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Zomia


José

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Je découvre dans Reason :

Zomia is a geographical term coined in 2002 by historian Willem van Schendel of the University of Amsterdam[1] to refer to the huge massif of mainland Southeast Asia that has historically been beyond the control of governments based in the population centers of the lowlands. The exact boundaries of Zomia differ among scholars: all would include the highlands of north Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Burma, and the southern mountains of China, others extend the region as far West as Tibet, north India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. These areas share a common elevated, rugged terrain, and have been the home of ethnic minorities that have preserved their local cultures by residing far from state control and influence. Professor James C. Scott of Yale used the concept of Zomia in his 2009 book The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia[2] to argue that the continuity of the ethnic cultures that live there provides a counter-narrative to the traditional story about modernity: namely that once people are exposed to the conveniences of modern technology and the modern state, they will assimilate. Rather, the tribes in Zomia are conscious refugees from modernity itself, choosing to live in more primitive, locally-based economies. Other scholars have used the term to discuss the similar ways that Southeast Asian governments have handled minority groups.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zomia_%28geography%29

zomiamap.jpg

Tom Palmer, rothbardien rénégat, fait un compte rendu du livre de James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia :

Understanding the nature of such zones where political control “runs out of breath” is not merely of interest to historians and social scientists. It’s central to understanding many things about the modern world, including the difficulties that NATO and its allied forces face in Afghanistan, the problems with other nation-building campaigns around the globe, the nature and costs of resistance to predatory state power, and the evolutionary relationship between tax systems and economic structures—that is, between systems of theft and structures of production. In effect, Scott gives us a libertarian geography.

Scott draws on the insights of Pierre Clastres, whose 1974 book Society Against the State undermined the narrative of the progressive transition from archaic society to state-governed civilizations by showing how a variety of Native American tribes developed systems to keep the state at bay. Such groups did not merely “fail to develop a state”; they succeeded in keeping one from developing.

http://reason.com/archives/2010/05/25/life-on-the-edge

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Interessant cet ouvrage, je vais l'ajouter dans ma liste des bouquins a lire.

Une preuve de plus que privatiser les routes est le seul moyen de ne plus etre viole.

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