David Thang Moe | ယခုဆောင်းပါးကို မြန်မာဘာသာဖြင့် ဖတ်ရှုရန် ဤနေရာတွင် နှိပ်ပါ

Cite as: 
David Thang Moe. (2025). Fond Memories with James C. Scott: The Ivy League Professor Who Learned from Village Peasants. Independent Journal of Burmese Scholarship, 6. https://ijbs.online/?page_id=5580

Described by The New York Times as an unofficial founder of the field of “resistance studies”,¹ James C. Scott passed away at his farm home in Durham, Connecticut, on 19 July 2024 at the age of 87.² His Burmese name was Shwe Yoe, and his passing coincided with Martyrs’ Day in Myanmar—the “country of his first love,” in his own words. It is a true honor for me to share my fond memories of Professor Scott and my deep admiration for his humble life and enduring legacy as his final mentee.

I am deeply honored not only to have been one of his final mentees but also to be amongst the last people to speak with him. A day before his passing, he called me at 9:33 a.m. for a goodbye conversation that lasted over twenty minutes; his daughter Mia Scott was by his side. He asked for updates on Myanmar’s resistance movement, particularly in the hill regions of Karenni and Chin states—what he fondly referred to as s. He expressed his great admiration for the people’s creative and courageous resistance to the 2021 coup and his optimism for the future of Myanmar’s democracy. He also reflected on how much he enjoyed the time we spent together as “two Myanmar experts,” at Yale University, and he wished me all the best. Even in the final moments of his life, his concern for the people of Myanmar remained steadfast, and his mind was as sharp as ever. What a genius scholar he was.

Scott’s love for Burma dated back to the 1950s during his undergraduate days at Williams College in Massachusetts. He wrote his senior thesis on Burma and later received a Rotary Fellowship to visit Burma as a tutor at Rangoon University (1958–59). He often told us proudly that he had declined admission to Harvard Law School in order to pursue this opportunity. “I could go to Harvard Law School anytime,” he said, “but going to Burma with the Rotary Scholarship was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” His choice of Rangoon University over Harvard Law School proved to be a turning point in his life.

Scott loved everyone, especially those from the margins and rural communities. In that sense, our meeting was special—both personally and intellectually. Scott and I met as what might be called “mutual lovers” of both the Ivy League and the hill villages. One of us (Scott) had moved from the Ivy League (Yale) to the villages for fieldwork, while the other (myself) had moved from the hill villages to the Ivy League for academic research—bringing firsthand experience into dialogue with scholarship. I was therefore not only his mentee but also his Zomian dialogue partner.

Scott had a profound love for the village peoples of Southeast Asia, from whom he learned about everyday forms of peasant resistance to power. When he decided to conduct fieldwork in a Malay village of Kedah State in 1978, his Yale colleagues discouraged him, warning that such work could “ruin his academic career.” They urged him instead to pursue library-based research. Having already completed such research for his earlier, groundbreaking book The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia³—which focused mainly on lowland Myanmar, home to the Bamar Buddhist majority, and on Vietnam—Scott insisted on conducting fieldwork for his next project. At that time, few scholars showed any interest in peasant societies. Yet Scott, driven by deep passion and conviction, chose to follow his own path. Together with his family, he spent two years (1978–1980) living and researching in a small Malay village in Kedah State. The outcome of that commitment was his seminal book Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance.⁴ As of today, the book has been cited by more than 25,432 scholars across multiple disciplines and has become a classic in political science, anthropology, history, Biblical studies, and political theology. Scott himself told me, “This book has unexpectedly traveled beyond my own guild.”

We often first come to know scholars through their writings, and only later meet them in person. That was certainly the case for my relationship with Scott. I first encountered him through his books and only finally met him in person in the summer of 2019 during my PhD dissertation research at Yale University. He invited me to his office, where he generously gave me several of his books, each personally signed. In one of them, The Art of Not Being Governed,⁵ he wrote: “For David Moe, in anticipation of a year full of learning and intellectual companionship. Warm regards, Jim Scott.”

He later took me to dinner, along with a visiting scholar from Norway, and invited me to return to Yale for a postdoctoral and lecturer position in Southeast Asian Studies. “I don’t have the authority to hire you,” he said, “but I will advocate for you by speaking with Professor Erik Harms, the current Chair of the Council on Southeast Asia Studies, to support your appointment at Yale.” Scott’s advocacy and support played a crucial role in my appointment at Yale. I am truly grateful to both Scott and Harms for their strong support and mentorship.

