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    Hig modernist city

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    Seeing Like a State

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    Hig modernist city

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    462 views40 pages

    Seeing Like A State

    Uploaded by

    ccastrobc
    Hig modernist city

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    of 40
    “The Institution for Social and Polcy Studie at Yale University “The Yale ers Series Like a State How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed James C. Scott ‘Yale University Press ‘New Haven and London “Dis iaookin the he Agari Si Sees ames Set, srs er apni © 19989 We Vann, site ere ‘Bartok mar me rer whe orn ang ttc a frm {hyo th ping permite y Sra tt US Copa nd ‘Sep reser writen permnon eh Deny eon dt ster py Raging Ft Bok, aha NC ‘Pied nthe Um Sos ered an Pre Bingen, ower Li of ones angina Date 78 Gtk ak pepe ‘Tepe nik se pie xem Sie Cam For Louise, again, always Introduction ‘This book grew out of a intellectual detour that became so gripping that I decided to abandon my original kinerary altogether After had made what appeared tobe anillconsdered tar, the surprising new fcenery andthe sense that Iwas headed fora more string destin ‘don persuaded me to change my plans. The nev tinerary, I think, has 8 logic of ts own. I ight even have been a more elegant trip had I postesed the wit to conceive oft at he ovtect What does seem clear {mes that the detour, although aang roads shat were bumpier and ‘more circuitous than T had foreseen, has led to 2 more substantial place. I goes without saying thatthe reader might have found a more ‘xperienced guide, but the itinerary Isso peculiarly off the beaten track that if youre headed thi way. you have to stl fr whatever local racker you ean find. ‘Aword about the road not taken. Original, Ise out to understand why the statohas always seemed tobe the enemy of people who move “round; to put it rudely In the coment of Southeast Asa, this prom: sed tobe a frutfl way of addressing the perennial tensions between mobile, sashand:bura hill peples on one band and wet-ce, valley “Kingdoms on the ober. The question, however, transcended regional icography. Nomad and pastoralists (auch as Berbers and Bedouin) [unter gatherers, Gypsies, vagrant, homeless people, itinerant, ran: vay slaves, and serfs have always been a thor in the side of states. forts to permanently ste these mobile peoples (sedentariation) seemed to be a perennial state projet — perennial, part, because It to seldom succeeded ‘The more 1 examined these efforts at sedenarization, the more 1 ‘cametto see them asa state attempt to make soclty legible, to ar- ‘ange the population in ways that simplified the classic state functions ‘of taxation, conscription, and prevention af ebllion Having begun to {think in these terms, began to see legibility oa central problem in statecrafe. The premodern state was, im many crucial respects, pare tially blind it knew precious iti about its subjects, thee wealth, their landholdings and yield, thls location, their very ident. I lacked ‘anything likes detailed “map” oft terrain and its poople I lacked, {or the most part, a measure, a merc, that would allow itt “rans late” what knew into s common standard necessary fr a synoptic view, Av aes interventions were often crude and self-defeating is atthis point chat the detour began. How did the sta gradually gt handle on te subjects and thei envirunment? Suddenly processes {5 cisparate a the creation of permanent last names, the standardiza tion of weights and messes, the establishment of cadastral surveys ‘and population register, the invention of freehold tenure, the standard {nation of language and igal discourse the design of cies, and the or- ganization of transportation seemed comprehensible as aempe ate {Bilay and simpliication. In each eae, oficials tok exceptionally ‘complex, evil, apd local socal practices, such as land tenure cus- {os or naming cists, and created a standard grid whereby ould be centrally recorded and monitored “The organization of the natural world was no exception, Asricl- ture i, afterall a raical reorganization and simplification of flora to ‘Suit mans goals Whatever their other purposes, the designs of si. ati forestry and agriculture andthe layouts of plantations, col tive farms, ujama villages, and strategie hamlets all seemed caleu- lated to make the terrain its prodacts, and its workforce more legible “and hence manipslale—from above and from the center ‘homely analogy from beckeeping may be helpful here. tn pre- ‘modern times he gathering of honey was a dificult afar Even i bees ‘Were housed in saw hives, harvesting