Seeing Like a State was recommended to me by Yale Cold War historian John Gaddis. At its core, this is a book about the many failures of mankind's attempts to assert order and "legibility" to nature, society, and the economy. Scott takes aim at many of the grand-scale authoritarian planning schemes of the 20th century, ranging from the notorious Soviet farming plans to the forced "villagization" of Tanzania. Apparently, this book is somewhat of a classic in historical circles and is cited incredibly frequently in research.

The takeaway, as Scott himself says is "If I were asked to condense the reasons behind these failures into a single sentence, I would say that the progenitors of such plans regarded themselves as far smarter and farseeing than they really were and, at the same time, regarded their subjects as far more stupid and incompetent than they really were"

Scott got into this whole question through the study of nomadic peoples across the globe. He says, "The more I examined these efforts at sedentarization, the more I came to see them as a state's attempt to make a society legible, to arrange the population in ways that simplified the classic state functions of taxation, conscription, and prevention of rebellion. Having begun to think in these terms, I began to see legibility as a central problem in statecraft." By trying to impose order upon the chaos of society, states could assert their power more effectively and they thought they could increase productivity and quality of life.

However, these plans have been almost uniformly unsuccessful and occasionally disastrous. Scott writes, "The most tragic episodes of state-initiated social engineering originate in a pernicious combination of four elements. All four are necessary for a full-fledged disaster. The first element is the administrative ordering of nature and society-the transformative state simplifications described above.... The second element is what I call a high-modernist ideology. It is best conceived as a strong, one might even say muscle-bound, version of the self-confidence about scientific and technical progress, the expansion of production, the growing satisfaction of human needs, the mastery of nature (including human nature), and, above all, the rational design of social order commensurate with the scientific understanding of natural laws. It originated, of course, in the West, as a by-product of unprecedented progress in science and industry... The third element is an authoritarian state that is willing and able to use the full weight of its coercive power to bring these high-modernist designs into being... A fourth element is closely linked to the third: a prostrate civil society that lacks the capacity to resist these plans.... In sum, the legibility of a society provides the capacity for large-scale social engineering, high-modernist ideology provides the desire, the authoritarian state provides the determination to act on that desire, and an incapacitated civil society provides the leveled social terrain on which to build"

Much of the book is devoted to case studies of failed high-modernist planning. Fascinatingly (for me at least), the book actually begins with an analysis of the birth of "scientific" forestry in 16th century Saxony. Scott explains how the tidy, well-kept rows of monoculture Norway Spruce planted by the Germans produced vast quantities of wood for a rotation or two, and then yields went to hell because of soil depletion, massive pest problems, and so on. Basically - forests are incredibly complex natural systems and trying to impose artificial order on them often leaves you vulnerable to unexpected consequences.

Scott spends a surprising amount of time covering high-modernist architecture and city planning - with a heavy emphasis on Le Corbusier. It's awesome the Scott - as director of the Yale Agrarian Studies program - has such a wide range of knowledge and insights. Of course, much of the second half of the book is devoted to failed large-scale agricultural schemes in the US and abroad. Scott makes the claim that small-holder agriculture often performs as well as massive mechanized agribusiness operations in the short term and is almost always a better long-term plan for sustained high yields. I had always thought that modern agriculture was orders of magnitude more productive than traditional agriculture, so that was a surprise to me.

The very last part of the book is about the concept of "metis" - a sort of practical knowledge which "lies in that large space between the realm of genius, to which no formula can apply, and the realm of codified knowledge, which can be learned by rote". Scott holds metis in quite high regard and suggests that social planners do too. He thinks that many of the disasters caused by development planning could be avoided if planners: take small steps and observe, favor reversibility, realize that irreversible interventions have irreversible consequences, plan on surprises, plan on human inventiveness.

All in all, this was a great read that significantly changed my views on managing complex real-world systems. I think that before this book I certainly fell into the high-modernist camp. I still certainly believe in the power of better data to help make better decisions, but I think that Scott's book has made me considerably less "imperial" in my faith in high modernism. It's also made me a lot more cautious about grand ambitions for totally "scientific" forest management!

Seeing Like a State - Likewise Book Reviews

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