“The peoples of the vast Southeast Asian region of Zomia were successful in providing incentives against statecraft–that is, they successfully prevented their own appropriation by external states and successfully prevented local state formation–for most of their long history. James C Scott notes that Zomian populations disincentivized statecraft via ‘patterns of settlement, agriculture, and social structure.’ We describe these interrelated mechanisms–settlement, agriculture, and social structure–more broadly as (1) locational, (2) productional, and (3) cultural mechanisms to repel states.”
–Edward Peter Stringham and Caleb J. Miles. Repelling States: Evidence from Upland Southeast Asia