Seeing Like a State

How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (The Institution for Social and Policy St)

by

Paperback, 464 pages

English language

Published Feb. 8, 1999 by Yale University Press.

ISBN:
978-0-300-07815-2
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4 stars (1 review)

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.

8 editions

reviewed Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott (Yale Agrarian Studies)

legibility, high modernism, metis

4 stars

I enjoyed this greatly and I am dyingggg to know about criticisms of big tech and surveillance capitalism that utilize the concepts in this book—particularly around legibility and the mechanization of people/minds. If you see this and you know of any, plz share! Such a good read for those of us in the interstitial spaces between the provably known and the experientially felt, and for those thinking about the pain and problems of objectivity.

Subjects

  • Central government policies
  • Constitution: government & the state
  • Social welfare & social services
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Politics/International Relations
  • Anthropology - Cultural
  • Development - Economic Development
  • Sociology - Social Theory
  • Political Science / General
  • Public Policy - Regional Planning