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This obituary is excerpted from Yale University.
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James C. Scott was Sterling Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Professor of Anthropology at Yale University. He passed away peacefully in his home in Durham, CT, on Friday, July 19, 2024. He was 87.
He served as director of the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University, an experimental, interdisciplinary effort to reshape how a new generation of scholars understands rural life and society. He was described in the 2012 New York Times article “The Professor Who Learns From Peasants” as the “unofficial founder of the field of “resistance studies,” in which his book “Weapons of the Weak” (1985), a study of peasant resistance based on fieldwork in a Malaysian village, is a kind of Bible.”
“The American political scientist James C. Scott stands for creativity, curiosity, and an open mind. For generations of researchers, the political thinker was a source of inspiration. He was a brilliant scholar, and a mentor who often helped researchers take a more global view. Scott’s work transcends disciplinary boundaries and explores the limits of government intervention and economic policy based on his field research on rural communities in Southeast Asia.” – Obituary for James C. Scott, WZB Berlin Social Science Center
On August 27, 2021 the Berkeley Library Oral History Project at the University of California announced the release of the Yale Agrarian Studies Oral History Project, a two-part series featuring the life history of James C. Scott, and shorter interviews with over a dozen affiliates of the Yale Agrarian Studies Program. He was awarded the 2020 Albert O. Hirschman Prize, the Social Science Research Council’s highest honor. The Hirschman Price recognizes excellence in social and behavioral science in the tradition of Albert O. Hirschman’s pioneering research.
Professor Scott was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has held grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation, and has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Science, Science, Technology and Society Program at M.I.T., and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.
Related articles:
- James C. Scott, Iconoclastic Social Scientist, Dies at 87, New York Times
- In Memoriam: James Scott, pathbreaking scholar in the social sciences
- James C. Scott, much referenced anarchist thinker, 1936–2024
- Oral History Project Celebrates Famed Political Scientist James C. Scott and the Yale Agrarian Studies Program
- Film: In A Field All His Own: The Life and Career of James C. Scott
- James C. Scott: Agrarian Studies and Over 50 Years of Pioneering Work in the Social Sciences