When I moved to New Haven in the summer of 2022, Scott was in Denmark on vacation. Upon his return, he called to welcome me to Yale and to New Haven via phone, and soon after invited my wife and I to his home for a welcoming lunch. He said, “Please don’t call me Professor Scott; just call me Jim—we’re colleagues now.” Coming from a culture that deeply honors someone of his high stature—we would call them sayagyi (“great teacher”)—it took me some time to feel comfortable calling him Jim. Scott, however, was quick to open his heart and extend his generous hand. He was truly a down-to-earth man. He did not merely study and write about peasants—he lived like one, with simplicity and humility. He avoided wearing neckties and often dressed casually. Inside his car, I never saw a laptop, but I did notice farming gloves.

Despite holding a Sterling Professorship—the highest academic rank at Yale—Scott embodied genuine humility. He never treated scholars and ordinary people differently; he treated everyone with equal respect. During our lunch at his house, he spoke warmly with my wife, who is of Malaysian origin (the country he called his “second love”), practicing Bahasa Malay with her and Burmese with me. We share fond memories of that day where he recounted his time in Myanmar and Malaysia. I was impressed by his humble personality and his exceptional professionalism as a scholar and person. During that meeting, we also discussed potential collaborations and projects to advance Myanmar Studies, including a workshop on “Federalism from Below” at Yale.

Yale Classrooms and Global Impacts

Scott, Yale, and Southeast Asian Studies are inseparable. When Scott finished his PhD and returned to Yale University in 1976 as a tenured professor, he quickly became an intellectual force in developing Southeast Asian Studies. He helped grow the discipline during his chair for Yale’s Council on Southeast Asia Studies in the 1980s. Even after his retirement, Scott continued playing a significant role in developing Burmese studies within Southeast Asian Studies.

Under his leadership, together with Dr. Erik Harms, and other Myanmar scholars, such as Dr. Courtney Wittekind, Dr. Frances O’Morchoe, and others, we established the Multicultural Myanmar Collaboratory (MMC) at Yale—a safe space for scholars, writers, and civil actors to research, teach, and engage with the intellectual and cultural life of Myanmar. We came up with the idea of Yale helping to fill the educational vacuum left by the military coup. Since education has faced a severe crisis following the 2021 coup, the MMC has served as a hub for intellectual exchange and curriculum development. Scott never imposed his ideas; instead, he offered thoughtful insights and encouraged collective reflection. He was also a vocal advocate on campus. When Yale launched a program to host scholars facing persecution in their home countries, Scott urged then-President Peter Salovey to include displaced Myanmar scholars.

In late 2023, we formed the Yale-Myanmar Junior Scholars Mentorship Program, which was designed to support young scholars and practitioners whose education and professional work was interrupted by the 2021 coup. Out of nearly 200 applicants, we selected some to come to Yale to present their papers in April 2024, while others joined us virtually. Despite his poor health, Scott gave impactful remarks on the last day of the program. Our mentees greatly enjoyed engaging with Scott. We were deeply honored to have him as a distinguished speaker for our program.

What made Scott unique was his integration of academia with advocacy and activism. He never separated his scholarly work from real life. Having been arrested more than six times during the civil rights movement, he understood what the people of Myanmar endured. Together, we shared panels on the Burmese revolution at leading universities, including Yale, Columbia, Yonsei, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, among others. He also co-founded Mutual Aid Myanmar to raise funds for those suffering under military repression. And of course, Scott also helped local Burmese and other specialist scholars re-establish the very Independent Journal of Burmese Scholarship you are now reading.⁶

In the spring of 2023, Scott offered his last seminar at Yale Law School, titled “Decentralized Resistance.” During lunch at the Law School café, he confided, “David, I’ll tell you something just between you and me. As I was slowly working on my book project”—what has now become his posthumous In Praise of Floods: The Untamed River and the Life It Brings⁷—“I hesitated to accept the invitation to teach this seminar. But I decided to do it for two reasons: first, to bring fresh insights from the Burmese revolution into the classroom; and second, to donate my honorarium from the course to the Burmese resistance.” HHe generously donated his entire honorarium to the Burmese resistance movement.

