“ꓢꓲꓽ ꓒ ꓶꓽ ꓟ ꓙꓲ꓾ ꓬꓲ ꓙꓬ ꓠꓶꓽ ꓟ ꓙꓲ”
For centuries, the Lisu survived in one of the most difficult environments in Asia.
They lived in mountains.
They moved when necessary.
They farmed in ways that allowed mobility.
They organized society without powerful centralized rulers.
They preserved history through oral tradition.
They adapted their identity and relationships as circumstances changed.
To an outsider, these things might look like signs of poverty, backwardness or political weakness.
But American political scientist and anthropologist James C. Scott asked us to look at them differently.
In his influential book The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, Scott argues that many highland peoples of what he calls “Zomia”—including the Lisu—should not simply be understood as peoples who were left behind by civilization.
They may have been doing something much more intelligent:
They were protecting their freedom.
Scott’s argument is that geography, agriculture, mobility, social organization and even oral traditions could function as strategies for avoiding excessive incorporation into lowland states.
But here is the question for us today: If the strategy worked for our ancestors, will it work for us?
Probably not.
And that is where the next chapter of Lisu history begins.
1. Our mountains were not simply our home. They were our protection.
Imagine the world our ancestors lived in.
Power was concentrated in the valleys.
Governments needed people they could count, tax, recruit and control. They needed agricultural production that could be measured and collected. They needed roads and accessible settlements.
The mountains made all of this difficult.
Scott’s concept of Zomia describes the enormous highland region stretching across parts of modern China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and surrounding areas. He argues that mountainous terrain historically provided a kind of zone of refuge for populations seeking distance from slavery, taxation, forced labor, conscription, warfare and other forms of state control.
The mountain was therefore more than geography.
The mountain was a political resource.
Distance itself created freedom.
The harder it was for an outside authority to reach you, the more room you had to govern your own life.
2. Mobility was not weakness. It was a survival technology.
Modern people often think of settlement as progress:
House → village → town → city.
But for a people living under pressure, mobility can be an enormous advantage.
If conditions became dangerous, people could move.
If political power expanded into one area, people could relocate.
If agricultural land became exhausted, people could move again.
Scott describes the mobility of many Zomian peoples as part of a broader system of adaptation that made them difficult to capture and incorporate.
This gives us an important lesson: Our ancestors did not always survive by defeating powerful people. Sometimes they survived by refusing to become easy to control.
That is a different kind of intelligence.
3. Even agriculture could become a strategy for freedom
Swidden or shifting cultivation is often described simply as primitive agriculture.
Scott challenges that assumption.
He argues that some forms of upland agriculture could be understood as “escape agriculture” because they required less fixed infrastructure and could support mobility and dispersed settlement.
Compare two systems.
A highly concentrated agricultural system creates:
fixed fields → fixed settlements → concentrated population → predictable production → easier taxation and administration.
A more mobile system can create:
dispersed fields → dispersed settlements → mobility → less predictable population → greater autonomy.
So agriculture was not merely about producing food.
It could also shape political freedom.
This does not mean every Lisu agricultural practice was consciously invented to resist states. Scott’s thesis is broader and interpretive: these patterns can be understood, at least partly, as adaptations that made incorporation more difficult.
That distinction matters.
We should learn from Scott without turning his theory into a simplistic explanation of everything Lisu.
4. Our lack of centralized power may also have been a strength
One of the most fascinating aspects of Scott’s argument concerns social organization.
Many highland societies did not develop the same centralized political structures as surrounding lowland states.
Why?
One possible explanation is that centralized authority itself could become dangerous.
A powerful chief can become a king.
A king can create a bureaucracy.
A bureaucracy can collect taxes.
A centralized authority can become a mechanism through which an outside state can reach everyone.
Scott therefore sees egalitarian and decentralized social structures among some highland peoples as potentially connected to the preservation of autonomy.
There is a profound lesson here: Our ancestors may have understood something modern societies sometimes forget: concentrated power is efficient—but it can also become dangerous.
The answer is not to reject leadership.
The answer is accountable leadership.
5. Even oral tradition may have had political advantages
This may be one of Scott’s most controversial—and interesting—ideas.
Modern society usually assumes:
Writing = civilization.
Scott asks us to reconsider that assumption.
He argues that oral traditions and flexible genealogical memories among some highland peoples, including the Lisu, could make centralized political organization and hereditary claims to authority more difficult.
If people can reconstruct or reinterpret genealogies as they move between political environments, identity becomes flexible.
