![]() Scott takes great effort to highlight that he is not necessarily anti-state. He highlights collective farms in the Soviet Union, the building of Brasilia, and forced villagization in 1970s Tanzania as examples of failed schemes which were led by top-down bureaucratic efforts and where officials ignored or silenced local expertise. Schemes that successfully improve human lives, Scott argues, they must take into account local conditions, and that the high-modernist ideologies of the 20th century have prevented this. This helped the central government keep track of its subjects, at the cost of a more nuanced yet fuzzy and less legible understanding of local conditions. The court demanded that John take a permanent last name (in this case, the name of his village). Yet it was of less use to the central government, which did not know Thomas or William. In his local village, this naming system carried a lot of information, because people could identify him as the son of Thomas and grandson of William, and thus distinguish him from the other Johns, the other children of Thomas, and the other grandchildren of William. ![]() In the case of last names, Scott cites a Welsh man who appeared in court and identified himself with a long string of patronyms: "John, ap Thomas ap William" etc. While monoculture is easy to measure, manage, and understand, it is also less resilient to ecological crises than polyculture is. In agriculture and forestry, for example, it led to monoculture, or the sole focus on cultivating a single crop or tree at the cost of all others. This allows governors who have little to no local knowledge to immediately understand the outline of the area but simultaneously blinds the state to the complex interactions which happen within nature and society. While, in earlier times, a field could be measured in the amount of cows it could sustain or the types of plants it could grow, post centralization, its size is measured in hectares. The book uses examples like the introduction of permanent last names in Great Britain, cadastral surveys in France, and standard units of measure across Europe to argue that a reconfiguration of social order is necessary for state scrutiny, and requires the simplification of pre-existing, natural arrangements. The goal of local legibility by the state is transparency from the top down, from the top of the tower or the center/seat of the government, so the state can effectively operate upon their subjects. A main theme of this book, illustrated by his historic examples, is that states operate systems of power toward 'legibility' in order to see their subjects correctly in a top-down, modernist, model that is flawed, problematic, and often ends poorly for subjects. ![]() Scott shows how central governments attempt to force legibility on their subjects, and fail to see complex, valuable forms of local social order and knowledge. The book was first published in March 1998, with a paperback version in February 1999. While intended to facilitate state control and economies of scale, Scott argues that the eradication of local differences and silencing of local expertise can have adverse effects. Examples include the introduction of last names, censuses, uniform languages, and standard units of measurement. The book makes an influential argument that states seek to force "legibility" on their subjects by homogenizing them and creating standards that simplify pre-existing, natural, diverse social arrangements. Scott critical of a system of beliefs he calls high modernism, that centers on governments' overconfidence in the ability to design and operate society in accordance with purported scientific laws. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed is a book by James C. ( September 2019) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) ![]() Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. The neutrality of this article is disputed.
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