Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
@inproceedings{Scott1999SeeingLA, title={Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed}, author={James C. Scott}, year={1999} }
In this wide-ranging and original book, James C. Scott analyzes failed cases of large-scale authoritarian plans in a variety of fields. He argues that centrally managed social plans derail 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 on the recognition that local, practical knowledge is as important as formal, epistemic knowledge. The author…
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