The Atlantic – Joshua Foust: Are the World’s ‘Lawless’ Regions Really as Backwards as We Think?
In his weekly column for the Atlantic, ASP fellow Joshua Foust writes about the “lawless region of Zomia” and the misconceptions behind these types of regions.
The idea of a lawless region as an object of analysis is fraught with issues. These regions are not even really “lawless,” as Jacobs calls them. They just operate under different rules that are neither drafted nor enforced by the state. The tribal areas of Pakistan, for example, actually follow a long-established pattern of competition between local and central methods of control. Similarly, Southwest Kyrgyzstan isn’t rejecting modernity by any stretch, it is just coming under the control of mafia dons who have taken up high-level positions in the local and regional government. It’s not lawless, it’s just a different kind of law, however un-ideal and crappy it might be.
To be fair, you can see what Jacobs is getting at: that some regions of the world, seemingly clustered in Central and South Asia, reject their governments’ control. That’s correct. But what’s less fair is to extend that point to then argue that the people in this vast expanse exist in lawlessness and reject modernity.