He invited me as a guest speaker for that seminar to share my firsthand experience of Buddhist nationalism and ethnic minority resistance, along with Professor Elizabeth Nugent from Princeton University. Later, I invited Scott to speak in my own seminar, “Religion, Conflict, and Reconciliation in Southeast Asia,” at Yale Divinity School in spring 2023—a “reciprocal invitation,” as we called it. My students found his lecture deeply engaging and insightful. Scott frequently visited my other classes as well, including “Religion, Politics, and Identity in Asia,” offering generous encouragement to colleagues and students alike.

The last academic activity we shared was my book workshop on 15 May 2024 just two months before his passing. Together with Professor Erik Harms and Professor Chloe Starr, Scott read my entire manuscript thoroughly and offered constructive feedback. One of his most important suggestions was, “David, send your manuscript to scholars who are not familiar with your field. That kind of feedback is also helpful.” I dedicated this forthcoming book to Scott.

Scott’s Enduring Legacy for Scholarship and Democracy

Scott leaves behind an extraordinary legacy for scholarship going forward, and in particular, for the study of Southeast Asia and Zomia. Six months after his passing, I designed and taught a seminar at Yale in spring 2025 titled “The Politics of Religious Nationalism and Decentralized Resistance in Southeast Asia” to honor his life and legacy. Twenty-five students from diverse backgrounds enrolled, critically engaging with Scott’s work on domination and resistance, as well as Benedict Anderson’s theory of nationalism as “imagined communities.”⁸ Many students reported that Scott’s concepts of “everyday resistance” and “the art of not being governed” fundamentally transformed their understanding of social and political dynamics across the world. I would like to highlight at least three aspects of his unique legacy.

First, Scott was an exceptionally interdisciplinary scholar. I know of no other scholar whose work has been read so widely across so many academic disciplines. In a New York Times obituary for him, he was described as:

… One of the world’s most widely read social scientists, whose studies on why top-down government schemes of betterment often fail and how marginalized groups subtly undermine authority led to his embrace of a political philosophy.⁹

His influence extended far beyond political science and anthropology to include environmental studies, history, theology, religious studies, and even biblical scholarship. Scott consistently pushed the boundaries of traditional disciplines and thought outside the box. While it was natural for his work to be influential within his own fields, it is remarkable how far his ideas resonated beyond them. His insights also illuminate theology and biblical studies, since so many religious and theological texts themselves emerge from “the underside of history.”

For example, Richard Horsley of the University of Massachusetts Boston and his colleagues from biblical and theological backgrounds have extensively engaged with Scott’s work, producing two comprehensive volumes: Hidden Transcripts and the Arts of Resistance¹⁰ and Oral Performance, Popular Tradition, and Hidden Transcript in Q,¹¹ both edited by Horsley. In an email exchange with me on 27 August 2025, Horsley remarked, “The New Testament is stuck in its old ways—and they are narrowly theological. Scott’s insights are directly relevant to the work of Bible scholars.” Likewise, in his tribute to Scott on 8 August 2024, the late eminent Hebrew Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann praised him, writing, “Outside of my own discipline, I reckon that I’ve learned more from Scott than any other contemporary scholar.”

Second, Scott was what I would call a uniquely organic scholar. By this, I mean that his scholarship was deeply connected to real-world experiences. He did not impose intellectual insights upon ordinary people; rather, he brought grassroots voices, worldviews, and folklore into academic conversation. He was willing to learn from village peasants. Instead of viewing the world from a “bird’s-eye” perspective—from above—he examined it from what he called an “earthworm’s view,” from below. He placed the lived experiences of rural communities at the center of intellectual debates on power and resistance. This is unusual for many intellectuals.

As a result, his writings remain accessible to both scholars and ordinary readers, including political leaders. Many scholars are writing for their fellow scholars, but Scott’s writing is not only for scholars, but also for political leaders. For example, Malaysia’s political prisoner-turned-Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim was inspired by Weapons of the Weak and found deep resonance with his own student political activism in a rural Malay peasant village of Kedah State where Scott conducted fieldwork. In his tribute to Scott on his official social media account, Prime Minister Ibrahim expressed his deep sadness and highly praised Scott as a pioneering and “exceptional” Southeast Asianist.

