On the Shelf: Seeing Like a State

Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State: Why Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.

First, let it be said that Scott's book is brilliant. Second, this is a book that has been reviewed numerous times before, so a lot of what I say won't be anything new.

Seeing like a State is a wide ranging and very convincing analysis of the shortfalls of state-initiated plans for development. It begins by setting forth what Scott views as the significant common features of several major disasters in 20th century development projects. It proceeds to examine specific cases, such as the construction of Brasilia (and modernist city planning generally), Soviet collectivization, and villagization in Tanzania. As a point of departure, Scott posits two key points: that these projects were motivated largely by genuine humanistic and egalitarian impulses, and that they were horrific failures on both human and economic terms. It was refreshing to read a text on the failures of state planning that didn't degenerate into either tortured left-wing apologetics or an exultant paean to unrestricted capitalism. However, like other reviewers, I feel that there are definite flaws with the book that a responsible reviewer should address.

Scott asserts that the four key ingredients in a truly disastrous development project are:

1. A modern state with the administrative capability to monitor its population, including their wealth and patterns of land distribution.
2. A state motivated by a high modernist ideological framework that posits a linear view of social/technological progress ultimately leading to a rationally ordered society
3. An authoritarian state that is capable and willing back up its high modernist vision with force
4. A moribund or otherwise inert civil society that is incapable or unwilling to challenge these designs.

The initiators of such large scale development projects (in either their colonialist, nationalist, or socialist forms) tended to have an unshakable faith in technocratic solutions to human problems, a faith that leads to a rather dim view of local forms of knowledge. Indeed, for enthusiastic modernizers such traditional folkways are "the father who must be killed:" ridden with backwardness and inequalities. Though some, like Mao, might praise popular initiative ad nauseum, it was mainly for initiative shown in carrying out projects mandated by specialists in the central government.

Such disregard for the existing social capital of the very people they were trying to uplift is, in a large part, responsible for high modernism's tragic downfall. Rather than building upon popular knowledge and resources, typical high modernist solutions attempted to start fresh with new collective farms, cooperative villages, or model neighborhoods/workplaces. The problem inherent in such solutions is that they are usually based on radical simplifications of what human communities need in order to function, reduced to criteria easily measured by state authorities. And while such criteria (nutrition, sanitation, shelter) are vitally important, huge components of communal solidarity and social bonding exist outside its scope. Finally, top-down development projects usually overlap significantly with classic government concerns such as tax collection, conscription, and census taking and when push comes to shove these bureaucratic interests take precedence over the plan's democratic or egalitarian aspects.

There is a great deal more to this tome; more than I can realistically cover in a single entry. I'm planning on hitting a few other points in a later entry. But before ending I wanted to note what I saw as the book's flaws. Due to the book's staggering breadth, coupled with its relative brevity, it sometimes read more like an extended polemical essay rather than a scholarly text. And while I appreciated its multidisciplinary focus, the jumps between topics were sometimes disorienting, and the analogies connecting them somewhat lacking. The comparison between diverse urban communities and polycropped agricultural practices, for example, was evocative but somewhat insubstantial. Given the book's focus on agrarian policies, the chapters on urban planning (though fascinating!) seemed almost extraneous.

Those caveats aside, this is a fucking awesome book that I would recommend to anyone with a significant interest in 20th century history, public policy, economic development, or agriculture. Whatever your intellectual beverage of choice, you are likely to find something to your liking within.

When I told one of my professors about the premise of Seeing Like a State, she asked me to see if I could apply its analysis to No Child Left Behind. In my next entry I will attempt to do so.