Book
Licensed
Unlicensed
Requires Authentication
Seeing Like a State
How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
-
James C. Scott
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2020
About this book
“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
“A powerful, and in many [ways] insightful, explanation as to why grandiose programs of social reform, not to mention revolution, so often end in tragedy. . . . An important critique of visionary state planning.”—Robert Heilbroner, Lingua Franca
Hailed as “a magisterial critique of top-down social planning” by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail—sometimes catastrophically—in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters.
“Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”—New Yorker
“A tour de force.”—Charles Tilly, Columbia University
The Institution for Social and Policy Studies
“A powerful, and in many [ways] insightful, explanation as to why grandiose programs of social reform, not to mention revolution, so often end in tragedy. . . . An important critique of visionary state planning.”—Robert Heilbroner, Lingua Franca
Hailed as “a magisterial critique of top-down social planning” by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail—sometimes catastrophically—in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters.
“Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”—New Yorker
“A tour de force.”—Charles Tilly, Columbia University
The Institution for Social and Policy Studies
Author / Editor information
James C. Scott (1936–2024) was Sterling Professor of Political Science and Professor of Anthropology Emeritus at Yale University. His many books include The Art of Not Being Governed, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, and Against the Grain.
Topics
-
Download PDFPublicly Available
Frontmatter
i -
Download PDFPublicly Available
Contents
vii -
Download PDFPublicly Available
Acknowledgments
ix -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Introduction
1 - Part 1. State Projects of Legibility and Simplification
-
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 1. Nature and Space
11 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 2. Cities, People, and Language
53 - Part 2. Transforming Visions
-
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 3. Authoritarian High Modernism
87 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 4. The High-Modernist City: An Experiment and a Critique
103 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 5. The Revolutionary Party: A Plan and a Diagnosis
147 - Part 3. The Social Engineering of Rural Settlement and Production
-
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 6. Soviet Collectivization, Capitalist Dream
193 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 7. Compulsory Villagization in Tanzania: Aesthetics and Miniaturization
223 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 8. Taming Nature: An Agriculture of Legibility and Simplicity
262 - Part 4. The Missing Link
-
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 9. Thin Simplifications and Practical Knowledge: Metis
309 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 10. Conclusion
342 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Notes
359 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Sources for Illustrations
433 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Index
435
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
March 17, 2020
eBook ISBN:
9780300252989
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
480
Other:
36 b-w illus.
