When you read about James Scott, you commonly come across words such as ‘provocative,’ ‘contrarian,’ alongside ‘counter-narrative’ – such are the attempts to place his histories as outside the mainstream of thought. For this reason alone, his work is so worthwhile. He has always offered a striking perspective that can have a lasting influence on how you view things thereafter. In a way, he finds the blind spots in much of historical and cultural perspectives, and shows us how much we miss when not shining the light in such directions. I maintain here that it is the anarchistic elements of Scott’s thought that leads him to address the blind spots of others. He developed his anarchist perspective increasingly throughout his books, culminating in The Art of Not Being Governed (2009) and Two Cheers for Anarchism (2012). At first, he described how he characterized political organizations in his lectures and seminars in ways in which he found himself noticing how much they shared with anarchist perspectives, finding himself saying, “Now, that sounds like what an anarchist would argue” (Scott 2012: ix; see also 2020: 64; Holmes 2023). So, he began to explore anarchist theorists more closely, and in the process he even taught a course on anarchism at Yale. We should note that his anarchism is not at full throttle. After all, he did only offer “two cheers” (2012) for it, not three, but the weight of his scholarship is surely towards the anarchist side. In this sense, Scott represents one of the few prominent intellectuals that opted to work in this vein, alongside the contributions of Noam Chomsky (2005, 2013) or David Graeber (e.g., 2004, 2009, 2020). There are also several works that collect together scholars working in this direction for the social sciences, social movements, and theory (e.g., Shukaitis et al. 2007; Klausen and Martel 2011; Lilley and Shantz 2015; Levy and Newman 2019), all of which reveals that there’s been an increasing turn to this line of thought, after a period in which Marxist thinking was more common in the academy. Here, I discuss how Scott’s lifework has had an important influence on archaeology, anthropology, political science, and history through his theoretical approach in addition to several concepts that he developed that have been useful for considering political dynamics at various scales, in ancient early states (and their peripheries) to contemporary states and non-state regions such as the zomias of Southeast Asia. Throughout, I emphasize how Scott’s thinking upends so many common perspectives about political dynamics.

James C. Scott was the most incisive theorist of the state for people who are ambivalent about the state’s existence. He was a major theorist of power, revealing the covert weapons that groups without formal, coercive power wield against the state and its representatives. He pioneered ethnography in political science, insisting throughout his career on dangers of neglecting local context and knowledge. In doing so, he expanded our understanding of politics to include the politics of peasants, pre-state, and stateless people. Despite Scott’s eminence and his relevance to central questions in the field, his thought remains at the margins of political theory. The field has barely begun to mine the potential of Scott’s scholarship for new insights and research programs. If there is a theme that unifies Scott’s major works, it is the need to dispel state myths and to uncover and examine social and political life that are omitted or distorted by state agents (among whom are academics, especially political scientists). Scott dedicated his career to overcoming a major blind spot: that much of our evidence is produced by states. He consistently applied an “anarchist squint” to political life, illuminating features that otherwise remained invisible (Scott 2014).

At the time of working on this paper (December 2024), I attended a session organized by Bidar Research Institution in Tehran, where a young feminist was presenting the results of her M.A. dissertation on the Iranian women’s movement, One Million Signatures Campaign, in the 2000s. When I questioned the application of theories developed to study the agency and political action of subaltern groups, particularly Asef Bayat’s work, one member of the audience responded that this is not relevant to feminism and women’s movement. Nobody provided a counter argument, but a young male student mentioned another work by Bayat, Post-Islamism: The Changing Faces of Political Islam, where he discusses the agency of ordinary women in the Iranian post-revolutionary society. He briefly discussed the relevance of Bayat’s work to the exploration of women as a subaltern group. In Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East, Asef Bayat (2010) introduces the quiet encroachment of the ordinary. Drawing on James Scott’s everyday forms of resistance, Bayat discusses how subaltern groups such as the poor and women seek “life chances” through quiet encroachment in daily life in post-revolutionary Iran. He claims that “in many authoritarian Muslim states, such as the Islamic Republic of Iran, where conservative Islamic laws are in place, women have become second-class citizens in many domains of public life. Consequently, a central question for women’s rights activists is how to achieve gender equality under such circumstances” (Bayat 2010: 96). Bayat answers this question in the framework of Scott’s theory: “Women resisted these policies, not much by deliberate organized campaigns, but largely through mundane daily practices in public domains, such as working, playing sports, studying, showing interest in art and music, or running for political offices” (Bayat 2010: 97). Bayat calls this “feminism of everyday life” (2010: 96). This short narrative brings me to the point that I want to discuss in this paper: the application of theories of political action and the resistance of subordinate groups in feminist and gender archaeology. I briefly discuss the relevance of subaltern studies generally and James Scott’s “everyday forms of resistance,” then turn to the methodological and socio-political outcomes of this expansion for feminist and gender archaeology. Finally, I discuss two examples to demonstrate the significance of daily life as a site of conflict and resistance.

