Image
EAN-13	9780300078152
Product Name	Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
Language	English
Category	Book / Magazine / Publication
Short Description	Paperback
Amazon.com	Buy on Amazon ~ 0300078153
SKU	2454930
Price New	15.00 US Dollars    (curriencies)
Price Used	12.74 US Dollars    (curriencies)
Width	6.16 inches    (convert)
Height	1.22 inches    (convert)
Length	9.22 inches    (convert)
Weight	18.24 ounces    (convert)
Author	James C. Scott
Page Count	464
Binding	Paperback
Published	02/08/1999
Features	Yale University Press
Long Description	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. "A broad-ranging, theoretically important, and empirically grounded treatment of the modern state and its propensity to simplify and make legible a society which by nature is complex and opaque. For anyone interested inlearning about this fundamental tension of modernity and about the destruction wrought in the twentieth century as a consequence of the dominant development ideology of the simplifying state, this is a must-read". -- Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, author of Hitler's Willing Executioners
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Although we have had a couple days lately when we have been down for maintenance, looking back over the last couple years we can say that we have been available 99.5% of the time and that isn't too bad at all.

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