American Writers (One Hundred Pages at a Time)

In part two of my review of Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott, I explore the dangers of high modernism and some of the case studies of failed experiments he examines. What is your favorite example of high modernism going wrong, besides the opening night of The Rites of Spring?

As we continue our exploration of the works of James C. Scott, we move from the arts of resistance to the designs of a state with faulty vision. How do states see, how do they envision transformation, and how do these two things together fail us? 

In this episode I complete my reading of James C. Scott's DOMINATION AND THE ARTS OF RESISTANCE: HIDDEN TRANSCRIPTS. In this section we focus on the workings of infrapolitics and the question of how they become visible and possible unstoppable. 

In this episode I review Domination and the Arts of Resistance by James C. Scott, exploring the concepts of public and hidden transcripts. What can we gain by looking at the world through the lens of hidden transcripts?

The conclusion to my study of James C. Scott's Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. 

This episode is part 2 of my review of James C. Scott's examination of a Malay village, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. It is a slow burn but it builds toward an impressive interpretation. 

We get to know a Malay village down to its last family through James C. Scott's anthropological study Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. What are the styles of everyday resistance in your workplace?

In this episode I finish reading The Moral Economy of the Peasant by the brilliant James C. Scott. So what do you think of this book and its ongoing relevance? 

I begin my deep dive into the works of James C. Scott with The Moral Economy of the Peasant. In this work, Scott explores the subsistence ethic and the consequences of it for peasant resistance. Is it just me or were lots of people writing about peasants in the 1970s and 1980s?

As we prepare for our deep dive into James C. Scott's work, we finish up with a related text, Karl Jacoby's Crimes Against Nature. This is one of the more fascinating looks at the history of conservation and helps us ask the question, for just who were the conservationists conserving, and did they do a better job that the people who made their living in spaced deemed "wilderness".