Seeing Like a State

James C. Scott is the Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Anthropology at Yale University and current president of the Association of Asian Studies. He is the author of Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, and The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia, all published by Yale University Press.

出版者:Yale University Press

作者:James C. Scott

页数:464

出版时间:1999-2-8

价格:USD 21.00

装帧:Paperback

isbn号码:9780300078152

图书标签:社会学人类学政治学政治politicsJames_ScottAnthropology比较政治

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. Centrally managed social plans misfire, Scott argues, when they impose schematic visions that do violence to complex interdependencies that are not -- and cannot -- be fully understood. Further, the success of designs for social organization depends upon the recognition that local, practical knowledge is as important as formal, epistemic knowledge. The author builds a persuasive case against "development theory" and imperialistic state planning that disregards the values, desires, and objections of its subjects. He identifies and discusses four conditions common to all planning disasters: administrative ordering of nature and society by the state; a "high-modernist ideology" that places confidence in the ability of science to improve every aspect of human life; a willingness to use authoritarian state power to effect large-scale interventions; and a prostrate civil society that cannot effectively resist such plans. "A broad-ranging, theoretically important, and empirically grounded treatment of the modern state and its propensity to simplify and make legible a society which by nature is complex and opaque. For anyone interested inlearning about this fundamental tension of modernity and about the destruction wrought in the twentieth century as a consequence of the dominant development ideology of the simplifying state, this is a must-read". -- Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, author of Hitler's Willing Executioners

读后感

“我在头脑里建造一座样板城市，可以按照她来演变出所有可能的城市来，”忽必烈说，“她包含一切符合常规的东西。鉴于现有的城市都或多或少偏离常规，我就只须预先料想到常规的种种例外，便能计算出它们最可能的组合形式来。” ...  

原文：http://hutianyi.net/?p=2338 所有看到我iPod Touch界面的人都会惊讶： 主界面（左图）上一个App都没有，所有36个App都被分成3组安放在dock上，每组中的12个App的排列方式（右图）实际上也是经过反复进行揣摩的。例如第一排的四个排列方式很大程度上是因为“路径依赖”...  

这本书其实我很早就买了，一直搁着没有阅读，主要是基于三个原因：一方面，政治社会学（虽然作者认为自己是一个政治人类学家，他的很多作品确实是非常经典的政治人类学探讨，但我始终认为这是一部政治社会学作品，甚至社会学的痕迹都值得商榷）毕竟是我的“副业”；另一方面，...  

读《国家的视角》后 耶鲁大学的政治学和人类学教授James C.Scott的《国家的视角》一书，曾在十多年前被同事、同仁屡屡提起，彼时我还是一个NGO（公益组织）的一名专职员工，然而直到如今我才把这本书读完。读完之后，也刚好应了那句话：知识与实践刚好相结合起来。作为曾经在NG...  

用户评价

从农业社会到工业社会的转型及其局限性，讲坦桑尼亚和埃塞俄比亚的农业社会与村落改造的案例

论点非常简单的一本书，high modernism vs local knowledge，legibility vs opacity，主要读了俄国革命和苏联集体化的部分，有点意犹未尽。

Maggie安利，翻了翻

人类学家的书好难找topic sentence，感觉信息量大但有效信息少。还是找中文版读算了。

哎 太长了 赶什么一样终于大概撸了一遍。。。总得来说 逻辑简单粗暴又随意 方法论有点问题 瞄到豆瓣简评我就震惊了。。。 究竟我们读的是同一本么！anarchist你个头啦 人家哪里anarchist了。。。