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Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, by James C. Scott
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Review
"One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades. . . . A fascinating interpretation of the growth of the modern state. . . . Scott presents a formidable argument against using the power of the state in an attempt to reshape the whole of society."—John Gray, New York Times Book Review"Illuminating and beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit."—New Yorker"James C. Scott has written a powerful, and in many insightful, explanation as to why grandiose programs of social reform, not to mention revolution, so often end in tragedy—the Soviet disaster being the textbook case. . . . He has produced an important critique of visionary state planning."—Robert Heilbroner, Lingua Franca"[An] important book. . . . The author's choice of cases is fascinating and goes well beyond the familiar ones like Soviet collectivization."―Francis Fukuyama, Foreign Affairs"In a treatment that can only be termed brilliant, [Scott] has produced a major contribution to developmental literature. . . . This is a book of seminal importance for comparative politics and, indeed, for the social sciences. Highly recommended."—Choice"Mr. Scott tells the story in witty, sparkling prose of these (Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, among others) relentless social engineers and how they tried to impose for all eternity a perfect social order or an urban blueprint, regardless of human cost and unremitting human refractoriness."―Washington Times"An important and powerful work that deserves to be read by anyone interested in large-scale public planning. . . . Among the book's virtues are its lucid style, deep learning, and wide range of fascinating cases."―Gideon Rose, Washington Monthly"Where Seeing Like a State is original, and often startling so, is in its meticulous accumulation of empirical evidence that describes the failure of grandiose state projects to improve the human condition."—Brian C. Anderson, Public Interest"Seeing Like a State is a worldly, academic synthesis of the destructive hubris of large-scale rational planning. . . . What Scott does that is brilliant is talk about how states and large institutions acquire the knowledge that they ultimately use to govern."—Michael Schrage, Across the Board"Its global focus, its attention to issues of environment and economic development too often ignored by non profits scholars, and its impressive grasp of how organizations work, recommend it to anyone seriously interested in the future of public life."—Peter Dobkin Hall, ARNOVA News"Scott’s book is a paean to human liberty, a very complicated paean. . . . This book [owes] much of its value to the details of the particular case studies, and to Scott’s enthusiasm and ingenuity in seeing links among apparently different human projects. He has written a remarkably interesting book on social engineering."—Cass R. Sunstein, New Republic"In Seeing Like a State James Scott has given us powerful new paradigms of state action and popular resistance. His work is sure to inspire new thinking and research in history and social sciences."—Fred Murphy, Reader’s Catalog"Brilliant . . . [Scott] has produced a major contribution to developmental literature . . . this is a book of seminal importance for comparative politics and indeed, for the social sciences."—Choice"Scott’s book . . . is an important and powerful work that deserves to be read by anyone interested in large-scale public planning. . . . Among the book’s virtues are its lucid style, deep learning, and wide range of fascinating cases."—Gideon Rose, Washington Monthly"Seeing Like a State is a worldly, academic synthesis of the destructive hubris of large-scale rational planning. . . . Scott . . . takes a few powerful but basic themes and builds a persuasive case against what he calls 'High Modernism.' High Modernism, in essence, is the ideology of grand rational planners whose initiatives are based on the perfectibility of man. What Scott does that is brilliant is talk about how states and large institutions acquire the knowledge that they ultimately use to govern."—Michael Schrage, Across the BoardWinner of the 2000 Mattei Dogan Award 2015 Wildavsky Award for Enduring Contribution to Policy Studies, from the Public Policy Section of the American Political Science Association"James Scott is one of the most original and interesting social scientists whom I know. So it is no surprise that Seeing Like a State is a broad ranging, theoretically important, and empirically grounded treatment of the modern state. For anyone interested in learning about this fundamental tension of modernity and about the destruction wrought in the twentieth century as a consequence of the dominant development ideology of the simplifying state, high modernism, Seeing Like a State is a must read."—Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Professor of Government and Social Studies at Harvard University and author of Hitler's Willing Executioners "A broad-ranging, theoretically important, and empirically grounded treatment of the modern state and its propensity to simplify and make legible a society which by nature is complex and opaque. For anyone interested in learning about this fundamental tension of modernity and about the destruction wrought in the twentieth century as a consequence of the dominant development ideology of the simplifying state, this is a must-read."—Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, author of Hitler’s Willing Executioners"The 'perfection' Scott so rightly and with such tremendous skill and erudition debunks in his book he himself has nearly reached, as far as positing and presenting the problem is concerned. The case of what the order-crazy mind is capable of doing and why we need to stop it from doing it has been established 'beyond any reasonable doubt' and with a force that cannot be strengthened."—Zygmunt Bauman, emeritus professor, University of Leeds"A tour de force. . . . Reading the book delighted and inspired me. It's not the first time Jim Scott has had that effect."—Charles Tilly, Columbia University"Stunning insights, an original position, and a conceptual approach of global application. Scott's book will at once take its place among the decade's truly seminal contributions to comparative politics."—M. Crawford Young, University of Wisconsin, Madison
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About the Author
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, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, and The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia, all published by Yale University Press.
