Internalized Zomias?

Abstract

Working on a concept branded by Willem van Schendel, James Scott proposed in a 2009 essay a new and provocative view of the isolated societies that survived for a long time in the fringes of Himalayan and Southeast Asia, which could have formed a distinct region named Zomia. According to him, those populations were not the remnants of uncivilized tribes, as they have often been viewed in history, but peoples who had deliberately chosen to flee the domination of central states. But, for Scott, the conditions that made their independence and resilience possible vanished during the 1950ies, when technology made access to their regions easier. In this text, I argue that if we are seeing today an apparent domination of central states, which now cover the world continuously, geographical marginality engrained in the concept of Zomia remains hidden within their borders, often in the form of sparsely populated areas. These potentially constitute contemporary Zomias, which may have been internalized within the states, but still respond to a number of Scott’s postulates.