Seeing Like a State : How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

ISBN 13:
9780300078152
ISBN 10:
0300078153
Format: Trade Paper
Copyright: 02/08/1999
Publisher: Yale University Press

Note: Not guaranteed to come with supplemental materials (access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.)

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Summary

Why do well-intentioned plans for improving the human condition go tragically awry? In a wide-ranging and original study, 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 schematic visions are imposed on long-established structures without taking into account preexisting interdependencies.

Acknowledgments
Introduction	p. 1
State Projects of Legibility and Simplification	p. 9
Nature and Space	p. 11
Cities, People, and Language	p. 53
Transforming Visions	p. 85
Authoritarian High Modernism	p. 87
The High-Modernist City: An Experiment and a Critique	p. 103
The Revolutionary Party: A Plan and a Diagnosis	p. 147
The Social Engineering of Rural Settlement and Production	p. 181
Soviet Collectivization, Capitalist Dreams	p. 193
Compulsory Villagization in Tanzania: Aesthetics and Miniaturization	p. 223
Taming Nature: An Agriculture of Legibility and Simplicity	p. 262
The Missing Link	p. 307
Thin Simplifications and Practical Knowledge: Metis	p. 309
Conclusion	p. 342
Notes	p. 359
Sources for Illustrations	p. 433
Index	p. 435
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.

Seeing Like a State : How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

9780300078152

0300078153

Summary

Table of Contents

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