Seeing Like A State (Book Club, January 2018)

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Күн бұрын

This is the wrap-up video for the seventh month of the book club. This month we read Seeing Like A State by James C. Scott.
About the book:
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.
You can buy the book here:
www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-St...
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Note: this video contains spoiler alerts!
Short on time? Skip to these sections:
00:00 Introduction and Summary of Book
7:26 Main Themes in the book, the failure of high modernity
12:09 Mites Vs “Techny”
14:43 Introduction of Trent Fowler
17:56 Embodied Knowledge
21:37 Scientific Forestry
27:44 Career Applications
33:32 Implications for Early Populations
34:53 The Fatal Conceit
40:00 Summary

Пікірлер: 11

@in.der.welt.sein. Ай бұрын

So far, the first 20 minutes just sounds like Heidegger's "The Question Concerning Technology".

@nuclearmaga9694 2 жыл бұрын

remember reading a book by Scott about the people escaping state control or empire control... people became very ingenious in avoiding slavery...

@joshklinger1 6 жыл бұрын

Very eye opening. Superb review Scott. Thanks!

@dbadaddy7386 3 жыл бұрын

Remember, everything government does involves force. No matter how benevolent. At the very least, if it uses tax money, that money was collected by force or the threat of force. Don't pay your taxes and see how long it takes before people with guns show up to collect. Ask Wesley Snipes. In no way is that an anti-government or even anti-tax statement. It's a literal description of the process. So there is nothing government can do without force somewhere along the line, and apparent benevolence is not the same as actual benevolence.

@in.der.welt.sein. Ай бұрын

"a fungus called mycelia"-- mycelia are a rope like structure of all fungus, not a particular fungus.

@LongDefiant 2 жыл бұрын

So.... is this an argument against large corporations as well? It seems that the "ya can't know everything" argument would apply to ANY level of hierarchy. Think of a secretary serving an executive... that executive can't know everything about what the secretary does, even though the executive is the boss.

@justme-hh4vp 2 жыл бұрын

Depends on what you think the goal of the corporation is!

@imane9594 6 жыл бұрын

I wanted to join the group but I can't found it, seems like it's a secret group

@JC-ly8pz 2 жыл бұрын

From researching James Scott's materials, I think he's not a libertarian but more of a Left leaning Anarchist.

@in.der.welt.sein. Ай бұрын

"one of the things it can't do is plan the lives of thousands of people." This presupposes that the trouble of the economy of the USSR was a lack of information about needs, and I would say that's not exactly true. They tried to plan the satisfaction of needs by using levers borrowed from capitalism, as if ascribing a price to something and trying to make profit was the same thing as knowing how much corn, steel, or antibiotics are needed and then producing it. Capitalist firms plan their production, material requirements, and output of commodities down to the smallest detail. Not just a factory but the entire chain of production with all its suppliers and customers functions like clockwork, ‘just in time’ - simply for profit, for which all work is done in this country. But for any purpose other than competition for the money of society, planning is somehow absolutely futile! The argument against theoretical knowledge is also a contradiction in terms because it itself is a theoretical claim even if it claims to be based on empirical "traditional wisdom."