James Scott
http://richmedia.lse.ac.uk/publicLecturesAndEvents/20080522_1830_whyCivilisationsCantClimbHillsAPoliticalHistoryOfStatelessnessInSoutheastAsia.mp3
Why Civilizations Can’t Climb Hills: A Political History of Statelessness in Southeast Asia, a talk by James Scott Thursday, 22 May at the London School of Economics. Same talk: shorter link.
He’s an expert on Burmese hill tribes. His theory is that hill tribes in S.E. Asia were formed by refugees fleeing from various civilizations. The more usual view sees them as remnants of ancestor cultures. He shows various historical evidence including cultural adaptations suited to avoiding the burdens of the central government.
He relates the cost of exerting centralized control to shipping and travel time and expense. This is very much greater in hilly areas than in flat ones.
As the LSE blurb for the talk says: "There in the hills they have deliberately practiced forms of "escape agriculture", "escape social structure," and "escape culture" designed to avoid being made into state subjects while, at the same time, enjoying the advantages of trade with the valleys."
He restrains his observations largely to the tribes with which he is most familiar and among whom he has spent the most time, and attempts to not extend his historical narrative beyond World War 2.
I’ll have no such similar discipline in seeing parallels in other places and times.
For instance Humboldt County CA and other less-accessible hilly areas where misfits
flee to in this country to avoid government control. Look at the UPS map showing shipping times.
See those grey areas on the map? If you ship packages or people from the White House, those gray areas are the most expensive and time-consuming to reach.
Those are grey areas in practice as well as cartographically. Populations of various dissident groups such as marijuana farmers, white separatists, and home-schoolers have moved there. Slow shipping means hills and an area attractive to a population seeking to avoid the burdens central rules and rulers.
Scott’s stories about attitudes toward hill tribes by flatlanders have parallels in other parts of the world. An Iranian friend of mine once told me what he thought of Kurds: "You can’t be civilized if you live in the hills. You have to live on flat land for that. A Kurdish boy has to steal something before he can get married. He has to show he knows have to steal. You can’t trust them. They fought against us in the war with Iraq. They killed our soldiers when they had the chance and gave information to the enemy."
One can go further in extending Scott’s observations into general patterns.
He gives examples of tribes that were once literate but abandoned writing. One can observe this happening now. Criminal and revolutionary organizations communicate verbally so as to not leave written records of their activities for authorities or rivals to find. Have you ever decided against emailing or writing sensitive information to someone? Something you didn’t want authorities (your parents/boss/police) to know? So you talked directly to that person or phoned them up? You may be on your way to the hills yourself.
This contrasts with the behavior of dominant organizations, who especially seek to create records of their most important activities and assets. Their biggest problem is internal corruption and incompetence rather than external enemies. To solve that they need detailed records. Many historians believe writing was created specifically for making such records, and the oldest examples of written language are indeed account books.
He gives examples of radical egalitarianism. Tribes that strive to avoid any hierarchy or official leaders. He even gives the extreme example, tribes who boast of killing members who gain too much influence.
One can see this process happening today in dissident/deviant/counterculture groups.
Many organizations that are opposed by law enforcement have developed methods of "leaderless organization" to reduce the disruption if prominent members are arrested, and to decrease the responsibility each member bears for the group’s activities. For instance the Rainbow Family, the group that puts on annual "Rainbow Gatherings" of 30,000 people or more in national and state forests. They are opposed by park managers and a range of law enforcement groups, depending on where they decide to camp. Their "unofficial webpage" starts with "Some say we’re the largest non-organization of non-members in the world. We have no leaders, and no organization." But a Rainbow Gathering is not chaos. There is a great deal of organization. But it is done in such a way and through customs that minimize the disruption if any number of members are arrested or depart suddenly.
An extreme example of a decentralized organization opposed by a major empire is the U.S. effort against Al Queda. I went to a talk on U.S. efforts against the group (citation needed) The speaker said that our efforts to capture and kill terrorist leaders had the effect of flattening and de-centralizing the organization, and making it a much tougher adversary. And why would anyone want to run a global organization from a cave in Afghanistan? Was it chosen to create large shipping and transportation expenses for the expected U.S. response?
Scott talks about the difficulty of exerting centralized control due to shipping costs and relationship to taxation. He illustrates this with the Chinese proverb "Do not sell grain more than 250 Li distant." The team of oxen needed to carry a cartload of grain would consume their cargo in that distance. So when stored grain was the medium of exchange, it was difficult to obtain taxes from distant and hilly places. I’m tempted to expound on the history of the Scotch-Irish diaspora, the Appalachian moonshine trade during prohibition, and parallels to the marijuana-growing regions today, but I see from James Scott’s wikipedia page that he’s written books that may cover all of this, so my time would be better spent reading than ranting!
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