That flexibility can become survival.
But here we encounter a completely new problem.
What once protected us can now become a vulnerability.
Our ancestors could survive with oral history.
We cannot rely on it alone anymore.
Why?
Because the modern world is written, digitized and searchable.
If we don’t document our language, stories, philosophy, genealogy, music and knowledge, they can disappear within a few generations.
So perhaps our new strategy should be:
From oral memory to digital memory.
Record the elders.
Digitize the stories.
Document the language.
Preserve the proverbs.
Archive the songs.
Record traditional ecological knowledge.
Document place names.
Collect historical photographs.
Build digital dictionaries.
Preserve Fraser-script materials.
Teach young Lisu people to read both their own heritage and the wider world.
Our ancestors survived by remembering.
We must survive by recording, teaching and transmitting.
6. But then something happened: the world changed
Scott himself recognized the limitation of the old strategy.
Modern technologies have dramatically reduced the protective power of distance and terrain. Roads, communications, transportation, administration and surveillance have made it much harder for mountain peoples simply to disappear from state systems. A scholarly review of Scott’s work notes that he himself regarded traditional state-evasion strategies as increasingly ineffective in the modern nation-state era.
The mountain is still there.
But the world around the mountain has changed.
A smartphone can cross a mountain in seconds.
A government database can contain information about someone who lives hundreds of kilometers away.
A road can transform a remote village.
A young person can leave the mountain and enter a global labor market.
A social-media platform can influence a village more quickly than an elder can.
A university can be thousands of miles away—and yet accessible from a phone.
The geography of power has changed.
Therefore:
We need a new Lisu strategy.
7. We cannot simply escape the state anymore
Our ancestors might have asked:
“How can we stay beyond the reach of the state?”
We should ask a different question:
“How can we participate in the modern state without losing our freedom, identity and dignity?”
That is a much harder question.
But it is also a much more important one.
We cannot simply disappear.
We need citizenship.
We need education.
We need legal knowledge.
We need economic participation.
We need political understanding.
We need technology.
We need institutions.
We need relationships with governments and other communities.
But we also need the ability to say:
“We are Lisu, and we know who we are.”
8. From escaping power to understanding power
This may be the greatest transition.
The old survival skill was:
Avoid power.
The new survival skill is:
Understand power.
A Lisu young person should understand:
how government works
how laws affect communities
how economics works
how land rights work
how education systems work
how international organizations work
how digital technology works
how misinformation works
how political narratives are constructed
how communities negotiate with institutions
Why?
Because ignorance makes a community vulnerable.
If we don’t understand the system around us, other people will make decisions for us.
Education therefore becomes a new form of mountain.
Our ancestors had physical mountains protecting them.
We need intellectual mountains.
9. From mobility to connectivity
Our ancestors had another powerful resource:
mobility.
Today we can transform that into something even more powerful:
connectivity.
Lisu people now live in many places.
Myanmar.
China.
Thailand.
India.
The United States.
Europe.
Australia.
And many other places.
Instead of seeing dispersion only as fragmentation, we can turn it into a network.
A Lisu person in Putao can communicate with a Lisu person in Yangon.
A Lisu student abroad can help a village school.
A Lisu doctor can support rural healthcare.
A Lisu engineer can help develop technology.
A Lisu teacher can preserve the language.
A Lisu entrepreneur can create jobs.
A Lisu researcher can document history.
A Lisu organization can connect them all.
Our ancestors used mobility to escape capture.
We can use mobility to build networks.
10. From fragile identity to conscious identity
Scott’s work also challenges the idea that ethnic identity has always been fixed and unchanging.
He emphasizes the historical flexibility of highland identities and argues that identities could be reshaped in response to changing political circumstances.
But another scholar, Bengt G. Karlsson, cautions against explaining everything about highland identity simply as a reaction to the state. Highland peoples also have deeper forms of belonging and identity that cannot be reduced to state avoidance.
This is an important warning for us.
We should not reduce Lisu identity to resistance.
We are more than people who escaped something.
We have our own language.
Our own memories.
Our own values.
Our own stories.
Our own relationships.
Our own ways of understanding family, community, land and life.
The future question is therefore not merely:
“How do we protect ourselves from outsiders?”
It is:
“What kind of Lisu people do we want to become?”
