Seeing like a state : how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed / / James C. Scott
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| Autore: |
Scott James C
|
| Titolo: |
Seeing like a state : how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed / / James C. Scott
|
| Pubblicazione: | New Haven, : Yale University Press, c1998 |
| Descrizione fisica: | 1 online resource (462 p.) |
| Disciplina: | 338.9 |
| Soggetto topico: | Central planning - Social aspects |
| Social engineering | |
| Authoritarianism | |
| Note generali: | Description based upon print version of record. |
| Nota di bibliografia: | Includes bibliographical references (p. 359-434) and index. |
| Nota di contenuto: | pt. 1. State projects of legibility and simplification -- pt. 2. Transforming visions -- pt. 3. The social engineering of rural settlement and production -- pt. 4. The missing link. |
| Sommario/riassunto: | 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. |
| Titolo autorizzato: | Seeing like a State |
| ISBN: | 9786611729134 |
| 1-281-72913-2 | |
| 0-300-12878-9 | |
| Formato: | Materiale a stampa  |
| Livello bibliografico | Monografia |
| Lingua di pubblicazione: | Inglese |
| Record Nr.: | 9910821221903321 |
| Lo trovi qui: | Univ. Federico II |
| Opac: | Controlla la disponibilità qui |
Serie:
Yale agrarian studies.
Yale ISPS series.