I like reading James C. Scott in the same way that I like reading Bill Easterly, Nassim Taleb or Hernando de Soto. His books contain good ideas, carefully explained, that change the way I see the world; see this post on his masterful Seeing Like a State.

In Weapons of the Weak: Everyday forms of Peasant Resistance (1985), Scott documents and explains the impact of the Green Revolution on peasants in “Sedaka,” a Malaysian village Scott lived in for 18 months.

The major components of the Green Revolution were a move to double-cropping paddy (wet) rice and the adoption of combine harvesters for the harvest and threshing of this rice. Scott pays attention to the impact of these changes on the poor of Sedaka (a pseudonym), their relations with the rich, and how their interactions represent a microcosm of the larger movement towards “dehumanized” capitalism and away from less-efficient, yet more “social” class relations in a small village.