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Product details
Paperback: 464 pages
Publisher: Yale University Press (February 8, 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0300078153
ISBN-13: 978-0300078152
Product Dimensions:
6.2 x 1 x 9.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.3 out of 5 stars
71 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#31,605 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Scott begins with a history of the tension between the desire for legibility versus the desire for local control. E.g. central governments wanted to know how much they could tax peasants without causing famine or revolt. Yet even in the optimistic case where they got an honest tax collector to report how many bushels of grain John produced, they had problems due to John's village having an idiosyncratic meaning of "bushel" that the tax collector couldn't easily translate to something the central government knew. And it was hard to keep track of whether John had paid the tax, since the central government didn't understand how the villagers distinguished that John from the John who lived a mile away.So governments that wanted to grow imposed lots of standards on people. That sometimes helped peasants by making their taxes fairer and more predictable, but often trampled over local arrangements that had worked well (especially complex land use agreements).I found that part of the book to be a fairly nice explanation of why an important set of conflicts was nearly inevitable. Scott gives a relatively balanced view of how increased legibility had both good and bad effects (more efficient taxation, diseases tracked better, Nazis found more Jews, etc.).Then Scott becomes more repetitive and one-sided when describing high modernism, which carried the desire for legibility to a revolutionary, authoritarian extreme (especially between 1920 and 1960). I didn't want 250 pages of evidence that Soviet style central planning was often destructive. Maybe that conclusion wasn't obvious to enough people when Scott started writing the book, but it was painfully obvious by the time the book was published.Scott's complaints resemble the Hayekian side of the socialist calculation debate, except that Scott frames in terms that minimize associations with socialism and capitalism. E.g. he manages to include Taylorist factory management in his cluster of bad ideas.It's interesting to compare Fukuyama's description of Tanzania (in Political Order and Political Decay) with Scott's description. They both agree that villagization (Scott's focus) was a disaster. Scott leaves readers with the impression that villagization was the most important policy, whereas Fukuyama only devotes one paragraph to it, and gives the impression that the overall effects of Tanzania's legibility-increasing moves were beneficial (mainly via a common language causing more cooperation). Neither author provides a balanced view (but then they were both drawing attention to neglected aspects of history, not trying to provide a complete picture).My advice: read the SlateStarCodex book review, don't read the whole book.
Insightful, though it's not for everybody. An extended discussion about how government agencies shape the world to accomplish their ends, Very much about the law of unintended consequences. I am no scholar, so I cannot debate his thesis , but I find this book has changed the way way I look at the world, and particularly, the character of government.
To my mind, the central argument of this book is critical to understanding numerous aspects of how the world we live in today came into being, and why it functions the way that it does. I cannot overstate how impressed I was by Scott's ideas, arguments, and evidence. Scott focuses in this book on how these ideas relate to governments and policy, with a focus on agriculture, but are also worth considering for their impact in smaller arenas, such as business, trade, and even family relations.With that said, it is very scholarly in tone. It is not particularly accessible, and fairly hard work to read. I would also argue that the second half of the book could have been shorter by half, and one could probably still get the vast majority of the value of the book by focusing on the first half or so, and skimming or perhaps even skipping the second half.Nevertheless, if you are interested in government, policy, social policy, or even business, I would highly recommend investing the time to read and understand this book.
In a world where governments continually seek to invade personal privacy, control the elements, clump humanity into categories and relentlessly attempt to socially engineer their populations, Scott seeks to make sense of the situation by explaining the why and how behind governmental actions, making "the case for the indispensable role of practical knowledge, informal processes, and improvisation in the face of unpredictability." Perhaps Scott sums it up best when he says, "Much of this book can be read as a case against the imperialism of high modernist, planned social order." Every part of this book is clear and concise. This is a rare gem among modern academia.
This book is essentially a series of discussions of how the perceptual gaps of state apparatus lead to specific sorts of problems, especially when the state attempts to perform large scale, society-changing work. While the book is written by a man who could be reasonably described as a minarchist, it's exceptionally useful to big-state left wing socialists, such as myself, who value understanding why this sort of thing has failed, and failed so badly, in the past.In addition to the educational value, it is an absolute page turner, filled with exciting historical moments that will be brand new to most American readers. I heartily recommend it to anyone.
This book argues that states create simple models in order to understand and regulate society. In many cases forcing society to conform to the model becomes an end in itself. The oversimplification implicit in these models causes various reform schemes to fail. Most of the book consists of presenting examples and variations on this theme.I saw in another review a criticism that the examples were not convincing, which I disagree with. The examples seem proper and on topic to me. They include modernist theories of urban design, the Russian revolution, and agricultural "reforms" in the Soviet Union and Tanzania. Another reviewer thought Scott is making the same argument as Hayek, but that's not really true though they're certainly more similar than the author is willing to admit.My major criticism of this book is that it's about 60-70% too long. There's a lot of repetition and musing that could have been cut.
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