An edition of Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (1998)

Seeing like a state

how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed

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  • ★★★★ 4.3 (13 ratings)
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Cover of: Seeing like a state by James C. Scott, James C. Scott
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  • ★★★★ 4.3 (13 ratings)
  • 134 Want to read
  • 6 Currently reading
  • 23 Have read

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Last edited by bitnapper
November 6, 2025 | History
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An edition of Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (1998)

Seeing like a state

how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed

by

  • ★★★★ 4.3 (13 ratings)
  • 134 Want to read
  • 6 Currently reading
  • 23 Have read

In 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.

Publish Date
Publisher
Yale University Press
Language
English
Pages
445

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Previews available in: English

Subjects

Central planning Social engineering Social aspects of Central planning Social aspects Authoritarianism Long Now Manual for Civilization Economic assistance, domestic Social problems Human services State, the POLITICAL SCIENCE Public Policy Economic Policy BUSINESS & ECONOMICS Government & Business Development Economic Development Business Development Structural Adjustment General Pays en développement Pays de l'Est Economie dirigée Régimes totalitaires Aspects sociaux Autoritarisme Planeconomie Utopieën Maatschappijverbetering PLANEJAMENTO ECONÔMICO (ASPECTOS SOCIAIS) AUTORITARISMO (SISTEMAS DE GOVERNO) ANTROPOLOGIA CULTURAL E SOCIAL PLANEJAMENTO TERRITORIAL (AVALIAÇÃO) Planification économique Aspect social Ingénierie sociale

People

V. I. Lenin Jules Nyerere Le Corbusier Baron Haussmann

Places

Tanzania Soviet Russia Brasilia

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Edition Availability
Cover of: Seeing Like a State
Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (The Institution for Social and Policy St)
February 8, 1999, Yale University Press
Paperback in English - New Ed edition
Cover of: Seeing like a state
Seeing like a state: how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed
1998, Yale University Press
in English

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Book Details

First Sentence

"Certain forms of knowledge and control require a narrowing of vision."

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Page ix
Introduction
Page 1
Part 1. State Projects of Legibility and Simplification
Page 9
1. Nature and Space
Page 11
2. Cities, People, and Language
Page 53
Part 2. Transforming Visions
Page 85
3. Authoritarian High Modernism
Page 87
4. The High-Modernist City: An Experiment and a Critique
Page 103
5. The Revolutionary Party: A Plan and a Diagnosis
Page 147
Part 3. The Social Engineering of Rural Settlement and Production
Page 181
6. Soviet Collectivization, Capitalist Dreams
Page 193
7. Compulsory Villagization in Tanzania: Aesthetics and Miniaturization
Page 223
8. Taming Nature: An Agricultyure of Legibility and Simplicity
Page 262
Part 4. The Missing Link
Page 307
9. Thin Simplifications and Practical Knowledge: Metis
Page 309
10. Conclusion
Page 342
Notes
Page 359
Sources for Illustrations
Page 433
Index
Page 435

Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references (p. 359-434) and index.

Published in
New Haven, USA
Series
Yale agrarian studies
Copyright Date
1998

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
338.9
Library of Congress
HD87.5 .S365 1998, HD87.5 .S365 1998eb

The Physical Object

Pagination
xiv, 445 p. :
Number of pages
445

Edition Identifiers

Open Library
OL680025M
ISBN 10
0300070160
LCCN
97026556
OCLC/WorldCat
191730771, 37392803
LibraryThing
12260
Goodreads
1024396

Work Identifiers

Work ID
OL26241985W

Source records

Work Description

Examines how (sometimes quasi-) authoritarian central planning fails to deliver the goods, be they increased resources for the state or a better life for the people.

Excerpts

Certain forms of knowledge and control require a narrowing of vision.
added anonymously.

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