Biography
James C. Scott (1936–2024) was an American political scientist and anthropologist whose work transformed understandings of everyday resistance, agrarian societies and the relationship between knowledge and state power. Having earned his doctorate at Yale, he taught there and directed the Agrarian Studies Program. His research crossed conventional disciplinary boundaries and paid particular attention to the practices of people living under structures of domination.
In The Moral Economy of the Peasant (1976), he examined the social conditions of peasant rebellion, while Weapons of the Weak (1985) explored discreet forms of resistance often absent from traditional political narratives. Domination and the Arts of Resistance (1990) investigated the public and hidden transcripts of subordinate groups. In Seeing Like a State (1998), he analysed the failures of planning projects that simplify social realities to make them administratively legible.
His later work, particularly The Art of Not Being Governed (2009) and Against the Grain (2017), challenged established accounts of the emergence of the state and agrarian civilisation. Scott demonstrated the historical importance of strategies of evasion, local autonomy and practical knowledge. His legacy remains a central reference for political anthropology, social history, development studies and critiques of state centralisation.
Published books