In Domination and the Arts of Resistance, Scott coined the term “infrapolitics” to describe the everyday political actions of ordinary people—acts often subtle, hidden, and overlooked by elites.¹² Rather than making famous scholars more famous, Scott chose to amplify the unheard voices of peasant communities within academic discourse. He often said that, since peasants represented the largest segment of the world’s population, it was both an honor and a worthy career to devote one’s life to studying peasants and agriculture. This conviction resonated deeply in the context of Southeast Asia’s agrarian societies and rural communities. To institutionalize his legacy in this area, Scott established the Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale University in 1991 and led numerous conferences and seminars on agrarian issues and governance.

Third, Scott was a pioneering theorist of non-state societies. He theorized politics outside the conventional framework of the state, popularizing influential and sometimes controversial concepts such as “weapons of the weak,” “hidden transcripts,” “seeing like a state,” and “the art of not being governed.” Rather than viewing politics solely through the lens of formal institutions, laws, and the state, Scott examined how ordinary people navigate, negotiate, and resist domination in their everyday lives. His influential concepts have reshaped contemporary social and political theory. In Seeing Like a State,¹³ he critiques high-modernist schemes that attempt to make societies legible and governable, demonstrating how state interventions often fail because they ignore local knowledge, social practices, and informal institutions. His theory of non-state formation and resistance has become relevant also for my ethnic Chin community.

Scott, Hill Peoples, and the Ungovernable Community

While his previous book, The Moral Economy of the Peasant, focuses on anti-colonial movements such as Saya Hsan’s peasant rebellion in lowlands and Buddhist valley kingdoms, his later work, The Art of Not Being Governed, examines hill peoples and their resistance to centralized states across highland Southeast Asia and its borderlands. This latter work explores societies that deliberately evade state control, emphasizing how geography, social organization, and cultural practices create forms of “ungovernability” that challenge centralized authority.

Scott’s creative concept of Zomia is helpful for a new area study of non-state peoples in Southeast Asia, Northeast India, and Southwest China. Scott said at the time, “Zomia is the largest remaining region of the world whose peoples have not yet been fully incorporated into nation-states”.¹⁴ The Zomia region is as large as Europe, but scholars have not paid sufficient attention to it. While Scott’s characterization of hill peoples as “runaway, fugitive, and maroon communities”¹⁵ may be debatable in terms of the Chin and others’ self-imagination as indigenous communities still in their ancestral lands, The Art of Not Being Governed resonates with the ungovernable Chin community in both the pre-colonial and post-coup periods.

The Burmese translation of The Art of Not Being Governed,¹⁶ is even more relevant to the Chin community. It expresses a teacher-student and leader-follower typology of top-down relationships. The Chin people refuse to be governed by outsiders; they prefer autonomy under their own leaders. On the other hand, the Burmese version notes that the Chin people prefer to be leaders rather than followers. They do not want to listen to leaders, which is problematic, as shown in the current leadership crisis in the Chin community that resists military rule.

Regardless of this, the Chin resistance movement has been successful. They make good use of their local mountains as refuges during ongoing resistance to the regime from the lowlands. The war continues, but today, most of the Chin hills and other rural regions are governed by civilians, while urban cities remain under regime control. The Chin hills are becoming ungovernable by the central state and military regime.

Flexible Identity, Fixed Identity, and Nationalism

Scott often asked two questions regarding relations between the central state and hill peoples. First, how does the state become an enemy of ethnic minority groups in hill villages? Second, why do ethnic minorities know more about ethnic majorities than ethnic majorities know about ethnic minorities? He asked me the second question while we were having dinner at a restaurant near the Yale University campus in November 2022. The answer to the second question relates back to a teacher-student relationship. The Bamar ethnic majority has made ethnic minorities into students, assimilating them into their dominant culture. Ethnic and religious minorities are forced to learn the dominant culture. Some ethnic minority groups, such as the Chin, Kachin, and Shan, were in the past never under the direct rule of Bamar kings, but were arbitrarily included within political boundaries drawn by the British colonists, forcing them into a union under the predominantly Bamar Buddhist population residing mainly in the lowlands. Burma’s nation-building since independence has been led and imagined exclusively by Bamar Buddhists, so the central state has automatically caused trouble to ethnic minorities. This is the answer to the first question.

