Quotes from book
Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States

Name: Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States
Author: James C. Scott

Against The Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States is a book by James C. Scott that sets out to undermine what he calls the "standard civilizational narrative" that suggests humans chose to live settled lives based on intensive agriculture because this made people safer and more prosperous. Instead, he argues, people had to be forced to live in the early states, which were hierarchical, beset by malnutrition and disease, and often based on slavery. The book has been praised for re-opening some of the biggest questions in human history. A review in Science concludes that the book's thesis "is fascinating and represents an alternative, nuanced, if somewhat speculative, scenario on how civilized society came into being."

“Once the basic assumption of the superiority and attraction of fixed-field farming over all previous forms of subsistence is questioned, it becomes clear that this assumption itself rests on a deeper and more embedded assumption that is virtually never questioned. And that assumption is that sedentary life itself is superior to and more attractive than mobile forms of existence.”

James C. Scott book Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States

Source: Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (2017), pp. 7-8

“Mankind has been mesmerized by the narrative of progress and civilization as codified by the first great agrarian kingdoms. As new and powerful societies, they were determined to distinguish themselves as sharply as possible from the populations from which they sprang and that still beckoned and threatened at their fringes.”

James C. Scott book Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States

Source: Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (2017), p. 7