Against the Grain
by James C. Scott
On the 4 June reading, Kavya/Pavithra pointed out that JSC presents this book not as an expert in anthropology writing a story of his own making, but instead builds out of the works of others in the field, a narrative of evolution of the human race. Facts: Humanoids (Anthropocenes) existed 200,000 years ago; Agriculture was around ~ 10,000 years ago; Mad growth of the human race ~ 5,000 years ago. After dawdling for 150,000 years, how did the last 5K years of excessive surplus happen? Traditional POV: natural evolution ==> sedentism ==> agriculture and boom! The JSC-ATG argument is: 1. we (desperately) underestimate our control of fire, which enabled concertrated subsitence in smaller areas –> helps sedentism. 2. we (desperately) underestimate the costs of sticking with agriculture in one geographical region. 3. But he agrees that “How, despite its fragility, the domus of fixed-field agriculture became a hegemonic, agro-ecological and demographic bulldozer that transformed much of the world in its image, is something of a miracle.’ :-) 4. He says that there is no evidence of cause and effect but that such a system (concentrated manpower,+arable land+nutrition) had an elective affinity with political power and privilege ==> State (Boom!).
The remaining chapters are: 5. Population control: Bondage and War; 6. Fragility of the early state: Collapse as disassembly; 7. The golden age of the barbarians. Looking forward to meeting up with all reading enthusiasts to find out the rest of the story at:
Date: 9 July 2025
Venue: Artha Global conference space
Time: 5:30pm
Wrapped up reading “Against the grain” by James C. Scott on 9th July. Thanks to all the enthusiastic readers, constant and new.
Like the “Tyranny of experts..” and “Triump of the city..”, it challenges ideas that we take for granted about the hows and whys of the evolution of society, civilisation and the state. (1) The superpower that the human race got was fire. That set the race on this path more than the control of agriculture. (2) No state has risen without the agro-complex; agro-complexes have thrived without state (an example of Weber’s “Elective affinity”). (3) State = (walls, tax collection and officials) which means that there was a first state (Uruk in Mesopotamia) by 3200 BCE (Before Common Era). (4) The primary driver for state appeared to be collecting people, not so much as territory or physical resources. Walls were built to keep people in, more than to keep raiders out. (5) States collapse because of climate change, loss of resources, disease, war, migration, political fragility. But really, (6) the collapse of a state is merely a “loss of social complexity”. (7) Mobile peoples (“barbarians”) and sedentary populations (with/without state) should be thought of as “competitive subsistence strategies”. The narrative built in this book may come across as a bit ideological, except that these arguments are drawn from multiple sources, not all Scott’s own, covering different periods and places. He does the orchestration, but points out puzzles and the missing holes. The story of our evolution is not done yet; state is clearly new, and is IMHO the source of immense innovation. But it’s interesting that the times we are living in resonate with some of the end of times paths described in this book. What is a barbarian in the world of AI and the internet?
Next book: A people’s consitution: The everyday life of law in the Indian republic’, by Rohit De. The book has 6 chapters, and we will read the first two for the next session on:
Date: 6 August 2025
Venue: Artha Global conference space
Time: 5:30pm
See you there!