Why would anyone choose to evade governance, and what do contemporary versions of that choice look like in the communities we serve? What familial stories do we carry forward that are, at root, an attempt to evade government?
The late James C. Scott, Yale political scientist, agrarian studies scholar, and, as he put it himself, an anarchist willing to raise only two cheers (as he titled one of his beloved books, Two Cheers for Anarchism), spent a career asking that question.
Today we explore Scott’s book The Art of Not Being Governed, which outlines an arc of our history that is, for the most part, about people who have lived outside the reach of government systems. That we have fled, adapted, and re-integrated elsewhere, partly or fully, is fundamental to our human story. These stories reveal our diversity and resilience, but also our reluctance to be made “legible” to governments.
Here with me are Dr. Mike Rowe (University of Liverpool), Dr. Tom Bryer (University of Central Florida, soon to be founding director of the Center for CivicLands and Democratic Stewardship at Old Dominion University), and Dr. Mandie Cantlin (township manager and lecturer at West Chester University).
Together we take up Scott’s larger question: why do people stay within systems of governance, and why do they leave? Drawing on examples that range from Southeast Asia to contemporary communities, the conversation moves through themes of resistance, mobility, sustainability, and public trust.
Our conversation offers many jumping-off points for deeper inquiry into how people navigate the edges of being governed. For those of us working in and around local government, Scott’s work asks us to look more closely at how people experience governance, and what it means to belong to a place.
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Timestamps
00:00 — Molokai and the choice to say no
05:30 — Why people stay or leave a place
06:30 — Scott’s work and challenging linear progress
09:30 — Rethinking prosperity and subsistence
12:00 — Why people choose not to be governed
13:30 — Modern examples: homeschooling and personal autonomy
16:30 — Diversity, identity, and “legibility”
18:00 — The push and pull of government in everyday life
20:00 — Contemporary forms of resistance
21:30 — Subsistence thinking in modern economies
23:00 — Development, sustainability, and local choice
24:30 — The role of government when people resist
26:00 — Participation, “state picking,” and civic voice
29:00 — Public trust and agency
30:00 — Ecological systems and unintended consequences
33:00 — Climate, risk, and the role of the state
37:30 — Hill people, mobility, and “flight”
40:00 — No single path forward
41:30 — Civilization, exclusion, and who belongs
45:30 — Living with tension in governance
47:30 — Closing reflections
Australia