Seeing Like A State. - Review - book review

Journal of Social History, Summer, 2000 by Michael Adas

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. By James C. Scott (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998. xiv plus 445pp.).

It does not require a very thorough examination of the history of the long twentieth century for one to conclude that political extremism, in both leftist and rightist varieties, has been a major, if not the main, cause of the unprecedented levels of human suffering unleashed in the twelve or thirteen decades since European imperialist domination encompassed the entire globe. Focussing mainly on case examples that explore massive projects in social engineering directed by those who have claimed to be inspired by leftist political philosophies, James Scott argues that these exercises in bureaucratic hubris share a common commitment to tenets of what he terms "high modernist" ideology. He argues that the ideas and urges, organizational strategies, and technologies of coercion that informed Soviet schemes for collectivization, "villagization" in Tanzania, and agricultural modernization in accordance with Western precedents in the colonial and post-colonial eras were all constructed to advance high modernist ends . Detailed analyses of these grand schemes for political and socioeconomic transformation, which form the core case studies for Seeing Like a State, reveal that they originated in a constellation of seemingly disparate processes. Some of these can be traced back to early modern times, particularly to the Enlightenment; others are products of twentieth-century sensibilities and technological breakthroughs.

In the early chapters of Seeing Like a State, Scott explores a wide range of more limited, earlier high modernist projects, from German forest conservationism and urban planning to cadastral surveys and language standardization. All of these he argues persuasively shared a common goal of enhancing what he terms the legibility of urban and rural landscapes and human populations. Legibility, as Scott employs the term in demonstrating the commonalities among these processes, includes standardization, simplification, codification, abstraction, and the valorization of procedures deemed to be scientific (that is objective, precise, and universally valid) at the expense of local knowledge. He links high modernist projects generally with the imperatives of state bureaucracies that initiate and doggedly implement them, often in the face of considerable resistance and clear evidence that their actual effects are rather different from those the officials in charge intend.

Beginning with the Russian revolution and the draconian Soviet campaigns under Stalin to collectivize (hence modernize) agriculture and capture the peasantry that had made its own revolution in 1917 and the years of the civil war, Scott employs an impressive array of secondary sources and key primary documents to demonstrate the dehumanization, destruction, and environmental degradation that have very often been the main products of these grand schemes to remake the world according to high modernist ideals. Brutality had become a central feature of the Soviet regime even before collectivization and the liquidation of the Kulaks were launched, and for reasons that were often contrary or peripheral to high modernism. But Scott argues that even under relatively benign leaders, such as Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, modernizing projects have invariably resulted in widespread bureaucratic bullying and state violence against its citizens, the destruction ofviable communities and patterns of livelihood, and environmen tal devastation. As Scott demonstrates in each case, it is most appropriate that the ideologues and bureaucrats who create and direct high modernist projects have frequently resorted to military imagery and techniques--strategies, regimentation, chains of command, discipline, drill, and uniforms--to inspire and intimidate the populations who are the objects of their ambitious designs.

In the general introduction to his case and thematic studies, Scott identifies three key processes whose convergence he sees as responsible for the excesses of society-wide social engineering projects in the past century. First, civil society is levelled by severe traumatic shocks, such as defeat in war, state collapse and revolution. In its prostrate condition, the society is vulnerable to the seizure of power by political factions determined to build an authoritarian regime. Finally, the ideologues of the extreme factions are committed to some version of high modernism as a grand blueprint for societal transformation. This convergence of forces corresponds perfectly with those that gave rise to the Soviet state and the forced modernization of the Stalinist era. Though Scott does not deal with either case in any depth, this convergence of forces and similar outcomes have also occurred in China and Cambodia in recent decades.

This configuration of historical processes fits in equal measure the history of Germany in the decades after World War I, which might have provided a key test case from the right side of the political spectrum. For reasons that he does not elucidate, Scott has little to say about the potential for lethal social engineering by rightist regimes, such as the Nazis or the Fascists in Italy. But either of these cases could certainly be employed to expand the applicability of his arguments concerning high modernism. As studies such as Jeffrey Herf's Reactionary Modernism (Cambridge, 1984) demonstrate, they would also complicate his thesis considerably. For the Nazis and Fascists, and many other proponents of rightist militarism, the high modernist agenda was diluted significantly by highly romanticized revivals (or inventions) of ancient myths and rituals as well as an idealization of the agrarian past. Recall the striking sequences in "The Triumph of the Will" of German peasants--male and female, adults and child ren--marching exuberantly to pay their respects to Der F[ddot{u}]hrer. Or, consider Hitler's obsession with what he declared was the eternal struggle between Aryans and Jews, and the ways in which that conviction contributed to the massive campaign for their extermination, which exceeded even the horrors of Stalinist Russia as an example of high modernist regimentation and technologizing gone awry.