Seeing Like a State by James C Scott
An analysis of diverse failures in high-modernist, authoritarian state planning. It covers projects such as collectivization in Russia and the building of Brasilia, arguing that any centrally-managed social plan must recognize the importance of local customs and practical knowledge.
“A magisterial critique of top-down social planning that has been cited, and debated, by the free-market libertarians of the Cato Institute (which recently dedicated an issue of its online journal to the book), development economists, and partisans of Occupy Wall Street alike”—Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times
“One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades. . . . A fascinating interpretation of the growth of the modern state. . . . Scott presents a formidable argument against using the power of the state in an attempt to reshape the whole of society.”—John Gray, New York Times Book Review
“Illuminating and beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”—New Yorker
“To my mind, Seeing Like a State is one of the most stimulating and ambitious synthetic works of recent years.”—John Agar, British Journal for the History of Science
“Seeing Like a State is an important work. It will, I believe, be used widely in university courses and by a wider reading public who seek to understand the broad contours of our recent history.”—Jane Adams, Rural History
2015 Wildavsky Award for Enduring Contribution to Policy Studies, from the Public Policy Section of the American Political Science Association
Winner of the 2000 Mattei Dogan Award
“The ‘perfection’ Scott so rightly and with such tremendous skill and erudition debunks in his book he himself has nearly reached, as far as positing and presenting the problem is concerned. The case of what the order-crazy mind is capable of doing and why we need to stop it from doing it has been established ‘beyond any reasonable doubt’ and with a force that cannot be strengthened.”—Zygmunt Bauman, emeritus professor, University of Leeds
“A tour de force. . . . Reading the book delighted and inspired me. It’s not the first time Jim Scott has had that effect.”—Charles Tilly, Columbia University
“Stunning insights, an original position, and a conceptual approach of global application. Scott’s book will at once take its place among the decade’s truly seminal contributions to comparative politics.”—M. Crawford Young, University of Wisconsin, Madison
“A broad-ranging, theoretically important, and empirically grounded treatment of the modern state and its propensity to simplify and make legible a society which by nature is complex and opaque. For anyone interested in learning about this fundamental tension of modernity and about the destruction wrought in the twentieth century as a consequence of the dominant development ideology of the simplifying state, this is a must-read.”—Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, author of Hitler’s Willing Executioners
“One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades. . . . A fascinating interpretation of the growth of the modern state. . . . Scott presents a formidable argument against using the power of the state in an attempt to reshape the whole of society.”—John Gray, New York Times Book Review
“Illuminating and beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”—New Yorker
“To my mind, Seeing Like a State is one of the most stimulating and ambitious synthetic works of recent years.”—John Agar, British Journal for the History of Science
“Seeing Like a State is an important work. It will, I believe, be used widely in university courses and by a wider reading public who seek to understand the broad contours of our recent history.”—Jane Adams, Rural History
2015 Wildavsky Award for Enduring Contribution to Policy Studies, from the Public Policy Section of the American Political Science Association
Winner of the 2000 Mattei Dogan Award
“The ‘perfection’ Scott so rightly and with such tremendous skill and erudition debunks in his book he himself has nearly reached, as far as positing and presenting the problem is concerned. The case of what the order-crazy mind is capable of doing and why we need to stop it from doing it has been established ‘beyond any reasonable doubt’ and with a force that cannot be strengthened.”—Zygmunt Bauman, emeritus professor, University of Leeds
“A tour de force. . . . Reading the book delighted and inspired me. It’s not the first time Jim Scott has had that effect.”—Charles Tilly, Columbia University
“Stunning insights, an original position, and a conceptual approach of global application. Scott’s book will at once take its place among the decade’s truly seminal contributions to comparative politics.”—M. Crawford Young, University of Wisconsin, Madison
“A broad-ranging, theoretically important, and empirically grounded treatment of the modern state and its propensity to simplify and make legible a society which by nature is complex and opaque. For anyone interested in learning about this fundamental tension of modernity and about the destruction wrought in the twentieth century as a consequence of the dominant development ideology of the simplifying state, this is a must-read.”—Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, author of Hitler’s Willing Executioners
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.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780300078152 |
| ISBN 10 | 0300078153 |
| Title | Seeing Like a State |
| Author | James C Scott |
| Series | The Institution For Social And Policy Studies |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Yale University Press |
| Year published | 1999-02-08 |
| Number of pages | 464 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |