Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have FailedIn this wide-ranging and original book, James C. Scott analyzes failed cases of large-scale authoritarian plans in a variety of fields. He argues that centrally managed social plans derail 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 on 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. And in discussing these planning disasters, he identifies four conditions common to them all: the state's attempt to impose administrative order on nature and society; a high-modernist ideology that believes scientific intervention can improve every aspect of human life; a willingness to use authoritarian state power to effect large-scale innovations; and a prostrate civil society that cannot effectively resist such plans. |
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Review: Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
Avis d'utilisateur - Cory - GoodreadsDefinitely a paradigm-nudging work for me. I think it's a great summary of the ways in which states (or quants/scientists/economists...) simplify in order to make progress and some of the perverse ... Consulter l'avis complet
Review: Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
Avis d'utilisateur - GoodreadsI read the first chapter ("Nature and Space"), skimmed the second chapter ("Cities, People, and Language"), and glanced at the remainder of the book. I agree whole-heartedly with the author's thesis ... Consulter l'avis complet
Table des matières
| 1 | |
| 11 | |
| 53 | |
| 87 | |
An Experiment | 103 |
A Plan and a Diagnosis | 147 |
Soviet Collectivization Capitalist Dreams | 193 |
An Agriculture of Legibility | 262 |
Metis | 309 |
Conclusion | 342 |
Notes | 359 |
Sources for Illustrations | 433 |
Autres éditions - Tout afficher
Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have ... James C. Scott Aucun aperçu disponible - 1998 |
Expressions et termes fréquents
administrative aesthetic Agrarian Aleksandra Kollontay authoritarian Bolsheviks Brasilia cadastral map Cambridge capital central collective farms collectivization colonial complex context Corbusier create crops cultivation cultural designed ecological economic engineering environment example experience experimental fact factory farmers farms field fiscal forest forms function grain grid high modernism high-modernist human Ian Hacking Ibid industrial institutions Jacobs knowledge kolkhoz labor land landraces Le Corbusier legible Lenin living logic Luxemburg Marglin measurement ment metis modernist Nyerere officials organization Paris peasantry peasants planners plant plots political polyculture population practice precisely production quoted resistance revolution revolutionary rules rural Russian schemes settlement shifting cultivation simplification social socialist society soil Soviet standard surnames Taming of Chance Tanzania techniques tenure tion transform typically ujamaa ujamaa villages uniform University Press urban utopian vanguard party visual workers yields
Fréquemment cités
Page 172 - Capitalist culture has created large-scale production, factories, railways, the postal service, telephones, etc., and on this basis the great majority of functions of the old 'state power' have become so simplified and can be reduced to such simple operations of registration, filing, and checking that they would be
Page 160 - We are marching in a compact group along a precipitous and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies, and are under their almost constant fire. We have combined voluntarily, especially for the purpose of fighting the enemy and not to retreat into the adjacent marsh,
Page 173 - increasingly difficult . . . and will probably be accompanied by such swift and severe punishment (for the armed workers are men of practical life, not sentimental intellectuals and they will scarcely allow anyone to trifle with them), that very soon the necessity of observing the simple, fundamental rules of
Page 428 - spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and follow things as they are. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a
Page 183 - the public peace—the sidewalk and street peace—of cities ... is kept by an intricate, almost unconscious network of voluntary controls and standards among the people themselves, and enforced by the people themselves.
Page 173 - calls for absolute and strict unity of will, which directs the joint labours of hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of people. . . . But how can strict unity of will be ensured? By thousands subordinating their will to the will of one.
Page 173 - the armed workers are men of practical life, not sentimental intellectuals and they will scarcely allow anyone to trifle with them), that very soon the necessity of observing the simple, fundamental rules of social life
Page 428 - 14. Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p.
Page 154 - underlying any float of population must be a continuity of people who have forged neighborhood networks. These networks are a city's irreplaceable social capital. Whenever the capital is lost, from whatever cause, the [social] income from it disappears, never to return until and unless new capital is slowly and chancily accumulated.
Informations bibliographiques
| Titre | Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed Series / Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University The Institution for Social and Policy St Series The Yale ISPS series Yale agrarian studies |
| Auteur | James C. Scott |
| Édition | illustrée, réimprimée, révisée |
| Éditeur | Yale University Press, 1998 |
| ISBN | 0300078153, 9780300078152 |
| Longueur | 445 pages |
| Exporter la citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |