Today I'm joined by my colleague Mike Rowe, lecturer in the public administration at the University of Liverpool.
Together we'll explore the modern classic James c Scott's 1998 book Seeing Like a State, How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Scott who taught in Yale's Department of Political Science ranged far beyond that field, drawing on anthropology, agrarian, and environmental studies and social policy.
Because this is our first recorded conversation about his work, and because Scott's ideas are both wide ranging and delightfully provocative, I'm doing things a little differently. You'll hear short explainers sprinkled between our clips to keep the through line clear. The key notions we'll touch on today are..
Everyday forms of resistance: the quiet ways people push back against authority.
Legibility: how governments make society readable in order to govern it.
Simplification: our urge to tame complex systems with science and technology, and
High modernism: Those utopian top-down ambitions that take legibility and simplification to extremes.
Scott's central point is that the practical know-how of ordinary people ultimately keeps such grand schemes in check.
He isn't preaching an ideology. He's inviting us to weigh both the intended and unintended consequences of the way we deliver services, including taxation, zoning, planning, policy, administration, the whole lot, efficiency and modernization may be our North star, but he asks us to what end.
Sadly, James C. Scott passed away in 2024. Although late to the game, I feel richly rewarded for finding his work and hope you will find his perspective as intriguing as we do.
Time Stamps
00:00 - 03:00 - Introduction and Context
03:00 - 07:00 - Everyday Forms of Resistance
Explainer on hidden resistance in daily life; discussion of Indonesian flood management and animistic land practices
07:00 - 11:00 - From Job Descriptions to Legibility
Nancy's organizational development experience; Mike's story about the two women who "really ran" the university; introduction to legibility concept
11:00 - 16:00 - Legibility and Simplification
Explainer on cadastral mapping and forest management; immigration policy as example of complex simplification
16:00 - 20:00 - Planning and Local Knowledge
Discussion of urban sprawl, high-speed rail planning challenges, and Colin Ward's anarchist architecture
20:00 - 24:00 - Cadastral Mapping and Zoning
Historical context of land mapping for taxation; modern parallels in small business and cash economy
24:00 - 30:00 - High Modernism and Brasília
Explainer on Le Corbusier's influence; the story of Brasília's construction workers creating thriving informal settlements
30:00 - 36:00 - Agricultural Simplification
Contract farming as modern example; loss of generational farming knowledge; comparison to contracting out government services
36:00 - 42:00 - Local Government Applications
Lancaster County agriculture, mushroom farms vs. new developments, building on floodplains; practical advice for policy-making
42:00 - 43:00 - Conclusion
Reflections on Scott's political reception and continuing relevance
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