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This one goes to the top of [[JC]]’s 2020 lockdown re-reads. It was published in 1998, so it’s a bit late to get excited — but while it addresses the “high modernism” of modern government, the read-across to the capitalist market economy, and beyond that into the modern large corporate — are you reading, boss?<ref>Boss: “Yes, [[JC]], I am. Now, [[get your coat]].”</ref> — shrieks from every page. These are profound ideas we all ''should'' recognise, but — being, well, citizens of a “prostrate civil society” — either we can’t or we won’t. | This one goes to the top of [[JC]]’s 2020 lockdown re-reads. It was published in 1998, so it’s a bit late to get excited — but while it addresses the “high modernism” of modern government, the read-across to the capitalist market economy, and beyond that into the modern large corporate — are you reading, boss?<ref>Boss: “Yes, [[JC]], I am. Now, [[get your coat]].”</ref> — shrieks from every page. These are profound ideas we all ''should'' recognise, but — being, well, citizens of a “prostrate civil society” — either we can’t or we won’t. | ||
{{br|Seeing Like a State}} takes as its thesis how well-intended patrician governorship can, in specific circumstances, lead to utter disaster. While Scott’s examples are legion one could, and some do, criticise him for his anecdotal approach: he has curated examples that best fit his thesis, and it therefore suffers from [[confirmation bias]]. That may be true, but I don’t think it matters, for Scott’s thesis, when set out, is so ''familiar'', so ''plausible'' and its exhortations so ''consistent'' with other theories in adjacent fields,<ref>{{author|Charles Perrow}}’s {{br|Normal Accidents}} theory; [[Systems Theory]] as expounded by {{author|Donella H Meadows}}, {{author|Thomas Kuhn}}’s {{br|The Structure of Scientific Revolutions}}</ref> that it is hard to be bothered by a lack of empirical rigour. Data is not its value: its [[narrrative]] is its value. Scott is providing a counter-narrative to modern statist (and corporate) orthodoxy, and that in itself is valuable and enlightening. | {{br|Seeing Like a State}} takes as its thesis how well-intended patrician governorship can, in specific circumstances, lead to utter disaster. While Scott’s examples are legion one could, and some do, criticise him for his anecdotal approach: he has curated examples that best fit his thesis, and it therefore suffers from [[confirmation bias]]. That may be true, but I don’t think it matters, for Scott’s thesis, when set out, is so ''familiar'', so ''plausible'' and its exhortations so ''consistent'' with other theories in adjacent fields,<ref>{{author|Charles Perrow}}’s {{br|Normal Accidents}} theory; [[Systems Theory]] as expounded by {{author|Donella H. Meadows}}, {{author|Thomas Kuhn}}’s {{br|The Structure of Scientific Revolutions}}</ref> that it is hard to be bothered by a lack of empirical rigour. Data is not its value: its [[narrrative]] is its value. Scott is providing a counter-narrative to modern statist (and corporate) orthodoxy, and that in itself is valuable and enlightening. | ||
In any case, bureaucratic disaster is not inevitable, but the same four conditions are present wherever we find it: a will to bend nature, and society, to the administrator’s agenda; a [[high modernism|“high modernist” ideology]] believing that all problems can be anticipated and solved ahead of time; an authoritarian state with machinery to impose its ideological vision; and a subjugated citizenry (or staff) without the means (or inclination) to resist the machinery of the administrator. | In any case, bureaucratic disaster is not inevitable, but the same four conditions are present wherever we find it: a will to bend nature, and society, to the administrator’s agenda; a [[high modernism|“high modernist” ideology]] believing that all problems can be anticipated and solved ahead of time; an authoritarian state with machinery to impose its ideological vision; and a subjugated citizenry (or staff) without the means (or inclination) to resist the machinery of the administrator. | ||