James C. Scott, political scientist and anthropologist, passed away on 19 July 2024 at the age of 87. He was Sterling Professor of Political Science and Director of the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University – and a farmer. His scholarship focused on agrarian societies, state power, and forms of political resistance. Scott conducted extensive fieldwork in southeast Asia. A prolific writer (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Scott), Scott’s books inspired scholars across many fields – and many of us in the editorial collective of Forum Kritische Archäologie (FKA) as well. His work has influenced our perspectives on the mechanisms of state power and ways of resisting or avoiding it. His challenges to traditional narratives of state formation and state control and the alleged powerlessness of the marginalized have helped us as archaeologists to think about material traces of ‘everyday forms of resistance’, ‘hidden transcripts,’ and ‘weapons of the weak.’

This article explores how archaeo-politics generates violence woven into everyday life by analysing Israel’s archaeological apparatus in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt). In light of former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to the Tell Seilun archaeological site, I examine how state and non-state actors exploit archaeology to legitimise territorial claims. I argue that archaeo-politics is not limited to a revisionist self-awareness and the way that current politics uses, misuses, and abuses archaeology. It encompasses the subtle and pervasive ways in which violence is embedded in state structures, norms, and power dynamics, ultimately perpetuating not only spatial injustice and exclusion but also becoming a factor in fuelling ongoing cycles of Israeli settlers’ oppression and direct violence against Palestinian subjects. The article investigates how archaeo-political violence is materialized through Israel’s archaeological state and non-state apparatus operating within frameworks of settler colonialism and entrepreneurism. By scrutinising American officials’ fixation on archaeological sites in internationally recognised occupied territories, I question the motives behind these activities and explore the forms of violence they engender that go beyond physical harm. This analysis contributes to understanding how archaeology is weaponised within contested landscapes, revealing the complex relationship between heritage, power, and structural violence in contexts of ongoing settler colonialism and military occupation.

Richard Bussmann, Professor of Egyptology at the University of Cologne, recently published the book The Archaeology of Pharaonic Egypt: Society and Culture, 2700–1700 BC (2023, Cambridge University Press), which places people at the centre of an analysis of the so-called “Pyramid Age” of Ancient Egypt. The book focusses on life “in the shadow of the pyramids” by exploring aspects of daily life (and death) as well as social interactions beyond the traditional Egyptological focus on royal and elite spheres. Bussmann examines cross-cultural themes such as urbanism, materiality, non-elite culture, political and religious practice, gender roles, and perceptions of the body. As a comparative approach to ancient societies and as a study drawing heavily on anthropological and theoretical concepts, the book raised the interest of the FKA Editorial Board. To allow us and the author to critically reflect on some of the issues raised in our discussion, we took the opportunity to pose a set of questions to Richard Bussmann, which he kindly answered.

We live in a paradoxical world in which humanity has accumulated more wealth than ever before – but we have distributed it less equitably than ever before (e.g., Christiansen and Jensen 2019). This is not a new insight. Most archaeologists, at least since the Processual – Post-Processual debates, acknowledge that they work within inequality. As Gabriel Moshenska (p. 49),1 quoting Collingwood puts it: “I know that all my life I have been engaged unawares in a political struggle, fighting against these things in the dark. Henceforth I shall fight in the daylight.” This quote nicely encapsulates the intent of this important Archaeology as Empowerment theme issue that marks the 10th anniversary of Forum Kritische Archäologie.

RG: So, Yannis, having read and reread the essays, I thought we might exchange a few impressions and respond to some of the challenges that have been offered in them, whether directly or indirectly. One of the first things that struck me, both in this set of papers and in other reactions to ANR (published, online and in academic settings), is how varied and “undisciplined” they are: each response seems to spin off in a different direction! I know that it was our intent and hope to engage a diverse readership, but I began to wonder whether there is true communication, as Despina Lalaki suggests there should be, or if we are talking to ourselves and past each other. I’m also thinking of the eye-rolling reproach that I often encounter, not least from colleagues within the profession, of those who would prefer that we ‘stay in our lane,’ do what we do best and what we are paid public money to do; that is, dig, publish and tell stories about the past. Why trouble the world with our half-baked meditations? And now we have gone and lured more well-intentioned, mostly young scholars to join us in this pointless exercise!

