The State vs. Non-State Societies

This chapter examines the intricate dynamics between state governance and communities outside its control, highlighting historical preferences for living beyond state influence. It contrasts centralized authority with the autonomy of non-state societies, emphasizing how differing frameworks of legibility impact social organization and quality of life.

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One of my biggest podcasting regrets is not having been able to interview the anthropologist Dr. James C. Scott before he died in 2024. We had corresponded by email, but he'll forever be one of the ones who got away... Rest in peace, James. Your scholarship is still making people think.

Today's show serves as an introduction to anthropology, and to some key Scottian concepts like "legibility" that Grant Faber and I apply to the carbon removal and carbon offsetting spaces.

Why do states prefer straight lines? Why do more organic shapes take place seemingly everywhere else? How can creating legibility be simultaneously great for transparency and order but perilous for justice and truth? When complexity is often so much more accurate, what is it within us that yearns to abandon it? What is in us that desires to make everything legible to our gaze even if it creates a wasteland and calls it peace?

If that's a soupy theoretical mess for you, you'll probably enjoy this episode. It's a doozy!

“A language is a dialect with an army and navy."

— Max Weinreich, attributed

"[The Romans] create a desert and call it peace."

— Tacitus

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