Books like Against the Grain by James C. Scott

Jared Diamond explains how geography, biology, and human ingenuity shaped the world’s unequal societies in his Pulitzer‑winning study of civilization and social evolution.

Francis Fukuyama traces how diverse societies have arrived at their present political arrangements, exploring the historical and comparative routes that shape modern states.

Michel Foucault’s seminal work traces the evolution of punishment and surveillance, revealing how modern societies exercise power through disciplinary institutions such as prisons, schools, and hospitals.

**Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play** is a 2012 book-length defense of the anarchist perspective, written by anthropologist James C. Scott and published by Princeton University Press. (Source: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Cheers_for_Anarchism))

A landmark anthropological study exploring how the peoples of Southeast Asia’s highlands—collectively called Zomia—have historically avoided incorporation into nation‑states, using a blend of ethnography and history to reveal their strategies of autonomy.

"James C. Scott places the critical problem of the peasant household -- subsistence -- at the center of this study. The fear of food shortages, he argues persuasively, explains many otherwise puzzling technical, social, and moral arrangements in peasant society, such as resistance to innovation, the desire to own land even at some cost in terms of income, relationships with other people, and relationships with institutions, including the state. Once the centrality of the subsistence problem is recognized, its effects on notions of economic and political justice can also be seen. Scott draws from the history of agrarian society in lower Burma and Vietnam to show how the transformations of the colonial era systematically violated the peasants' 'moral economy' and created a situation of potential rebellion and revolution. Demonstrating keen insights into the behavior of people in other cultures and a rare ability to generalize soundly from case studies, Scott offers a different perspective on peasant behavior that will be of interest particularly to political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, and Southeast Asianists."--Publisher description.

Examines how (sometimes quasi-) authoritarian central planning fails to deliver the goods, be they increased resources for the state or a better life for the people.