What's (written) history for?: On James C. Scott's Zomia, especially Chapter 6½

What could still trigger a worthwhile anthropological debate now that eight years have passed since the publication of James C. Scott's The art of not being governed in 2009? In this article, the author proposes a reading involving perhaps the most controversial chapter of Scott's book: Chapter 6½ – ‘Orality, writing, and texts’. Scott means to say that the absence of literacy in a society could result from a preference rather than a deficiency. He describes a project that refuses state formation, putting to use the advantages of flexibility and adaptation that an oral tradition has over a written tradition. Drawing on the case of the Hmong, the author proposes that Scott's argument might have been made more solid had he relied less on a geographical and historically rooted definition of Zomia, and more on a discussion of cultural elements such as egalitarianism and orality.