000			02377cam a2200241 i 4500
008			2212 t20172017ctuab b 001 0 eng d
020			_a9780300182910 (PB)
041			_aeng
080			_a94.7 _bSCO
100	1		_aScott, James C.
245	1	0	_aAgainst the grain _bA deep history of the earliest states
260			_aNew Haven, CT. _bYale University Press _c 2017
300			_axvii, 312 p _billustrations, map
490	1		_aYale agrarian studies
504			_aIncludes bibliographical references (pages 279-300) and index.
505	0		_aA narrative in tatters : what I didn't know -- The domestication of fire, plants, animals, and... us -- Landscaping the world : the domus complex -- Zoonoses : a perfect epidemiological storm -- Agro-ecology of the early state -- Population control : bondage and war -- Fragility of the early state : collapse as disassembly -- The golden age of the barbarians.
520	8		_aAn account of all the new and surprising evidence now available for the beginnings of the earliest civilizations that contradict the standard narrative. Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains, and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative. The first agrarian states, says James C. Scott, were born of accumulations of domestications: first fire, then plants, livestock, subjects of the state, captives, and finally women in the patriarchal family-all of which can be viewed as a way of gaining control over reproduction. Scott explores why we avoided sedentism and plow agriculture, the advantages of mobile subsistence, the unforeseeable disease epidemics arising from crowding plants, animals, and grain, and why all early states are based on millets and cereal grains and unfree labor. He also discusses the "barbarians" who long evaded state control, as a way of understanding continuing tension between states and nonsubject peoples.
650		0	_aAgriculture
650		0	_aAgriculture and state
650		0	_aAgriculture
690			_aGeneral
942			_cBK _01
999			_c59314 _d59314