In this context, the Chin people have two options: One is to change their religion, and the second is to resist the central state shaped by Buddhist nationalism. Religious identity is more flexible in Myanmar and other Southeast Asian countries, while ethnic identity is often less flexible. Today’s Christian could become tomorrow’s Buddhist, especially in a Buddhist-majority country where people are discriminated against for their religious identity. Some Chin people do indeed choose the first option: they change their religion to overcome religion-based identity and thereby gain privileges in Buddhist society. However, changing one’s religion from Christianity to Buddhism is regarded as disloyal by most Chin people. Since ethnicity serves as a stronger factor in discrimination, changing one’s religion does not fully solve the problem.

There is a common saying about identity imagination: “To be Bamar is to be Buddhist; to be Chin or Kachin is to be Christian.” Most Chin people choose the second option. They remain faithful to their Christian identity and resist the centralized state and its political ideology of Buddhist nationalism, which discriminates against ethnic minorities who are not Buddhists. Chin and other ethnic minorities have resisted the centralized state’s politics of Burmanization and Buddhistization since long before the 2021 coup. This only nurtured a stronger sense of resistance once the coup occurred.

Scott and the Chin People’s Decentralized Resistance

Following the 2021 coup, the Chin were among the first to resist the military regime with their basic hunting rifles (tumi in Burmese) in what BBC News described as the “small embattled town” of Mindat,¹⁷ located in the Chin Hills. This is the town in which I completed high school. The majority of people in Mindat are peasants and most men are also hunters. As hunters, Chin men own hunting rifles at home. Hunting guns are weapons of the weak peasants. Due to their determined opposition to the regime, the military declared martial law in Mindat in May 2021—the first ethnic minority town to be placed under martial law since the coup. Mindat’s tumi resistance deeply inspired others across the country to take up arms against the military, which was increasingly killing unarmed protesters.

Scott defines the Burmese revolution, including the Chin’s opposition to the 2021 coup, as a decentralized form of resistance. The 2021 anti-coup resistance movement did not start with political elites or a centralized government. It emerged from the discontent of ordinary civilians. Unlike Ukraine’s centralized resistance to Russia’s invasion, resistance in Myanmar emerged from the ground up. It did not begin with commands from a centralized government but through cooperative actions by ordinary civilians, most of whom are not interested in politics beyond living in a society that respects their rights.

Military leaders may have thought that detaining the duly elected and iconic political leader Aung San Suu Kyi on the day of the coup would diminish the power of ordinary people and their collective motives for protest. However, the coup was met with massive protests by millions of civilians from diverse religious, ethnic, and gender backgrounds. In the past, the Chin and other ethnic armed groups were most often understood by the Bamar majority as simply illegal rebels, while ethnic minority groups regarded themselves as freedom fighters. The 2021 coup created an opportunity for people to reconcile their multiple identities and unite against the military rule. Men and women joined protests beyond previously imagined boundaries, defying the coup’s underestimation of popular power. Unlike the previous resistance movements, the post-2021 decentralized movement is more inclusive in terms of religion, ethnicity, and gender.¹⁸ As Scott rightly noted:

The uniqueness of Burmese revolution merits a comprehensive study. Obscured, by the headline-grabbing wars in the Ukraine, and between Hamas and Israel, its importance for understanding both the struggle for democracy, in general, and the techniques of decentralized insurgency, in particular, is unique. It deserves the kind of history and documentation that does justice to the sacrifice of tens of thousands of civilians throughout the country, and to the goal of democratic federalism they share. Such a popular sourced history is not only Ahmed to the Burmese national narrative but is more widely a vital contribution to the understanding of decentralized cooperation in democratic revolutions. If, as many historians believe, how a revolution achieves its goals is determinate of how it will rule, then should it achieve power, the structure and mutuality of the democratic uprising is important. Federalism—far from being just a constitutional text—is in fact being forged on the ground by the widespread cooperation of a dizzying number of autonomous resistance courses. Despite the relative ignorance of the Burmese revolution in the West, it belongs to the exemplary category occupied by the French revolution and the solidarity movement in Poland.¹⁹

Despite having no military support from any external countries, this highly decentralized resistance has proven inventive in adapting civilian technology for military uses. For example, the manufacture and modification of drones and the manufacture of small arms. The movement’s ad hoc cooperation between myriad local groups attacking the military and defending terrain is also impressive. No one can predict the eventual outcome of this decentralized resistance movement on the future of democracy in Myanmar, but its effectiveness is equally evident in the significant numbers of defectors leaving the military since the coup.²⁰ While decentralized resistance has its strengths, it may also have limitations, such as the lack of unifying political leadership leading to disorganization. However, Scott’s main concern was to understand why and how decentralized resistance against centralized states in Southeast Asia emerged.

