From the acclaimed author and scholar James C. Scott, the compelling tale of Asian peoples who until recently have stemmed the vast tide of state-making to live at arm's length from any organized state society For two thousand years the disparate groups that now reside in Zomia (a mountainous region the size of Europe that consists of portions of seven Asian countries) have fled the projects of the organized state societies that surround them-slavery, conscription, taxes, corvee labor, epidemics, and warfare. This book, essentially an "anarchist history," is the first-ever examination of the huge literature on state-making whose author evaluates why people would deliberately and reactively remain stateless. Among the strategies employed by the people of Zomia to remain stateless are physical dispersion in rugged terrain; agricultural practices that enhance mobility; pliable ethnic identities; devotion to prophetic, millenarian leaders; and maintenance of a largely oral culture that allows them to reinvent their histories and genealogies as they move between and around states. In accessible language, James Scott, recognized worldwide as an eminent authority in Southeast Asian, peasant, and agrarian studies, tells the story of the peoples of Zomia and their unlikely odyssey in search of self-determination. He redefines our views on Asian politics, history, demographics, and even our fundamental ideas about what constitutes civilization, and challenges us with a radically different approach to history that presents events from the perspective of stateless peoples and redefines state-making as a form of "internal colonialism." This new perspective requires a radical reevaluation of the civilizational narratives of the lowland states. Scott's work on Zomia represents a new way to think of area studies that will be applicable to other runaway, fugitive, and marooned communities, be they Gypsies, Cossacks, tribes fleeing slave raiders, Marsh Arabs, or San-Bushmen.

The art of not being governed : an anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia

Time is divided by geologists according to marked shifts in Earth's state. Recent global environmental changes suggest that Earth may have entered a new human-dominated geological epoch, the Anthropocene. Here we review the historical genesis of the idea and assess anthropogenic signatures in the geological record against the formal requirements for the recognition of a new epoch. The evidence suggests that of the various proposed dates two do appear to conform to the criteria to mark the beginning of the Anthropocene: 1610 and 1964. The formal establishment of an Anthropocene Epoch would mark a fundamental change in the relationship between humans and the Earth system.

Defining the Anthropocene

The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

The article reviews the book "The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History" by Elizabeth Kolbert.

The sixth extinction: an unnatural history.

This essay – Part II – reconceptualizes the past five centuries as the Capitalocene, the ‘age of capital’. The essay advances two interconnected arguments. First, the exploitation of labor-power de...

The Capitalocene Part II: accumulation by appropriation and the centrality of unpaid work/energy

Love it or hate it, the Anthropocene is emerging as an inescapable word for (and of) the current moment. Popularized by Eugene Stoermer and Paul Crutzen, Anthropocene names an age in which human in...

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Anthropologists Are Talking - About the Anthropocene

Between Frontiers: Nation and Identity in a Southeast Asian Borderland

How have distant people living in separate river systems historically maintained contact? What are the factors contributing to the consolidation of their social relationships and networks? By answering these questions, our ethnographic inquiry on northern Sarawak elucidates key features of the cultural, socioeconomic and geomorphological characteristics of Borneo. To examine social formations in a riverine basin, we focus on watershed pathways, or the connecting points between two or more riverine catchments. In doing so, we attempt to separate ourselves from previous studies on migration. First, we look at the social formation from trans- as well as multiethnic perspectives, comprehensively examining more than two dozen ethnic groups and their interrelations. The second vantage point is that we map migratory movements in a wider spatial arena of Sarawak than has previously been studied. The unit of analysis is a vast basin society located in a triangular area carved out by the South China Sea, the Rejang and the Baram rivers. Third, we pay attention to geomorphological features of the basin society. Distance, elevation and connectivity provide the most crucial factors to consider when investigating the formation of Bornean riverine society.

Community, River and Basin: Watersheds in Northern Sarawak as a Social Linkage

Preface List of Contributors 1. Transnational Natural Resource Governance in Border Regions 2. Social, Spatial, and Sectoral Boundaries in Transboundary Conservation of Central African Forests 3. State-Making and Transnationalism: Transboundary Flows in a Borderland of Western Borneo 4. A Resource-Hungry Malaysia, Transnational Mobile Peoples and the Absence of the State: A Lethal Combination for Natural Resources in Indonesia's Borderlands? 5. Territorialization, Regionalism and Natural Resource Management in the Peruvian Amazon 6. Territorialization Re-examined: Transborder Marine Resources Exploitation in Southeast Asia and Australia 7. Circumventing the Sea Cucumber War: Self-Regulation of Sea Cucumber Fisheries in Rishiri Island, Japan 8. Beyond Borders: Scaling-Up Marine Turtle Conservation Through Trans-National Arrangements 9. Adapting to Water Scarcity in a Changing Climate: The Role of Institutions in Transboundary Settings 10. Fighting Floods or Living with Floods? Streamlining Multiple Strategies of Flood Risk Management in Transborder River Basins 11. Greater Mekong Subregion Cooperation in Hydropower Development and Power Interconnection: Potentials, Challenges and Progresses Index

Transborder governance of forests, rivers and seas

Changing weather patterns, increasing frequency and intensity of natural hazards, and rising sea levels associated with global climate change have the potential to threaten cultural heritage sites worldwide. This is especially the case for maritime heritage sites located in the low-lying coastal and delta regions of Asia. Maritime heritage can reflect both highly localized cultural products based on the coupling of people and maritime environments and the historic footprints of complex maritime networks that connect people, ideas, and material over vast distances, creating unique cultural spheres. Furthermore, maritime heritage sites potentially serve as or contain records of how past societies have been impacted by and adapted to past environmental stress. Therefore, their degradation threatens local/regional/global cultural patrimony as well as evidence of human resilience and fragility in the face of environmental change. This makes a strong case for urgent preservation. However, the possible damage caused by climate change and the scale of vulnerable maritime heritage pose seemingly insurmountable challenges. In this paper, we present the ways in which maritime heritage sites across Asia are vulnerable to environmental stresses, such as changing sea levels, coastal erosion, flooding, and storm surges. Our objective is to draw upon our experience documenting endangered cultural heritage across South and Southeast Asia to illustrate that there are unique conceptual and practical characteristics of maritime heritage that complicate effective management and conservation efforts on the scale required to prevent massive loss by climate change. We conclude by stressing the need to reconceptualize debates about the custody and stewardship of maritime heritage and the urgency of employing a wide range of innovative preservation solutions to ensure maritime patrimony is not lost to the rising tides.

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Noboru Ishikawa

Papers

Anthropologists Are Talking - About the Anthropocene

Between Frontiers: Nation and Identity in a Southeast Asian Borderland

Community, River and Basin: Watersheds in Northern Sarawak as a Social Linkage

Transborder governance of forests, rivers and seas

Challenges of Managing Maritime Cultural Heritage in Asia in the Face of Climate Change