating, or his clothing only if the public among whom such tales circulate have shared standards of generosity, polite speech, honesty, and appropriate dress. Without an accepted normative standard from which degrees of deviation may be estimated, the notion of gossip would make no sense whatever. Gossip, in turn, reinforces these normative standards by invoking them and by teaching anyone who gossips precisely what kinds of conduct are likely to be mocked or despised. 13. The power to gossip is more democratically distributed than power, property, and income, and, certainly, than the freedom to speak openly. I do not mean to imply that gossip cannot and is not used by superiors to control subordinates, only that resources on this particular field of struggle are relatively more favorable to subordinates. Some people’s gossip is weightier than that of others, and, providing we do not confuse status with mere public deference, one would expect that those with high personal status would be the most effective gossipers.

Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts Quotes

The utopian, immanent, and continually frustrated goal of the modern state is to reduce the chaotic, disorderly, constantly changing social reality beneath it to something more closely resembling the administrative grid of its observations.

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed Quotes

Encouragement of sedentarism is perhaps the oldest "state project," a project related to the second-oldest state project of taxation.

Civilization Quotes / Nomad Quotes Nomadism Quotes State Quotes Taxation Quotes The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia Quotes

Social order is not the result of the architectural order created by T squares and slide rules. Nor is social order brought about by such professionals as policemen, nightwatchmen, and public officials. Instead, says Jacobs, “the public peace—the sidewalk and street peace—of cities … is kept by an intricate, almost unconscious network of voluntary controls and standards among the people themselves, and enforced by the people themselves.

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed Quotes

The larger the pile of rubble you leave behind, the larger your place in the historical record!

Civilization Quotes / Anthropology Quotes Archeology Quotes Garbage Quotes The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia Quotes

Given a choice between patterns of subsistence that are relatively unfavorable to the cultivator but which yield a greater return in manpower or grain to the state and those patterns that benefit the cultivator but deprive the state, the ruler will choose the former every time. The ruler, then, maximizes the state-accessible product, if necessary, at the expense of the overall wealth of the realm and its subjects.

Central planning Quotes Centralization Quotes Economics Quotes Free market Quotes Taxation Quotes The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia Quotes

The despot is not a man. It is the Plan. The correct, realistic, exact plan, the one that will provide your solution once the problem has been posited clearly, in its entirety, in its indispensable harmony. This plan has been drawn up well away from the frenzy in the mayor’s office or the town hall, from the cries of the electorate or the laments of society’s victims. It has been drawn up by serene and lucid minds. It has taken account of nothing but human truths. It has ignored all current regulations, all existing usages, and channels. It has not considered whether or not it could be carried out with the constitution now in force. It is a biological creation destined for human beings and capable of realization by modern techniques.

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed Quotes

immanent in their willingness to break the law was not so much a desire to sow chaos as a compulsion to instate a more just legal order. To the extent that our current rule of law is more capacious and emancipatory than its predecessors were, we owe much of that gain to lawbreakers.

Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy Quotes Dignity and Meaningful Work and Play Quotes

But all these systems of ‘education’ lack provisions for freedom of experiment, for training and for expression of creative abilities by those who are to be taught. In this respect also all our pedagogues are behind the times.

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed Quotes

Nothing could be further from the truth. All identities, without exception, have been socially constructed: the Han, the Burman, the American, the Danish, all of them. Quite often such identities, particularly minority identities, are at first imagined by powerful states, as the Han imagined the Miao, the British colonists imagined the Karen and the Shan, the French the Jarai. Whether invented or imposed, such identities select, more or less arbitrarily, one or another trait, however vague-religion, language, skin color, diet, means of subsistence-as the desideratum. Such categories, institutionalized in territories, land tenure, courts, customary law, appointed chiefs, schools, and paperwork, may become passionately lived identities. To the degree that the identity is stigmatized by the larger state or society, it is likely to become for many a resistant and defiant identity. Here invented identities combine with self-making of a heroic kind, in which such identifications become a badge of honor

The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia Quotes

New World escape crops made the economics of escape as tempting as its politics. Colonial officials tended to stigmatize cassava and maize as crops of lazy natives whose main aim was to shirk work. In the New World, too, those whose job it was to drive the population into wage labor or onto the plantation deplored crops that allowed a free peasantry to maintain its autonomy. Hacienda owners in Central America claimed that with cassava, all a peasant needed was a shotgun and a fishhook and he would cease to work regularly for wages.

The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia Quotes

A language is the joint historical creation of millions of speakers. Although all speakers have some effect on the trajectory of a language, the process is not particularly egalitarian. Linguists, grammarians, and educators, some of them backed by the power of the state, weigh in heavily. But the process is not particularly amenable to a dictatorship, either. Despite the efforts toward "central planning," language (especially its everyday spoken form) stubbornly tends to go on its own rich, multivalent, colorful way.

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed Quotes

We must never assume that local practice conforms with state theory.

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed Quotes

The aspiration to such uniformity and order alerts us to the fact that modern statecraft is largely a project of internal colonization, often glossed, as it is in its imperial rhetoric, as a 'civilizing mission'.

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed Quotes

Not so very long ago, however, such self-governing peoples were the majority of humankind. Today, they are seen from the valley kingdoms as “our living ancestors,” “what we were like before we discovered wet-rice cultivation, Buddhism and civilization.” on the contrary, I argue that hill peoples are best understood as runaway, fugitive, maroon communities who have, over the course of two millennia, been fleeing the oppressions of state-making projects in the valleys — slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée labor, epidemics, and warfare.

The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia Quotes

Designed or planned social order is necessarily schematic; it always ignores essential features of any real, functioning social order. This truth is best illustrated in a work-to-rule strike, which turns on the fact that any production process depends on a host of informal practices and improvisations that could never be codified. By merely following the rules meticiously, the workforce can virtually halt production. In the same fashion, the simplified rules animating plans for, say, a city, a village or a collective farm were inadequate as a set of instructions for creating a functional social order, The formal scheme was parasitic on informal processes that, alone, it could not create or maintain.

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed Quotes

One day you will be called upon to break a big law in the name of justice and rationality. Everything will depend on it. You have to be ready. How are you going to prepare for that day when it really matters? You have to stay "in shape" so that when the big day comes you will be ready. What you need is "anarchist calisthenics." Every day or so break some trivial law that makes no sense, even if it’s only jaywalking. Use your own head to judge whether a law is just or reasonable. That way, you'll keep trim; and when the big day comes, you'll be ready.

Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy Quotes Dignity and Meaningful Work and Play Quotes

Top 37 James C. Scott Quotes of All time - Quotes.Pub