Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
Description
Why do ambitious plans to rationalize society so often produce disorder, oppression, or failure? This influential study examines how states simplify complex social realities through standardized maps, classifications, and administrative schemes—and how those efforts can undermine the local knowledge and flexible practices on which communities depend. Drawing on examples from agriculture, urban planning, collectivization, and social engineering, it explores the dangers of high-modernist confidence and authoritarian central planning. The result is a compelling argument for humility, practical knowledge, and greater attention to the lived complexity of human societies.
Available Editions
paperback
Yale University Press
Published Feb 8, 1999
464 pages
ISBN: 9780300078152
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Details
First Published
1998
Language
eng
Content Warnings
Content and trigger warnings for Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C. Scott.