Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (Yale Agrarian Studies)
Language: English
Published by Yale Universirty Press, 1998
Series: Book 5 of 8 - Veritas Paperbacks
- Softcover
- Used
Seller: The Book House, Inc. - St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, U.S.A.The Book House, Inc. - St. Louis
AbeBooks seller since February 6, 1998
Condition: Used - Good
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Good trade paperback, some marking/highlighting.
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- Title
- Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (Yale Agrarian Studies)
- Author
- Scott, James C.
- Publisher
- Yale Universirty Press
- Publication year
- 1998
- Condition
- Good
- Binding
- Trade Paperback
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0300078153
- ISBN 13
- 9780300078152
- Series
- Book 5 of 8: Veritas Paperbacks
- Seller catalogs
- History, Philosophy, Politics, Political Science, & Government
“A magisterial critique of top-down social planning.”―Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times
“One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades.”―John Gray, New York Times Book Review
Compulsory ujamaa villages in Tanzania, collectivization in Russia, Le Corbusier’s urban planning theory realized in Brasília, 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.
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About the Author
James C. Scott (1936–2024) was Sterling Professor of Political Science and codirector of the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University. His previous books include Domination and the Arts of Resistance, Seeing Like a State, and The Art of Not Being Governed.
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