Seeing Like a State

How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

James C. Scott

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9780300128789
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Compulsory ujamaa villages in Tanzania, collectivization in Russia, Le Corbusier's urban planning theory realized in Brasilia, the Great Leap Forward in China, agricultural "modernization" in the Tropics-the twentieth century has been racked by grand utopian schemes that have inadvertently brought death and disruption to millions. Why do well-intentioned plans for improving the human condition go tragically awry?

In this wide-ranging and original book, James C. Scott analyzes failed cases of large-scale authoritarian plans in a variety of fields. Centrally managed social plans misfire, Scott argues, when they impose schematic visions that do violence to complex interdependencies that are not-and cannot-be fully understood. Further, the success of designs for social organization depends upon the recognition that local, practical knowledge is as important as formal, epistemic knowledge. The author builds a persuasive case against "development theory" and imperialistic state planning that disregards the values, desires, and objections of its subjects. He identifies and discusses four conditions common to all planning disasters: administrative ordering of nature and society by the state; a "high-modernist ideology" that places confidence in the ability of science to improve every aspect of human life; a willingness to use authoritarian state power to effect large- scale interventions; and a prostrate civil society that cannot effectively resist such plans.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1. State Projects of Legibility and Simplification
• Chapter 1. Nature and Space
• Chapter 2. Cities, People, and Language
• Part 2. Transforming Visions
• Chapter 3. Authoritarian High Modernism
• Chapter 4. The High-Modernist City: An Experiment and a Critique
• Chapter 5. The Revolutionary Party: A Plan and a Diagnosis
• Part 3. The Social Engineering of Rural Settlement and Production
• Chapter 6. Soviet Collectivization, Capitalist Dreams
• Chapter 7. Compulsory Villagization in Tanzania: Aesthetics and Miniaturization
• Chapter 8. Taming Nature: An Agriculture of Legibility and Simplicity
• Part 4. The Missing Link
• Chapter 9. Thin Simplifications and Practical Knowledge: Metis
• Chapter 10. Conclusion
• Notes
• Sources for Illustrations
• Index