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Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

James C. Scott · 16 HN comments
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Amazon Summary
“Illuminating and beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”— New Yorker “A magisterial critique of top-down social planning.”—Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times “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 Compulsory ujamaa villages in Tanzania, collectivization in Russia, Le Corbusier’s urban planning theory realized in Brasilia, the Great Leap Forward in China, agricultural "modernization" in the Tropics—the twentieth century has been racked by grand utopian schemes that have inadvertently brought death and disruption to millions. Why do well-intentioned plans for improving the human condition go tragically awry? In this wide-ranging and original book, James C. Scott analyzes failed cases of large-scale authoritarian plans in a variety of fields. Centrally managed social plans misfire, Scott argues, when they impose schematic visions that do violence to complex interdependencies that are not—and cannot—be fully understood. Further, the success of designs for social organization depends upon the recognition that local, practical knowledge is as important as formal, epistemic knowledge. The author builds a persuasive case against “development theory” and imperialistic state planning that disregards the values, desires, and objections of its subjects. He identifies and discusses four conditions common to all planning disasters: administrative ordering of nature and society by the state; a “high-modernist ideology” that places confidence in the ability of science to improve every aspect of human life; a willingness to use authoritarian state power to effect large- scale interventions; and a prostrate civil society that cannot effectively resist such plans.
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From Ch 1, Seeing Like a State By James C. Scott:

The great simplification of the forest into a "one-commodity machine" was precisely the step that allowed German forestry science to become a rigorous technical and commercial discipline that could be codified and taught. A condition of its rigor was that it severely bracketed, or assumed to be constant, all variables except those bearing directly on the yield of the selected species and on the cost of growing and extracting them. As we shall see with urban planning, revolutionary theory, collectivization, and rural resettlement, a whole world lying "outside the brackets" returned to haunt this technical vision.

In the German case, the negative biological and ultimately commercial consequences of the stripped-down forest became painfully obvious only after the second rotation of conifers had been planted. "It took about one century for them [the negative consequences] to show up clearly. Many of the pure stands grew excellently in the first generation but already showed an amazing retrogression in the second generation. The reason for this is a very complex one and only a simplified explanation can be given.... Then the whole nutrient cycle got out of order and eventually was nearly stopped.... Anyway, the drop of one or two site classes [used for grading the quality of timber] during two or three generations of pure spruce is a well known and frequently observed fact. This represents a production loss of 20 to 30 percent."

A new term, Waldsterben (forest death), entered the German vocabulary to describe the worst cases. An exceptionally complex process involving soil building, nutrient uptake, and symbiotic relations among fungi, insects, mammals, and flora--which were, and still are, not entirely understood--was apparently disrupted, with serious consequences. Most of these consequences can be traced to the radical simplicity of the scientific forest.

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/sc...

Azn link for HN Books: https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/d...

I recently started reading the book titled "Seeing like a state: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed" by James C. Scott [1] which talks about how starting with a simplified idea of how to structure a complex system (i.e. a system with many interdependencies) without taking into account details at the ground level end up in disaster.

Using that idea of "legibility" that Scott proposes, not accounting for indigenous "tribal knowledge" in planning for their "betterment" does not work. Common language that reflects this happening is when such knowledge is trivialized or rejected using words like "unscientific".

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/d...

Yes, I would. If there's some negative externality caused by activity X, put a price on that externality and let the market decide whether X is still worth it. Top-down bans and mandates and price controls and all sorts of other clumsy interventions in society destroy value and cause endless misery to humanity. What works is letting people decide on their own how to live their lives.

https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/d...

aetherane
How does this work then? If you raise electricity prices people who need it for everyday living won't be able to afford it
"Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed" by James C. Scott (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0300078153)
For more on how legibility (through naming, street grids, single-crop farms etc) acts a prerequisite for manipulation, check out Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes To Improve The Human Condition Have Failed.

https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/d...

throwanem
An excellent recommendation which I unreservedly second.
This reminds me of something from "Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed"[1], about Brazil's new capital [2].

The new order was "visually appealing" to the bureaucrats, with housing in one section, work in one section, government in the middle etc. A lot of vast open space made it so spontaneous markets & trading did not occur (due to enforced zoning and excessive sunlight instead of using shade from buildings), leading to a lower quality of life for its inhabitants.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/d... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bras%C3%ADlia

This book by James Scott has a very interesting perspective on the mapping of unmapped cities. The TL;DR is that an unmapped or unmappable city can't be managed from afar. In an unmapped city you must go there to manage it, in a mapped city you can sit at a desk a thousand miles away and know who's paid their taxes, etc. Paradoxically the act of mapping helps both outside help and outside exploitation.

http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/dp...

iwwr
This also engenders a "Sim City" kind of urban planning that keeps commercial spaces or jobs very far away from homes and makes it impractical to not own a car (simply necessary for survival).
For management, it's not really about the process du jour per se. It is about standardization, frameworks, and control. Read 'Seeing like a state'

From Ruby Rogues 184 RR

"JESSICA: Alright. So, I am going to echo one of Greg’s picks because it was on my list but for a different reason. ‘Seeing like a State’ is an amazing book. And I think it’s drastically changed the way I look at software, not for the same reason as Greg talked about but because it shows why what we do is hard. ‘Seeing like a State’ talks about all the subtleties of human systems and human interactions at the local context level. It talks about all the improvisation that everyone does on a day-to-day basis and how in real human communities, we’re constantly changing the system to adjust to a slightly different reality, to corner cases we hadn’t seen before but now we have. It’s shifting and it’s not well-defined. And suddenly it makes complete sense that the hardest part of software is figuring out what we want to do. That’s it. It’s a great book."

http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/dp...

myth_drannon
Funny how one comment on HN can bring a relatively old and unknown book from obscurity to top spot on Amazon sales chart (it's a sub-section but still). Of course it's just an assumption that there is a correlation between.
UK-AL
"standardization, frameworks, and control" If management wants this than good.

