Seeing Like a State

How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

by

Hardcover, 446 pages

English language

Published March 29, 1998 by Yale University Press.

ISBN:
978-0-300-07016-3
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OCLC Number:
97026556

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4 stars (2 reviews)

Examines how (sometimes quasi-) authoritarian high-modernist planning fails to deliver the goods, be they increased resources for the state or a better life for the people.

8 editions

reviewed Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott (Yale Agrarian Studies)

legibility, high modernism, metis

4 stars

I enjoyed this greatly and I am dyingggg to know about criticisms of big tech and surveillance capitalism that utilize the concepts in this book—particularly around legibility and the mechanization of people/minds. If you see this and you know of any, plz share! Such a good read for those of us in the interstitial spaces between the provably known and the experientially felt, and for those thinking about the pain and problems of objectivity.

avatar for bithive@tomes.tchncs.de

rated it

3 stars

Subjects

  • Central planning -- Social aspects
  • Social engineering
  • Authoritarianism