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Title: Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (Yale Agrarian Studies (Paperback)) by James C. Scott ISBN: 0-300-07815-3 Publisher: Yale University Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.61 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (11 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Important Anthropology for Cross-Disciplinary Application
Comment: The above reviewer, Stirling S Newberry, writes, "The book is part of a useful discussion, but the context and knowledge to engage in it does not seem to be present at this time. Unfortunate."
Actually, what is most unfotunate is that Newberry failed to that Scott allows his assertions regarding social engineering at the behest of an individual state apply just as well to, for example, international aid regimes and foreign hegemons who strive to "remake" the world and its societies after a single vision (8).
Scott's concern in Seeing Like a State is to make a case against an "imperial or hegemonic planning mentality that excludes the necessary role of local knowledge and know-how. Scott goes on to argue, "The most tragic episodes of state-initiated social engineering originate in a pernicious combination of four elements." The first is a simplification and aggregation of facts. Scott argues that states manipulate otherwise complex, dynamic, discrete and often unique circumstances into simplified, static, aggregated, and standardized data, and that these form unrealistic "snapshots" which often miss the most vital aspects of the situation. The second is what Scott terms "high-modernist ideology." Scott defines this as "a strong, one might even say muscle-bound, version of the self-confidence about scientific and technical progress, the expansion of production, the growing satisfaction of human needs, the mastery of nature (including human nature), and above all, the rational design of social order commensurate with the scientific understanding of natural laws." The combination of these two elements can be devastating when the third element, an authoritarian state, is "willing and able to use the full weight of its coercive power to bring the high-modernist designs into being" over the fourth element, "a prostrate civil society that lacks the capacity to resist these plans."
Throughout his work, Scott provides evidence that centrally managed social plans inevitably go awry. The reason for this, he argues, is that state imposed development initiatives wreak havoc upon the complex social interdependencies of peoples who, in the first place, are not adequately understood. Scott argues that for development initiatives to be successful, they must have their starting point in, first, the recognition of, and then the incorporation of, local, practical knowledge. He states that such forms of knowledge are just as important as "formal, epistemic knowledge." He thus argues against the sorts of developmental theories and practices that disregard metis.
In detailing the general methodology in which states have gone about solving the problem of underdevelopment, Scott argues that states-usually represented by aloof bureaucrats sitting in offices-approach development from the proverbial "bird's eye view" without adequately accounting for, and incorporating, the proverbial "worm's eye view." Such social engineering, Scott asserts, requires the simplification and standardization of complex facts, and in the process, essential knowledge of the facts are lost. At its worst, the result is tragedy, disaster, and human suffering. At its best, unplanned outcomes result, usually at great human and state expense.
Scott contrasts state simplifications with metis, which he defines as, "a wide array of practical skills and acquired intelligence in responding to a constantly changing natural human environment." Examples of metis are farmers knowing when to plant by looking at when the leaves on certain local trees begin to sprout, or describing the size of a farm by the number of workers needed to tend it, rather than by acreage. One region may have highly labor-intensive land, while another may not be so intensive. Forcing land to be described in terms of acreage negates this useful information, which information is the key thing lost in return for the "standardization" of discourse and knowledge. As well, when states and development planners dictate that all collective farms must plant at the same time, local knowledge is again lost-along with, Scott shows with a multitude of case studies, productivity.
Scott develops his argument to show that when citizens, events, cultural characteristics of peoples, and the natural environment are not easily standardized and quantifiable, there is an incentive for the state to alter the population to fit the desired "measurements" and proper "standards." For example, states privatize collectively owned lands to tax them more easily. In order to track more easily "consolidated" people into a larger development vision, the state forces villagers with deep historical roots to adopt surnames. Even if this means altering the very fabric of their society, the "larger" goals must give way to "smaller" visions. Scott states that, "the builders of the modern nation-state do not merely describe, observe, and map; they strive to shape a people and landscape that will fit their techniques of observation." Scott is prolific in citing historical examples to support his claims.
Many among the Haitian peasantry would sum up Scott's arguments with a Haitian proverb: "The big branch at the top of the tree thinks it has the best view, but it fails to see the sights enjoyed by the little bud tossed about by the wind." Damage therefore is the result.
Rating: 3
Summary: Got the gist, gets lost in the details.
Comment: Scott's book gets off to a very good start, arguing that the roots of "high modernism" run deep in a particular world view that grew with scientific culture, but lacks its elements of ruthless self-criticism. What impressed me was his grasp of this ideology as a culture, albeit a culture of a few. Science too is a culture, and this phenomenon is the mentality of the technicians, the engineers, the planners...once they gain power. As one who works in this milieu, although not with the power elite, it rang very true.
He also does a wonderful job of skewering the cultural and aesthetic pretensions of people like Le Corbusier, although this has been done very well by others as well. But Scott does a very good job of showing how the aesthetic was the political, although nobody would admit it.
Unfortunately, after the first two chapters or so, Scott's writing loses its force and wonders about, making no very impressive points, and relating interesting annecdotes, providing intriguing descriptions of bad situations, but not advancing or deepening his argument.
Rating: 5
Summary: A very important book
Comment: The power of this book does not come from the originality of the ideas - but in their application to policy. It is a discourse on the "gaze" of policy, in how it categorizes and boxes complex phenomena to make them fit the dominant discoure, and the implications of this for human well-being. It thus provides a valuable bridging role between the worlds of anthropology and sociology, and the world of public action. It has become of the most influential books of the 1990s and deserves to be required reading in courses on development policy.
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Title: Industrialized Nature: Brute Force Technology and the Transformation of the Natural World by Paul R. Josephson ISBN: 1559637773 Publisher: Shearwater Books Pub. Date: 01 December, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Utopistics: Or Historical Choices of the Twenty-First Century by Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein ISBN: 1565844572 Publisher: New Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1998 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Anti-Politics Machine: "Development," Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho by James Ferguson ISBN: 0816624372 Publisher: University of Minnesota Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1994 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts by James C. Scott ISBN: 0300056699 Publisher: Yale University Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 1992 List Price(USD): $18.50 |
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Title: The Boom and The Bubble: The US in the World Economy by Robert Brenner ISBN: 1859844839 Publisher: Verso Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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