James Scott (“Scotty”) ‘67 Ph.D., a revered scholar whose pathbreaking work crossed intellectual boundaries, died on July 19 at his home in Durham, Connecticut, after a long illness. He was 87.
Scott, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Political Science and professor emeritus of anthropology, who also held an appointment in environmental studies, worked at Yale from 1976 until his retirement in 2021. Before joining the Yale faculty he spent nearly a decade at the University of Wisconsin.
His 10 books, spanning multiple disciplines, written over the course of his career, were unparalleled contributions to the interpretive social sciences, many of them emphasizing people who resist being captured by states and dogmas.
His early book, “The Moral Economy of the Peasant,” called a “must read for any student of south and east Asian development, agricultural development, or developmental theory,” turned scholarship on its head by addressing the puzzle of why some types of exploitative relations give way to grassroots revolutions, while others do not. Scott was once described by the New York Times as the “unofficial founder of the field of resistance studies.”
In each book since then — among them, “Weapons of the Weak,” “Domination and the Arts of Resistance,” “Seeing like a State,” “The Art of Not Being Governed,” “Two Cheers for Anarchism,” and “Against the Grain” — Scott used his impeccable and on-the-ground scholarship, fierce intellect, and clear and uncompromising eye to write on a broad range of subjects, including peasant resistance, top-down state social planning, and anarchism. Often this writing captured the stories of neglected and misunderstood communities.