Life on the Edge  Denizens of the periphery find ways to escape
the predatory state.  The Art of Not Being Governed: An
Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, by James C. Scott,
Yale University Press, 442 pages, $35  In the dominant narrative
of civilization’s march, cultured people are ruled by
centralized law-giving institutions (city-states, kingdoms,
empires, and now nation-states), usually centered in relatively
flat lowlands and sustained by grain agriculture. By contrast,
according to this view, people who live in the mountains, in
swamps, or in “remote” jungles are rude, primitive, and
backward, relying on nomadism, slash-and-burn agriculture, and
hunting and gathering. They live not in cities or nations but in
bands, clans, and tribes. The way they live is the way everyone
used to live before some of us became civilized; they are
windows onto our past, living museums of prehistoric life.   How
lucky we are not to be backward. How fortunate we are to be
ruled by wise kings and far-sighted legisla