Egalitarianism, the teachings of fieldwork and anarchist calisthenics
Iames C. Scott is Sterling Professor of Political Science and Anthropology at Yale Univer sity where he directs the Program in Agrarian Studies. Author of foundational books on the fields of Agrarian studies and Social Movements (but with a wider resonance in other rains of social sciences) namely The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (1977) Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (1985) and Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (1990) Scott recently published The Art ofNot Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (2009) His work has been a major source of inspiration for the four of us and we therefore invited him to visit Portugal in order to discuss some of the key elements of his research. The following conversation took place in Lisbon, April 2012, and gathered many students and researchers from both Portugal and Spain. The conversation was first directed by our own ques tions and we then opened the floor for discussion, taking some questions from the audience. The subjects discussed ranged from Scott's participation in the Perestroika Movement in Poli tical Science to his critique of the State and the concept of high modernism (see Seeing like a State EIow Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, Scott's 1998 book) The conversation also included his perspectives on resistance and their relation to contributions made by authors such as E.P. Thompson, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Clastres, among others. Finally, we also discussed the possibility of an "anarchist turn" in social sciences and came to know Scott's law of anarchist calisthenics, and some hints about his new book, Two Cheersfor Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play (2012).1