![]() ![]() What I learned is that centralised revolutionary movements have almost always resulted in a State that was more oppressive then the ones they aimed to replace. That is why I tried to understand the wars of liberation and the peasantry. So, if development means anything, it should mean something for peasants and if it doesn’t, then the hell with development. It is the largest class in the world and the most important one, historically. After my work in Malaysia I decided to devote my life to understanding peasantry. I am an American soixantehuitard formed by the Vietnam war. But the best I can do though is to think carefully about previous social movements. J.S.: Well, I do not consider myself a pundit. ![]() Are we seeing new ways of contesting State authority from within? We think of Occupy Wall Street, Nuit Debout or the ZAD movements in France who are drawing people internationally too. Q: Your work relates to various contemporary contexts, including movements of resistance contesting the State authority as well as capitalist economy and the standardisation of cultures. “If development means anything it should mean something for peasants, if it doesn’t then the hell with development” The Anonymous movement is a globalised form of anarchist protests where there are no leaders to bargain with or try to control. People are harder to get together but once they are, it is even harder to put them back into the bag. ![]() That is both the advantage and the disadvantage of anarchist globalised form of revolution. It was hard to mobilise at first but after a while people were committed. Another good example is the anarchist Polish movement. There were no leaders you can bargain with. In many places in South East Asia, people are difficult to administer because they would need to be captured one by one. People are hard to control because their motives are plural. It is only later that the “winner” retrospectively creates a narrative which makes the movement very centralised and organised much more than what it actually was. We often miss the unconsciousness behind such events. People during the French Revolution had different agendas – and of course they didn’t know they were making the French revolution. James Scott: It seems to me that almost every successful revolution movement is an assemblage of people with many different objectives. James Scott: ‘Anarchism as a praxis: a defence of politics, conflict debate and a principle of uncertainty and perpetual learning’. How do you combine your analysis of long-term and discreet resistance of subaltern groups, which often turn to be a sum of multiple individual acts, with the collective and often short-term dimension of political action? The book produced a lot of comments, both positive and negative. You also define anarchism as a praxis: a defence of politics, conflict debate and a principle of uncertainty and perpetual learning. Q: You wrote in a 2012 book called Two Cheers for Anarchism, ( Petit éloge de l’anarchisme) that your conversion to anarchism is the result of an intellectual evolution linked with your disappointment toward the possibility of revolutionary change. Edited excerpts for The Conversation France. Scott paints a vast and diverse history of resistance to authoritarian tendencies. From hill tribes of the South-East Asia to medieval French peasants or enslaved African-Americans in the Great Dismal Swamp, James C. During an exclusive interview with professors Benjamin Ferron and Claire Oger and their students (UPEC, UFR LLSH, Master 2 “Communication politique et publique en France et en Europe”), Professor Scott discusses what so-called “powerless” actors can do and which strategies they use. These are only a few of the questions one could ask political scientist, anthropologist and anarchist thinker James C. How to resist the State when you feel powerless? How to make your voice heard when you have none? Is anarchism a vain utopia as it is often described by its opponents? ![]()
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