11. The new Lisu strategy
Perhaps we can summarize the transition like this:
Yesterday Tomorrow
Mountain refuge Knowledge refuge
Physical distance Intellectual independence
Mobility Global connectivity
Oral memory Digital preservation
Avoiding authority Understanding authority
Decentralization Accountable institutions
Subsistence Sustainable economic capacity
Flexible identity Conscious identity
Escape Strategic engagement
Survival Resilience and flourishing
This does not mean abandoning our ancestors.
Quite the opposite.
It means taking their deepest wisdom seriously.
They did not copy someone else’s way of surviving.
They observed their environment.
They understood power.
They adapted.
They changed when circumstances changed.
That is exactly what we should do.
12. We need a new kind of Lisu independence
Independence today does not necessarily mean living outside the state.
A modern form of independence might mean:
We can think for ourselves.
We can educate ourselves.
We can preserve our language.
We can organize ourselves.
We can create economic opportunities.
We can use technology rather than become victims of it.
We can negotiate with governments without becoming completely dependent on them.
We can cooperate with other peoples without losing ourselves.
We can enter the modern world without allowing the modern world to erase us.
That is a much deeper independence.
13. Perhaps Scott’s greatest lesson is not about the past
Scott’s book is called The Art of Not Being Governed.
But perhaps the Lisu question for the twenty-first century is becoming:
The Art of Not Being Controlled
Because control today does not come only from governments.
It can come through:
money
political ideology
religious institutions
corporations
social media
misinformation
addictive technology
dependency
poverty
lack of education
even our own internal divisions.
The challenge is therefore much broader.
We need people who can think independently.
Communities that can cooperate without becoming authoritarian.
Institutions that are strong but accountable.
Young people who understand both their heritage and the modern world.
And leaders who understand that leadership is service, not ownership of the community.
14. Our ancestors climbed mountains. What mountains will we climb?
This is perhaps the question we should leave with the next generation.
Our ancestors climbed physical mountains to protect their freedom.
What mountains must we climb today?
The mountain of education.
The mountain of technology.
The mountain of economic development.
The mountain of political understanding.
The mountain of cultural preservation.
The mountain of scientific knowledge.
The mountain of global citizenship.
And perhaps the hardest mountain of all:
learning how to remain Lisu without becoming trapped in the past.
We should not romanticize poverty.
We should not romanticize isolation.
We should not assume everything our ancestors did must be repeated.
But neither should we accept the idea that our ancestors were simply “backward.”
They adapted to their world.
They survived pressures that many powerful civilizations could not understand.
And now our world has changed.
So our responsibility is not to reproduce their exact survival strategy.
Our responsibility is to inherit their capacity for adaptation.
From Not Being Governed to Governing Ourselves
Perhaps the Lisu story can be understood as three chapters:
Chapter One — Escape
“We must remain beyond the reach of powerful states.”
Chapter Two — Survival
“We must adapt wherever history takes us.”
Chapter Three — Agency
“We must become capable of shaping our own future.”
This third chapter is ours.
We don’t need to run from the mountain.
We don’t need to abandon the mountain either.
We can carry the mountain inside our minds.
A Lisu person can be a farmer, teacher, doctor, pastor, scientist, engineer, entrepreneur, researcher, artist or politician—and still be Lisu.
A Lisu child can learn English, Burmese, Chinese or Thai—and still speak Lisu.
A Lisu student can study at a university thousands of miles away—and still remember where the ancestors came from.
A Lisu community can use artificial intelligence, digital archives, modern medicine and global communication—and still preserve its deepest values.
That is the challenge.
And perhaps that is the opportunity.
> Our ancestors mastered the art of escaping control.
Our generation must master the art of understanding power without surrendering our identity.
And the next generation must learn not merely how to survive—but how to shape the future.
That may be the new Art of Being Lisu.
—***—
References
1. James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. Yale University Press, 2009/2010. Scott’s central argument concerns the historical relationship between Zomian highland societies, mobility, agriculture, social organization, oral traditions and avoidance of state incorporation.
2. Geoffrey Boyce, review of Scott’s The Art of Not Being Governed, Antipode (2011). This review provides a useful overview of Scott’s arguments concerning Zomia, state evasion, Lisu oral traditions, mobility and agriculture, while also noting Scott’s caution about the declining effectiveness of traditional evasion strategies in the modern state system.
3. Bengt G. Karlsson, “Evading the State: Ethnicity in Northeast India through the Lens of James Scott,” Asian Ethnology 72(2), 2013, pp. 321–331. Karlsson appreciates Scott’s framework while cautioning that highland identities and ways of life cannot be reduced entirely to state avoidance.
4. Yale University, The Art of Not Being Governed—book overview and publication information.
