James C. Scott Decoding subaltern politics. Ideology, disguise and resistance in agrarian politics. Oxon: Routledge, 2013, 158 pp. ISBN 9780415539753, price: GBP 85.00 (hardback); 9780415540100, price: 27.99 (paperback).

Abstract

Both reflexive and highly analytical, this book grew out of Scott's four decades of distinguished work thinking about peasant societies, ranging from his early years in the 1960s as a young teacher who sincerely (if also naively, as he himself has said) believed in peasant revolutions, to an established and philosophical thinker considering such things as the disappearance of land reform from the World Bank agenda after the Berlin Wall fell and its wider ramifications for peasant societies around the globe. According to such rumors, kidnappers roam the country side looking for victims to be killed and have their internal organs taken out for sale abroad. [...]it seems to me that the study of peasant communities should not only reveal the 'shadow history' of peasant movements against domination, but also, in these rapidly evolving societies, to shed light on farmers exodus from peasantry in their struggle for a better world.