Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, James C. Scott

-About this book

One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades. »–John Gray, New York Times Book Review

« A powerful, and in many insightful, explanation as to why grandiose programs of social reform, not to mention revolution, so often end in tragedy. . . . An important critique of visionary state planning. »

Hailed as « a magisterial critique of top-down social planning » by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail–sometimes catastrophically–in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters.

« Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit. »–New Yorker

« A tour de force. »– Charles Tilly, Columbia University

-Contents

Introduction
Part 1. State Projects of Legibility and Simplification
Chapter 1. Nature and Space
Chapter 2. Cities, People, and Language
Part 2. Transforming Visions
Chapter 3. Authoritarian High Modernism
Chapter 4. The High-Modernist City: An Experiment and a Critique
Chapter 5. The Revolutionary Party: A Plan and a Diagnosis
Part 3. The Social Engineering of Rural Settlement and Production
Chapter 6. Soviet Collectivization, Capitalist Dreams
Chapter 7. Compulsory Villagization in Tanzania: Aesthetics and Miniaturization
Chapter 8. Taming Nature: An Agriculture of Legibility and Simplicity
Part 4. The Missing Link
Chapter 9. Thin Simplifications and Practical Knowledge: Metis
Chapter 10. Conclusion
Notes
Sources for Illustrations
Index

-caractéristiques

Date de parution :5 mai 2020

Éditeur : Yale University Press  

Langue : Anglais

NB.de pages : 464 pages

ISBN-10 : 0300246757

ISBN-13 : 978-0300246759

Poids   : 348 g

Dimensions : 12.7 x 3.3 x 19.56 cm