Trying to address a series of large questions—e.g., when peasants rebel, clandestine forms of resistance, state “imagination,” and the origin of the very first agrarian states—led me to abandon much of the standard political science “tool kit.” This is an account of that intellectual journey.
[James C. Scott died on July 19, 2024, just days before this short intellectual biography went live. Scott was an intellectual giant, an eloquent writer, and an inspiration to multiple generations of students and scholars. The Annual Review of Political Science is pleased to be the publisher of his latest, perhaps last, publication. His oral history is available here.]