Public and Hidden Resistance—‘Weapons of the Weak’

Scott is credited with coining the term “hidden transcripts” as a critical method of resistance in contexts of dangerous domination. While public protest and resistance to authority are often possible in democratic countries, such forms of public resistance are riskier in dictatorial contexts, such as Myanmar. Given this, Scott’s theory of hidden transcripts is highly relevant to Chin people’s everyday forms of resistance, both hidden and public. When the situation seems safe, they resist the regime visibly; but when it seems risky, they resist in hidden and symbolic ways. Scott emphasized that even below-the-radar forms of everyday resistance can be highly impactful in such dangerous contexts.

Scott’s theory of hidden transcripts refers to the private, off-stage critiques of military power that subordinate groups develop, contrasting with the public, official narratives that reinforce authority. These hidden critiques reveal rich, often unacknowledged dimensions of political life. Importantly, Scott’s theory enables Chin Christian communities to reread texts like Romans 13:1-7 as a hidden transcript of political theology. Some Chin Christians misuse Romans 13:1-7 as an imperial text that justifies the coup and demands the church’s blind submission to authorities. However, Scott’s theory allows us to read hidden transcripts in Romans 13:1-7, whereby the author Paul is a hidden resistor to empire. Romans 13:1-7 should be understood in dialogue with Romans 12:9, where Paul says, “resist evil and love what is good.” In light of this, the Chin churches must resist the coup as evil and love what is good for society.²¹ Resisting the coup as evil is connected to the Buddhist moral rejection of the coup as adhamma, which is the opposite of dhamma (the moral teachings of the Buddha).

The Chin people are adopting both hidden and public forms of resistance as “weapons of the weak.” In Weapons of the Weak, Scott highlights the subtle, often invisible forms of resistance employed by marginalized populations, such as the Chin, including “foot-dragging” (the deliberate act of slowness), “sabotage” (damaging someone’s property), “false compliance” (pretending to cooperate with rules without genuinely adhering to them), and rumor-spreading—all of which challenge power without overt confrontation. Scott also emphasizes gossip as a subtle yet significant form of everyday resistance. He explains that gossip serves as a kind of democratic voice in contexts where the threat of repression makes open acts of defiance dangerous.²² It allows the oppressed to share stories that expose and criticize the injustices of those in power, keeping alive the moral imagination of freedom even amid fear and silence.

Beyond Scott: Social and Diasporic Chin Mobilizations

While Scott’s work, especially Weapons of the Weak and Domination and the Arts of Resistance, offers exceptional contributions to the field of resistance studies, two aspects are notably missing. First is the role of social media in social movements. Second is the significance of diasporic mobilizations and their intercontinental connections with people on the ground. This omission is understandable, as Scott developed his theory of resistance before digital social media existed and when there were few ethnic Chin diasporic communities outside their homeland. Thus, my invitation is to read Scott’s work not only for its direct implications but also for how it can be expanded in light of the contemporary context.

Moving beyond Scott requires acknowledging that social media now plays a significant role in the anti-coup resistance movement in Myanmar. Social media serves both as a weapon of resistance and as a channel connecting Chin diaspora groups with local people at home, for example. While Elon Musk’s company X (formerly known as Twitter) is primarily used by elites, Facebook is accessible to more than half of the country’s 55 million citizens, including the Chin, and serves as a central space for expressing critical views, organizing civil disobedience campaigns, and raising funds for protesters and the families of those killed during demonstrations. For safety, many users adopt anonymous names and photos to engage in everyday acts of resistance.²³ The Chin social movement is deeply shaped by these intertwined forms of hidden and public resistance, where art, social media, and everyday acts of defiance converge to sustain the moral and political life of the community.

Through digital activism, visual art, music, poetry, and online performance, they create spaces of hidden and public resistance that challenge state propaganda, preserve collective memory, and inspire moral courage among the people. For example, a group of Chin diaspora activists and Mizo singers in northeast India released a music video cover of Michael Jackson’s We Are the World, adding lyrics that explicitly resist the coup. The video symbolizes their solidarity and serves as a call for the international community to support the people of Myanmar. It quickly garnered 1.6 million views,²⁴ and within two years, has reached about 7.3 million views.²⁵ The singers have generated donations through this video to support anti-coup efforts in India, the United States, and other countries.

