Kyle Harrison
to-read
Seeing Like a State
Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
- Author
- James C. Scott
- Published
- 1998
- Pages
- 454
- Recommended
- Once
Why it’s on the list: Scott’s account of why grand schemes fail: to administer something you must first make it legible, legibility means throwing away local knowledge, and the thing you end up managing is the simplified map rather than the territory. The source of mētis and legibility as terms of art.
Where I saw it: A bare Amazon link saved in the note.
Connections
- Legibility — the concept this book put into circulation.
- City Building — the portfolio idea this sits closest to; Brasilia and Le Corbusier are two of Scott’s central cases.
- Regulation · People Over Politics — where the argument lands.