In recent years there has been growing scholarly interest in the social context of archaeology in Israel. As amply demonstrated, ideologies, politics and religions have been entangled with the practice of archaeology in the southern Levant since Ottoman times, and they form the foundations of common current approaches. True, interpretive frameworks and methodological approaches gradually changed in response to studies of the history of scholarship during the 1980s and 1990s, as well as exposure to critical archaeological studies, and the perspective of archaeologists educated in recent decades differs from that of their predecessors, but many still adhere to paradigms and concepts that developed and crystallised almost a century ago by agenda-driven scholars. Accordingly, this contribution joins the call for a reflective discourse – which is needed now more than ever. It deals with the entanglement of the ancient, the recent and the present, as reflected in the ongoing work at Tel Ḥadid, a multilayer mound in central Israel, following Raphael Greenberg and Yannis Hamilakis’ (2022) call to “demystify” the ancient and imagination and consequently our scholarly approaches.

The first object that was accessioned by the Department of Oriental Antiquities at the Louvre Museum was a statue of the ruler Gudea (c. 2120 BC) from Tello (ancient Girsu) in southern Iraq (Fig. 1). When one looks at the hands of this statue closely, signs of damage and restoration can easily be discerned. In fact, the earliest photographs published in the excavation reports show this statue without its hands (Fig. 2). This absence was interpreted by the Louvre curator André Parrot as an ancient act of iconoclasm carried out in the late third millennium BC, after the time of Gudea: “By breaking the hands, the vandal believed to annihilate more completely the effectiveness of the statue erected in the Eninnu [temple of Ningirsu]” (Parrot 1948: 162).

Raphael Greenberg and Yannis Hamilakis argue for archaeology’s revolutionary potential, borne of its ability to see what is hidden by typology, process and projection. I admire the project that these scholars advance in their individual life’s work which includes actions of professional commitment, archaeological expertise, and activism that draws others to enhanced awareness. Their interchanges, as captured in Archaeology, Nation, and Race left me newly aware of potentials and responsibilities for me as an archaeologist, as an agent engaging in activities that span pasts and presents. I particularly appreciated their willingness to lay bare the possibilities for an archaeologist to do better in understanding and even untangling, rather than reproducing, structures of power and advantage. The maneuvers that diminish those who experience systemic limits on their access to knowledge, opportunity and narrative control are more apparent to me following my engagement with these interpretations of Israel and Greece. I am prompted to consider anew the processes of typologization, of defining archaeologies as plural, and also allowing space for concern with things which may possess “sentient, affective and emotive properties” (Greenberg and Hamilakis 2022: 91).

Across contexts as disparate as the United States, Australia, China, Japan, India, Russia, Spain and Europe more broadly, concepts of national identity are deeply intertwined with racial “purity” (Segal 1991; Weiner 1995; Dikötter 1997; Ang and Stratton 1998; Collins 1998; Tolz 2007; Goode 2009; Ghoshal 2021). Scientific rhetoric and technologies, from phrenology to genetics, have often been co-opted into shoring up myths about homogeneity and purity, and archaeology is no exception (Díaz-Andreu 1995; Epperson 1997; Arnold 2006; Challis 2013; Hakenbeck 2019; Pai 2020). What Rafi Greenberg and Yannis Hamilakis add to this discussion with their book Archaeology, Nation, and Race (2022) is a deep consideration of the myriad ways in which the metaphor of purification shows up throughout archaeological practice. Their discussion invites a consideration of what it is about archaeology in particular that lends it to arguments about the salience of nationalist racial categories and homogeneity.

The book of Raphael Greenberg and Yannis Hamilakis (2022) comes at a time when archaeology could be said to be at an inflection point. For many of the reasons outlined in this book, it is less and less possible to undertake business as usual as we recognize the politically charged nature of our work and the absolute necessity of engaging with communities and the public more broadly. I therefore want to focus on two pressing archaeological themes that emerge throughout the text, namely the archaeology of coloniality (or the coloniality of archaeology) and archaeological epistemology.

