James C. Scott discussing The Art of Not Being Governed
In the first chapter of The Art of Not Being Governed, Scott points out that ancient civilizations
were “in demographic terms, insignificant.
They occupied a miniscule portion of the world’s landscape… …their mark on
the landscape and its people’s is relatively trivial when compared to their
over-sized place in the history books.” Perhaps
this is strongly worded - I would need to look further into it. Regardless, he asks us to consider the fact that vast numbers of people have
lived outside of civilizations - even when they exist within an empires territory - and to consider exactly how effected people across
the vast expanse of any empire actually were by that empire. He asks us to reflect on
why (or at least on if) history has tended to be about states, rather than about peoples.
As a teacher, such considerations become reconsiderations of
how I frame civilization for my students: if I show them a map of Mesopotamia,
am I giving them the impression that all people living within that area are
participating in the state? Certainly
peoples close to the cities did, but once you get a hundred miles away from the
city walls, this may no longer be the case.
There are lots of people living farther out who may trade with various cities
and states, but not be assimilated into them.
As Scott emphasizes, mass amounts of people
lived in such a way as to actively avoid the state, its taxes, its
conscriptions, and its forced labor practices.
Text-books and teachers often point out that early
civilizations grew up around rivers: the Tigris and Euphrates, the Nile, the
Indus, the Yangtze and the Yellow. I
think it’s important to help students understand that the vast majority of
human beings did not live along these rivers, and that many that did still did
not participate in the civilizations that grew up around them. Many lived, by choice, in regions that made it difficult for states to gain
access to them, such as in mountainous or marshy areas.
Civilization tends to be portrayed as a great leap
forward. And while I don’t want to say
that it’s not, I think it is important not to oversimplify things and portray it as a beacon of
light. The rise of civilization is fraught with complex moral problems for students to explore. Scott reminds us that slavery is built into the foundations of
civilization: “Some subjects were no doubt attracted to the possibilities for
trade, wealth, and status available at the court centers, while others, almost
certainly the majority, were captives and slaves seized in warfare or purchased
from slave raiders.” There is a tension at the foundation of
civilization that we still experience today: the tension between specialized
work and the knowledge and commodities it produces, and unfair, often horrific labor practices
that untold numbers of people desperately wishes they could escape. What does progress mean in this context?
Another question regarding the notion of progress is how we
portray “civilized” vs. “uncivilized”.
While most teachers, I hope, don't use those terms anymore, they are often implicit in the way civilization is discussed. Are we automatically setting up the notion that written systems are
superior to oral ones? That large fields
of grain are superior to numerous small patches of root vegetables grown in a
forest? Most of us are still taught, and
perhaps have an unconscious understanding that one is better than the other. What I hope to do by examining Scotts work in
coming months is to explore the other side: the benefits and utility of oral
language and other features of traditional life that civilization is lauded as
having transcended.
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