“Much the same process of symbolic hyperventilation and validation of hierarchy through external referents can be observed in the smaller realms and in the hills.”
The Art of Not Being Governed - An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia
Chapter 4: Civilization and the Unruly
James C. Scott
#grownostr
“The idea of the Indic or Chinese state has long had great currency in the hills. It floats up, as it were, in strange fragments from the lowlands in the form of regalia, mythical charters, kingly dress, titles, ceremony, genealogical claims, and sacred architecture.”
“Local chiefs had ample reason to seek the seals, regalia, and titles conferred by a more powerful realm; they might overawe rivals and confer lucrative trade and tribute monopolies.”
“The more negligible the kingdom, the ruder and smaller the imitation…”
I really need to read this. It's been on my list for a while.
Although it’s a history book I’m finding it useful to understand how difficult it is for people living in “modernity” to unentangle themselves from the state.
“As in any colonial or imperial setting, the experience of the subject was wildly at odds with the ideological superstructure that aimed at ennobling the whole enterprise.”
“In contemporary China, although the stigmatising names for minority peoples have been sanitized… the underlying assumption is that minority societies and cultures are “social fossils” whose days are numbered.”
