Above and Beyond:Zomiaand the Ethnographic Challenge of/for Regional History
- 26 May 2010
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis Ltd in History and Anthropology
- Vol. 21 (2), 191-212
- https://doi.org/10.1080/02757201003793705
Abstract
James Scott’s notion of Zomia proposes a new look at historical and social dynamics in a vast area of the Asian hinterlands, in terms of deliberate state‐avoidance that came to an end through the nation state’s superior techniques of control. Zomia is a concept metaphor that defines the social reality it purportedly only describes. My examination points to a pervasive problem with the historicization of highland regions in Europe as much as in Asia. Juxtaposing Scott’s case with two other definitions of Zomia, I call attention to the way concept metaphors define social landscapes and historical dynamics. Drawing on the work of several Europeanists, I suggest a model of rural–urban relations that does not privilege either a community or the state as the principle of society and history, which may overcome the separate disciplinary biases of anthropology, history and political science.Keywords
This publication has 25 references indexed in Scilit:
- Mimetic Minorities: National Identity and Desire on Thailand's FringeIdentities, 2010
- Global AnxietiesAnthropological Theory, 2004
- Transethnic solidarities in a racialised contextJournal of Contemporary Asia, 2003
- Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance: Jumping Scale in Southeast AsiaEnvironment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2002
- A western perspective on an eastern interpretation of where north meets south: Pyrenean borderland culturesPublished by Cambridge University Press (CUP) ,1998
- State formation and national identity in the Catalan borderlands during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuriesPublished by Cambridge University Press (CUP) ,1998
- Headhunting, History, and Exchange in Upland SulawesiJournal of Asian Studies, 1991
- Historical Metaphors and Mythical RealitiesPublished by University of Michigan Library ,1981
- what is a Malay? situational selection of ethnic identity in a plural societyAmerican Ethnologist, 1974
- Chapter 2. Ethnic Categories in Burma and the Theory of Social SystemsPublished by Walter de Gruyter GmbH ,1967