82,903
edits
Seeing Like a State: Difference between revisions
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
no edit summary
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
| Line 24: | Line 24: | ||
Of course the cost of an ideology that seeks to regularise and unitise is [[diversity]]. Once the desire for comprehensive urban planning is established, the logic of uniformity and regimentation is well nigh inexorable. Cost effectiveness contributes to this tendency. Every concession to diversity is likely to entail an increase in time and budgetary cost. | Of course the cost of an ideology that seeks to regularise and unitise is [[diversity]]. Once the desire for comprehensive urban planning is established, the logic of uniformity and regimentation is well nigh inexorable. Cost effectiveness contributes to this tendency. Every concession to diversity is likely to entail an increase in time and budgetary cost. | ||
That [[diversity and inclusion]] is the ''cause célèbre du jour'' hardly falsifies this observation, especially given the current institutional approach to delivering it, which chimes with this desire for narratising [[legibility]] and [[high-modernism]]: firstly, [[diversity]] inherently ought, you would think, to be difficult to pin down, its manifestations being naturally — well — ''diverse''. Yet, to get a handle on it, organisations must make it ''[[legible | That [[diversity and inclusion]] is the ''cause célèbre du jour'' hardly [[Falsification|falsifies]] this observation, especially given the current institutional approach to delivering it, which chimes with this desire for narratising [[legibility]] and [[high-modernism]]: firstly, [[diversity]] inherently ought, you would think, to be difficult to pin down, its manifestations being naturally — well — ''diverse''. Yet, to get a handle on it, organisations must make it ''[[legible]]''. This they do by defining it in a strikingly limited way (by reference to religious, ethnic, sexual and gender identification, but not, say, to education-level, socio-economic background, nationality, political identification, pastime, or life skill). Then they seek to gather ethnic, sexual and gender ''data'' from their staff, so that they can present statistics about their changing diversity. Thus, diversity is homogenised, parameterised and regularised. Sounds a bit like an Aldous Huxley novel, doesn’t it? Feels a bit like one too. | ||
===An authoritarian state=== | ===An authoritarian state=== | ||