the honey usually meant div- Ing of the bees and often destroying the colony: The arrangement of brood chambers and hone cells followed complex pattems thet varied ‘fom hive to hive paterns that didnot allow for neat extractions. The ‘modern beehive in contests designed to solve the beekeepers prob Tem, With a device called a “queen exclude t separates the brood chambers Below frm the honey supplies above, preventing the queen from laying eget above a certain Ive. Furthermore the wax cells re arranged neatly in vertical frames, lne or tent a box, which enable the eaty extraction of honey, wax, and propolis. Extraction is made possible by serving “bee space" the precise distance between the frames thatthe bes wil leave open as passages rather than bridging the frames by building intervening honeycomb, From the beckeeper's point of view, the modern hive i an order “Tepibe” hive allowing the Eeekeeper to inspect the condition of the colony and the queen, judge its honey production (by weight), enlarge or contrat the size of the hive By standard unis, move toa new location, and, above all, x tract just enough honey (in temperate climates) to ensure that the olny will overwinter succesfull: 1 donot wish o push the analogy further than it wil go, but much cf eary moder Esropean statecraf seemed similarly devoted to ==. tonalisng and stndardicing what was social hieroglyph ino aleg- ible and adminisvasvely more convenient format. The socal sim- plilestons thus introduced not only permitted a more finely tuned ‘tem of tatation and conscription but aso greatly enkanced tate ca- pac. They made possible quite discriminating interventions of every in, such as pblic health measures, politcal suvelance, and vlef forthe poor ‘These state simplifications, the basic givens of modern statecaf, ‘were, rbepan o realize, rather ke abridged maps. The. did not sue- cesflly represen the actual activity ofthe society they depicted, nor “were they intended to; they ropresented only tha lice of that inter ‘sted the oficial observer. They were, moreover, not just maps. Rather, ‘ey were mape that whe allied with state power, would enable much ofthe realty they depicted to be remade, Thus a tate cadastral map ‘rested to designate table properholders docs nt merely describe ‘sytem of land tenure; treats such a system through its ability to five ite catogories the force of law. Mich ofthe frst chaper in {ended to convey how thoroughly seciety and the evironment have been refshioned by state maps of lgblty “This view of early modern sateraf snot particularly original. Suitably modified, however it can provide a distinctive opie through | which number of huge development Bascoes in poorer Third World ‘ations and Eastern Europe canbe usefully viewed, Bt “Basco” ie too lighthearted » word forthe diastors Ihave in smind. The Great Leap Forward in China, callecuvizaton in Russia, tnd compulsory villagization in Tanzania, Mozambique, and Ethiopia fre among the great human tragedies ofthe twentieth century, ia terms ofboth lives lst and lives ietrievablyderuptd. Ata less dra ‘mate but far more common lve, the history of Third Word develop ‘ment itered withthe debes of huge agriultral schemes and new cites (think of Bastia or Chandigarh) that have filed their resident, r IRisnotsodificul, als to understand why so many human ives have been desvoyed by mobilized violence between en groups, religious sects, oF linguist communities, But ts harder grasp why 29 ™many ‘welintended schemes to improve the human condition have gone so "Bagcaly awry 1 aim, in what follows, to provide e convincing account ‘ofthe logic behind the fallure of some of the great wopian socal eng heering schemes of the twentieth cen. T shall argue tat the most trago episodes of state-ntated rocial ‘engineering originate in a pernicious combination of four elements Allfour are necessary fra fledged disaster, Theis clement isthe [administrative ordering of nature and society—the transformative Slate simplifications deseribed above. By themselves, they are the Une Femarkable tools of moder statcrat: they are as vital to the mainte- nance of our welfare and freedom as they are to the designs of a ‘would-be modern despot. They undergrd the concept of eiizenship land the provision of oval welfare ust as they might undersied a pl ley of rounding up undesirable minors. — The second clement is what I cll a highsmodernist ideology: I is best conceived asa strong, one might even say muscle-bound, version ‘ofthe seltconfidence about scientific and technical progress the expan- ‘ion of production, the pring satisfaction of human needs the mas {ery of nature (includig human nature), and, above al, the rational

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