State Evasion in Mainland Southeast Asia: Why Civilizations Can't Climb Hills

November 27, 2007 from 7 p.m.-7:30 p.m.
Human and Social Development A240
University of Victoria, Victoria, BC

The Inaugural Albert Hung Chao Hong Lecture was presented by Dr. James Scott, Department of Political Science, Yale University. Dr. Scott is the Sterling Professor of Political Science and Anthropology. His research concerns political economy, comparative agrarian societies, theories of hegemony and resistance, peasant politics, revolution, Southeast Asia, theories of class relations and anarchism; he currently teaches courses on Agrarian Studies and Rebellion, Resistance and Repression at Yale University. His published work, much of it focused on Southeast Asia, includes the influential books Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (1987), and Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (1997). In recent years, Professor Scott has been conducting research in Burma, and his lecture drew upon this recent fieldwork.