Following the authors’ lead I would like to introduce my commentary on the book Archaeology, Nation and Race: Confronting the Past, Decolonizing the Future in Greece and Israel (Greenberg and Hamilakis 2022) with a short autobiographical note explaining my way into and out of the field of archaeology. I am a sociologist working in the areas of historical and cultural sociology. My first degree, however, from the University of Athens is in archaeology. It is still unclear to me why I chose to study the subject, but I am convinced that it had something to do with the Indiana Jones franchise that was popular in Greece at the time and the fact that I wasn’t that good in math. If that was the case, I would have probably become an architect. At the university I quickly developed an interest in prehistoric archaeology. Moving beyond the formalism of classical archaeology that still dominated the discipline, the “anthropological” questions raised in the field of the Greek Bronze Age – questions about culture, social and political organization and so on – were rather intriguing.

I read this book (Greenberg and Hamilakis 2022) with enormous excitement and admiration. I also read it with a strong feeling of solidarity as I tried to imagine the resistance the authors must have faced from some of their fellow archaeologists in their respective countries. I feel honored to be given a chance to express my feelings, unprofessional as they are. Still, speaking as a person with zero expertise in the field of archaeology and, what is worse, as an unrepentant modernist, I also feel an obligation to do some conceptual quibbling from the sidelines, and that’s what I’ll do.

Archaeology, Nation, and Race: Confronting the Past, Decolonizing the Future in Greece and Israel (Cambridge University Press, 2022; henceforth ANR) was conceived in the wake of an undergraduate seminar conducted jointly by the authors at Brown University in 2020. Our initial, recorded conversations at the end of the course were transcribed and formed the basis of a manuscript which was expanded, incorporating new research and ideas. Emerging from the dialogue between ourselves and with our students, the published work, also in dialogic form, is intended primarily as a stimulus to further discussion among archaeologists, anthropologists, classicists and anyone concerned with the way archaeology impacts the public imagination.

Russia’s brutal invasion into Ukraine, launched in 2022, has been widely condemned internationally. Using an interdisciplinary perspective, this paper investigates the notions of spheres of influence and personalist authoritarianism as they appear in international relations debates on the war in Ukraine. Interpretative tropes parallel to Russian versus Western spheres of influence as they figure in debates about Ukraine also appear in archaeological narratives of the Neolithic and Bronze Age transformations that progress from demographic growth to increasing competition over resources and exclusionary resource bases. Moreover, the personalist authoritarian system of Putin’s Russia parallels the idea of the exclusionary power of archaeological elites. However, the in-efficiency and corruption of Putin’s personalist authoritarianism as a root cause of the inefficiency of the Russian war effort are rarely raised as issues regarding the concept of elites in archaeology.

What is a better world is answered very differently, especially in intellectual circles, but also in society as a whole. At the same time, the existence of a “bad” world is implied. In my observation, the constants have shifted towards a “better” world in the last twenty years: the clear differentiation of society into rulers and ruled is no longer obvious and decisive, for example, within North American and European late capitalist societies or between the global North and the global South. The structural differentiation into ruling and oppressed classes has given way to a constructivist diversification of issues. The shift of financial resources by the rulers of the South to the North also points to the fact that the global differentiation of power structures no longer corresponds to the classical scheme of “imperialist” exploitation. Overall, we can observe not only an atomisation of individuals, but also an individualisation of resistances against a supposed late capitalist system.

Since the 1970s, scholars like Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, and Jorgen Randers (Meadows et al. 2022 [2004]: 383–454), have been actively proposing actions to guarantee the sustainability for life outside of the ideological framework imposed within the ‘Capitalocene’ (Moore 2016). In this specific context, activist archaeology certainly has a role to play in answering the questions: “is archaeology useful?” (Dawdy 2009: 131), or “why archaeology?” (Tilley 1989: 105; McGuire 2008: xi). The genesis of these questions likely emerges from the aim of millennial and Gen Z archaeologists to use their archaeological skills meaningfully, or at least in a way that does not harm people or the environment and preferably is somehow beneficial to communities. Thus, an activist archaeology is about reorienting the focus of archaeological research and emphasizing action itself as the heart of future research programs (Stottman 2010: 9) or even as a rescue program that seeks social, economic, political, and ecological justice. This active approach challenges and transgresses the traditional bounds of academic archaeology, rather than conceptualizing activism as a potential by-product of archaeological practice (McGuire 2008: xii).