Scott often distinguished between protest and resistance: protest is finite, while resistance is durable. Daily acts seed and nurture everyday forms of resistance. He frequently noted that most resistance in the world is not about organized protests, but about everyday resistance. There can be resistance without formal protest. The people of Myanmar in general, and the Chin communities in particular, adopt Scott’s theory of everyday resistance in their local, displaced, and diasporic opposition to the coup—often without direct knowledge of his theory. Scott’s ideas illuminate how power, resistance, and social order exist beyond formal state structures, highlighting the agency of ordinary Chin people and communities.

Professor Scott was truly one of a kind—a genius, giant, and generous scholar. His intellectual brilliance was profound; his ideas were original; his theories were highly influential; his humility was deep; and his generosity was wide beyond his own family. May his passion for learning from village peasants, his dedication to hill peoples’ decentralized resistance, and his ethic of amplifying ordinary voices inspire our democratic visions and foster dialogical scholarship across Southeast Asia, its borderlands, and global diasporas!

May his enduring legacy live on!

Endnotes

¹ Schuessler, 2012.
² Corbin, 2024; Laurans, 2024.
³ Scott, 1976.
⁴ Scott, 1985.
⁵ Scott, 2009.
⁶ McQueen, 2022.
⁷ Scott, 2025.
⁸ Anderson, 1983.
⁹ Trip, 2024.
¹⁰ Horsley, 2004.
¹¹ Horsley, 2006.
¹² Scott, 1990.
¹³ Scott, 1998.
¹⁴ Scott, 2009, p. ix.
¹⁵ Scott, 2009, p. ix.
¹⁶ ဆရာ မတင် ၊ တပည့် မခံချင်ကြသူများ။
¹⁷ Head, 2021.
¹⁸ For the role of women in the revolutionary movement, see the Independent Journal of Burmese Scholarship’s special issues on Feminism (2023; 2024). In a similar vein, insurgent collective movements were led by ordinary people in Latin America (Wood, 2003, pp. 5-20).
¹⁹ This quote is from Scott’s paper, “A Rough Draft for the Study of the Burmese Revolution” sent to me on 28 November 2023, eight months before he passed away. He presented these and other ideas on shared panels with me at Yonsei University on 18 May 2021, at Columbia University on 1 February 2022, at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs on 29 November 2022, and at the Chinese University of Hong Kong on 31 March 2023.
²⁰ Independent Journal of Burmese Scholarship, 2022; 2025.
²¹ Moe & Scott, 2023.
²² Scott, 1985, p. 282.
²³ Asher, 2021.
²⁴ Fishbein, 2023.
²⁵ ChinTube, 2023.

References

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Laurans, P. (2024, July 24). James Scott, pathbreaking scholar in the social sciences. Yale News. https://news.yale.edu/2024/07/24/james-scott-pathbreaking-scholar-social-sciences

McQueen, M. (2022, January 6). Interview with James C. Scott on the Origins of the Independent Journal of Burmese Scholarship. Council on Southeast Asia Studies, Yale MacMillan Center. https://macmillan.yale.edu/southeast-asia/interview-james-c-scott-origins-independent-journal-burmese-scholarship-ijbs

Moe, D. T., & Scott, J. C. (2023). Reading Romans 13:1-7 as a Hidden Transcript: A Dialogue Between James C. Scott and Anti-coup Protesters in Myanmar. International Journal of Public Theology, 17(2), 226-245.

Schuessler, J. (2012, December 4). Professor Who Learns From Peasants. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/05/books/james-c-scott-farmer-and-scholar-of-anarchism.html

Scott, J. C. (1976). The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. Yale University Press.

Scott, J. C. (1985). Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. Yale University Press.

Scott, J. C. (1990). Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. Yale University Press.

Scott, J. C. (1998). Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Yale University Press. https://doi.org/10.1353/jsh.2000.0050

Scott, J. C. (2009). The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. Yale University Press. https://doi.org/10.1177/026272801203200105

Scott, J. C. (2025). In Praise of Floods: The Untamed River and the Life It Brings. Yale University Press. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300278491/in-praise-of-floods/

Wood, E. J. (2003). Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador. Cambridge University Press.