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Seeing Like a State: Difference between revisions
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Any government must be able to “read” and thus “get a handle on” — hence, “make [[legible]]” — and so ''administrate'' the vast sprawling ''detail'' and myriad of ''interconnections'' between its citizens, lands and resources. It does this by, in its “statey” way, [[Narrative|narratising]] a bafflingly [[complex system]] into a thin, idealistic model: it assigns its citizens permanent identities (in the middle ages, literally, by giving them surnames: now, identity cards and the chips that are shortly to be implanted in our foreheads); it decrees standard weights and measures for all times and places (we may have proceeded by local customs and conventions;<ref>It is said Chinese farmers gauged distance by “the time it takes to boil rice”, which provides a different, and more practical means of comprehending how far away you are</ref> commissions cadastral surveys of the land so it can collect taxes; it records land holdings, registers births, deaths and marriages, imposes conventions of language and legal discourse designs cities and transport networks: in effect, to create a standard grid that could be measured, monitored and understood from the bird’s eye view of city hall. A population that legible is ''manipulable''. | Any government must be able to “read” and thus “get a handle on” — hence, “make [[legible]]” — and so ''administrate'' the vast sprawling ''detail'' and myriad of ''interconnections'' between its citizens, lands and resources. It does this by, in its “statey” way, [[Narrative|narratising]] a bafflingly [[complex system]] into a thin, idealistic model: it assigns its citizens permanent identities (in the middle ages, literally, by giving them surnames: now, identity cards and the chips that are shortly to be implanted in our foreheads); it decrees standard weights and measures for all times and places (we may have proceeded by local customs and conventions;<ref>It is said Chinese farmers gauged distance by “the time it takes to boil rice”, which provides a different, and more practical means of comprehending how far away you are</ref> commissions cadastral surveys of the land so it can collect taxes; it records land holdings, registers births, deaths and marriages, imposes conventions of language and legal discourse designs cities and transport networks: in effect, to create a standard grid that could be measured, monitored and understood from the bird’s eye view of city hall. A population that legible is ''manipulable''. | ||
This cost of this legibility is '' | This cost of this legibility is ''abridgement'': it represents only the slice of society that interests the administrator, which would be harmless enough those measures did not in turn permanently impact how citizens interact with each other and their environment. So, society came to be ''remade'' to suit the administrator. Thus, a reflexive feedback loop. | ||
Scott is persuasive that we lose something critical when we simplify in our yen for clear description, which state officials cannot but do. Trying to covert local customs — “a living, negotiated tissue of practices which are continually being adapted to new ecological and social circumstances — including, of course, power relations” — to unalterable laws loses subtlety and micro-adjustments that these customs are continually experiencing. | Scott is persuasive that we lose something critical when we simplify in our yen for clear description, which state officials cannot but do. Trying to covert local customs — “a living, negotiated tissue of practices which are continually being adapted to new ecological and social circumstances — including, of course, power relations” — to unalterable laws loses subtlety and micro-adjustments that these customs are continually experiencing. | ||
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===An authoritarian state and prostrate civil society=== | ===An authoritarian state and prostrate civil society=== | ||
Scott’s last two criteria are probably opposite sides of the same coin: an authoritarian state able and willing to coerce society to bring high modernist ideals into being, and a subjugated population lacking the capacity to resist the implementation of high-modernist plans. Scott was writing in 1998, a few years after the collapse of communism and in an era when [[This time it’s different|Francis Fukuyama]] and others were declaring the end of history, all battles won and so forth, so was a little shoe-shuffly about this. He needn’t have been! Not only have we seen the return of authoritarian governments and prostrate populations — for posterity I note I am writing from lockdown that has now lasted some nine months — but it has ''always'' been true of the corporate sector which is resolutely organised to be authoritarian, hierarchical and where you, dear employee, are administrated and ordered like no other participant on Earth. Every “meaningful”<ref>Meaningful to them, not to you.