Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

James C. Scott

Published by Yale University Press 2008

Seeing Like a State

How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

James C. Scott

In the series The Institution for Social and Policy Studies

https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300128789

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Contents

About this book

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.

Author information

James C. Scott is the Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Anthropology at Yale University and current president of the Association of Asian Studies. He is the author of Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, Domin

Topics

Political Science

Political Science, other

Social Sciences

Contents

Frontmatter

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Contents

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Acknowledgments

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Introduction

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Part 1. State Projects of Legibility and Simplification

Chapter 1. Nature and Space

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Chapter 2. Cities, People, and Language

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Part 2. Transforming Visions

Chapter 3. Authoritarian High Modernism

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Chapter 4. The High-Modernist City: An Experiment and a Critique

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Chapter 5. The Revolutionary Party: A Plan and a Diagnosis

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Part 3. The Social Engineering of Rural Settlement and Production

Chapter 6. Soviet Collectivization, Capitalist Dreams

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Chapter 7. Compulsory Villagization in Tanzania: Aesthetics and Miniaturization

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Chapter 8. Taming Nature: An Agriculture of Legibility and Simplicity

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Part 4. The Missing Link

Chapter 9. Thin Simplifications and Practical Knowledge: Metis

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Chapter 10. Conclusion

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Notes

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Sources for Illustrations

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Index

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Language: English

Publisher: Yale University Press

Copyright year: 2008

Pages

Main content: 464

Illustrations

Other: 36 b-w illus.

eBook

Published: October 1, 2008

ISBN: 9780300128789