Name: Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States
Price: 18.93 EUR
Availability: InStock
Author: James C. Scott
ISBN: 9780300240214

portada Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States

Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States

Type

Physical Book

Author

James C. Scott

Publisher

Yale University Press

Year

2018

Language

English

Pages

336

Format

Paperback

Dimensions

20.8 x 14.0 x 2.3 cm

Weight

0.34 kg.

ISBN13

9780300240214

Synopsis "Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States "

An Economist Best History Book 2017 "History as it should be written."--Barry Cunliffe, Guardian "Scott hits the nail squarely on the head by exposing the staggering price our ancestors paid for civilization and political order."--Walter Scheidel, Financial Times Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains, and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative. The first agrarian states, says James C. Scott, were born of accumulations of domestications: first fire, then plants, livestock, subjects of the state, captives, and finally women in the patriarchal family--all of which can be viewed as a way of gaining control over reproduction. Scott explores why we avoided sedentism and plow agriculture, the advantages of mobile subsistence, the unforeseeable disease epidemics arising from crowding plants, animals, and grain, and why all early states are based on millets and cereal grains and unfree labor. He also discusses the "barbarians" who long evaded state control, as a way of understanding continuing tension between states and nonsubject peoples.

James C. Scott

(Author)

View Author's Page

James C. Scott is Sterling Professor of Political Science, professor of anthropology, and co-director of the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University. Among his books are Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed; Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts; and most recently, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a mediocre farmer and beekeeper.

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