</ref> aspect of your performance and your role is, at some level, reduced to a parameterised data point: ID, location, salary, rank, position, performance, reporting line, holiday entitlement, sick-leave, [[service catalog]], objectives — let me know when you want me to stop. As for the high modernist ideal, well, this entire site is a paean to that, but strategy as we receive it seems entirely predicated on a deterministic, [[reductionist]] ideology that we can solve our landscape and then proceed sedately and without the need to be troubled by turbulent [[subject matter expert]]s thereafter. | Scott’s last two criteria are probably opposite sides of the same coin: an authoritarian state able and willing to coerce society to bring high modernist ideals into being, and a subjugated population lacking the capacity to resist the implementation of high-modernist plans. Scott was writing in 1998, a few years after the collapse of communism and in an era when [[This time it’s different|Francis Fukuyama]] and others were declaring the end of history, all battles won and so forth, so was a little shoe-shuffly about this. He needn’t have been! Not only have we seen the return of authoritarian governments and prostrate populations — for posterity I note I am writing from lockdown that has now lasted some nine months — but it has ''always'' been true of the corporate sector which is resolutely organised to be authoritarian, hierarchical and where you, dear employee, are administrated and ordered like no other participant on Earth. Every “meaningful”<ref>Meaningful to them, not to you.</ref> aspect of your performance and your role is, at some level, reduced to a parameterised data point: ID, location, salary, rank, position, performance, reporting line, holiday entitlement, sick-leave, [[service catalog]], objectives — let me know when you want me to stop. As for the high modernist ideal, well, this entire site is a paean to that, but strategy as we receive it seems entirely predicated on a deterministic, [[reductionist]] ideology that we can solve our landscape and then proceed sedately and without the need to be troubled by turbulent [[subject matter expert]]s thereafter. | ||
===[[Metis]]=== | ===[[Metis]]=== | ||
Speaking of | Speaking of [[subject matter expert]]s brings us nicely to Scott’s closing, where he ruminates on the concept, missing from high modernist canon, of ''[[metis]]''. This is hard to describe — folk wisdom, knowhow, Odyssean cunning — but in the corporate world it struck me as most resembling ''[[subject matter expert|expertise]]''. Ingenuity, [[Problem solving|problem-solving]], lateral thinking; smarts for figuring out what to do on the fly if you are in a jam. This is something that the [[high modernist]] programme seeks abolish — the theory being that [[Subject matter expert|loose cannon employees]] wandering around making snap decisions is potentially catastrophic, and jams of this sort can and should be avoided by appropriate planning: thus, [[subject matter expert]]s aren’t needed. | ||
There are two interesting observations here. The first is that metis is much more efficient''. You could — if you accept the reductionist stance — solve any problem with the right calculations, but the necessary data and processing power would be huge: but practical knowledge — [[metis]] “as economical and accurate as it needs to be, no more and no less, for addressing the problem at hand.” | There are two interesting observations here. The first is that [[metis]] is much more ''efficient''. You could — if you accept the reductionist stance — solve any problem with the right calculations, but the necessary data and processing power would be huge: but practical knowledge — [[metis]] — is “as economical and accurate as it needs to be, no more and no less, for addressing the problem at hand.” | ||
This is the difference, says Scott, between Red Adair<ref>Younger readers may not remember this [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Adair legend of the fire-fighting community]. </ref> and an articled clerk. There are some skills you cannot acquire except through experience. Likewise learning to sail, ride a bike, or play a musical instrument etc. You could spend as much time as you like with textbooks, but you will master riding a bike without practical rehearsal. | This is the difference, says Scott, between Red Adair<ref>Younger readers may not remember this [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Adair legend of the fire-fighting community]. </ref> and an articled clerk. There are some skills you cannot acquire except through experience. Likewise learning to sail, ride a bike, or play a musical instrument etc. You could spend as much time as you like with textbooks, but you will master riding a bike without practical rehearsal. | ||