In my experience its the constant change(I don't mind controlled change, but hidden change), constant scope creep, constant increasing of tasks, without increasing estimates. The constant being asked to "do things faster" without caring about quality, then being blamed about quality at a later date that makes things fail. Trying to implement every single feature, rather than focusing on a small set of useful features.

In a word its management that makes projects fail. You need a system to set constraints on managament so they have to make proper trade offs and don't expect everything in a small amount of time.

It's easy to manage if you expect everything can be done. What makes management hard is making the trade offs because you have limited resources.

If you implement a standard way of doing things, you can stop management wrecking projects.

Boss comes in and asks to change something? Well it has to go through the normal estimation process and the estimate increased etc

They can't ask you to cut corners, because it must go through the same quality procedures

etc

A lot of developers are complicit in this, because they have a super hero complex. They want to show off, and have unrealistic expectations of themselves. Management think they getting a great deal, but in the end the developer can't deliver. One of the parts of becoming a senior developer is to start to really know yourself. Then adjusting your systems to compensate.

One thing i like about SCRUM is the velocity technique, because uses past history to estimate rather than ego driven estimates.

Frameworks and standard techniques are there to protect developers much more than to protect managers.

Other than working at an enterprise-type company, getting exposure through watching videos might help. And remember - the best definition of enterprise software that I've ever heard is: enterprise software is when the person buying the software almost is never the one who uses it.

https://www.oracle.com/javaone/sessions/index.html

Based on your brief posting, you might be interested in more CIO-style matters.

http://www.cioinsight.com/ciovideos/

Really, I personally believe the more exposure you have to fields outside of your profession (at least the one you are in for now), the better mental model of the world you want to be part of you produce.

I used to work in enterprise software so I can say for sure that it its own unique bubble, just like startups.

In fact, read this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/dp...

From Ruby Rogues 184 RR

"JESSICA: Alright. So, I am going to echo one of Greg’s picks because it was on my list but for a different reason. ‘Seeing like a State’ is an amazing book. And I think it’s drastically changed the way I look at software, not for the same reason as Greg talked about but because it shows why what we do is hard. ‘Seeing like a State’ talks about all the subtleties of human systems and human interactions at the local context level. It talks about all the improvisation that everyone does on a day-to-day basis and how in real human communities, we’re constantly changing the system to adjust to a slightly different reality, to corner cases we hadn’t seen before but now we have. It’s shifting and it’s not well-defined. And suddenly it makes complete sense that the hardest part of software is figuring out what we want to do. That’s it. It’s a great book."

http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/dp...

There is a book called "Seeing like a state" http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/dp...

In it, the author tells a story of someone in a village in a less developed country who cannot afford pesticides. So he starts a war between two ant colonies in order to drive out the ants that are destroying a beloved fruit tree.

You can do the same thing for gut flora. You don't have to wipe things out first. Trying to wipe the gut clean is extremely hard on the body. It's much easier on the body to just feed the good flora and give them support so they start crowding out things you don't want. It's a gentler path. It just takes persistence.

Oct 07, 2014 · Adrock on The Genius ISMs
This annotation:

http://meta.genius.com/4127010

That picture of Bruges is from Seeing Like a State[1], which should be required reading for all managers.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300078153/ref=as_li_tl?ie=...

tomlemon
Slash for all HUMANS! it's basically the best book ever – i'll add a link in to the annotation..
Seeing like a state

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0300078153

Riches for the poor: The Clemente course in humanities

http://books.google.com/books/about/Riches_for_the_Poor.html...

And "Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed" - http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Like-State-Institution-Universi...
nooneelse
Does it mention Disney's grand vision for Epcot?

Addendum: I realized on the way home that this comment was rather too content-free for HN. So...

More specifically, I was curious if the book you mention has some narrative or historical details on why the grand Epcot vision fell apart/was stymied.

paganel
Great book! That's actually the book that got me interested in the recent history of my city, which suffered major changes (most say for the worst) that seem to have been taken up from the book's chapters on mdoernist urban development. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceau%C5%9Fima)
Jan 26, 2012 · anamax on Cars kill cities
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300078153

"Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (The Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University)"

Feb 03, 2011 · paganel on Earth from Above
I particularly had the South-African photo in mind as a comparison when I made my statement. Don't get me wrong, I don't approve poverty, I've lived for a couple of years on less than $2 a day and my parents still do, it's just that the Danish photo is so devoid of life, of human interaction, that makes it so depressing for me.

Maybe I'm a little bit biased because right now I'm reading James C. Scott's "Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed" (http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Like-State-Condition-Institutio...), which has a couple of chapters against modern, centralized, well-planed architecture that is designed "to look good from a plane" (he gives Brasilia as a negative example). Now, I know these suburbs weren't probably planned by the Government, but the main idea behind their design and planning is the same, i.e. to look good from a geometrical point of view.

pyre
It depends on how you look at it. With a more contained and 'gathered' approach, I would think that it would foster a tighter 'community feel' between the neighbors than in a more spread out model. That doesn't seem devoid of human interaction to me.
bricestacey
Each house has tall hedges surrounding it, acting as barriers from neighbors. It seems you'd have to walk all the way around if you wanted to visit. Then, everyone parks in the circle so the car you drive is the most prominent feature of your home.

It looks cool, but I can see how someone might consider it odd.

pyre
But all properties are connected at a central point, making it easy to put together gatherings of everyone in the community (e.g. 'block parties'). As opposed to a similar number of houses in a grid pattern. That's just my impression though.
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