Against the grain : a deep history of the earliest states / James C. Scott.
Material type: TextSeries: Yale agrarian studiesPublisher: New Haven : Yale University Press, 2018Copyright date: ©2017Description: xvii, 312 pages : illustrations, map ; 22 cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780300240214 (pbk.)
- 0300182910
- 900 SCO 23 021728
- GN799.A4 S285 2017
Item type | Current library | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Book | Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bangalore | 900 SCO 021728 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | Available | 021728 |
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900 ANA 017003 Understanding environment : a textbook in geography for class IX / | 900 SCH 014887 Naked or covered : | 900 SCH 017772 Naked or covered : | 900 SCO 021728 Against the grain : a deep history of the earliest states / | 900.82 CON 000335 Contemporary world politics : | 900 OXF 003427 The Oxford handbook of the history of nationalism / | 901 CAL 018025 Theories and narratives : reflections on the philosophy of history / |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-300) and index.
A narrative in tatters : what I didn't know -- The domestication of fire, plants, animals, and... us -- Landscaping the world : the domus complex -- Zoonoses : a perfect epidemiological storm -- Agro-ecology of the early state -- Population control : bondage and war -- Fragility of the early state : collapse as disassembly -- The golden age of the barbarians.
An account of all the new and surprising evidence now available for the beginnings of the earliest civilizations that contradict the standard narrative. 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.
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