The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia

“This work is a profound and fundamental contribution to the issues addressed.”—Sociology

“Vital to an understanding of peasant politics.”—Library Journal

James C. Scott places the critical problem of the peasant household—subsistence—at the center of this study. The fear of food shortages, he argues persuasively, explains many otherwise puzzling technical, social, and moral arrangements in peasant society, such as resistance to innovation, the desire to own land even at some cost in terms...