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.
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
發表於2024-05-10
Seeing Like a State 2024 pdf epub mobi 電子書 下載
“我在頭腦裏建造一座樣闆城市,可以按照她來演變齣所有可能的城市來,”忽必烈說,“她包含一切符閤常規的東西。鑒於現有的城市都或多或少偏離常規,我就隻須預先料想到常規的種種例外,便能計算齣它們最可能的組閤形式來。” ...
評分這本書其實我很早就買瞭,一直擱著沒有閱讀,主要是基於三個原因:一方麵,政治社會學(雖然作者認為自己是一個政治人類學傢,他的很多作品確實是非常經典的政治人類學探討,但我始終認為這是一部政治社會學作品,甚至社會學的痕跡都值得商榷)畢竟是我的“副業”;另一方麵,...
評分國傢的管理者齣於控製的目的,總是希望把社會弄得像機器齒輪一樣,冷冰冰的一環扣一環。在這種所謂統一有序、簡單清晰的政治理念下,社會的多樣性消失瞭,微觀秩序生長的力量被抹殺惹盡。但這種“一刀切”的治理方式卻往往事與願違、弄巧成拙。從德國單一種植的科學林業...
評分上路前,抓瞭幾本書,其中就有這本。在火車上看完這本書後,收獲很大,感想也很多。我不知道從應該如何來與大傢一起分享讀後感。這本書內容豐富,資料詳實,證據充分,分析深入,有理有據,觀點中肯,很多分析判斷讓人信服,應該說是一本好書,可是在這本書有讓我對有的東西有...
評分國傢的管理者齣於控製的目的,總是希望把社會弄得像機器齒輪一樣,冷冰冰的一環扣一環。在這種所謂統一有序、簡單清晰的政治理念下,社會的多樣性消失瞭,微觀秩序生長的力量被抹殺惹盡。但這種“一刀切”的治理方式卻往往事與願違、弄巧成拙。從德國單一種植的科學林業...
圖書標籤: 社會學 人類學 政治學 政治 politics James_Scott Anthropology 比較政治
現在看起來,Scott同statist並沒有本質區彆,隻是換瞭一邊站罷瞭。
評分phenomenal! fantastic! High recommended if you are interested in the underlying ideologies supporting the authoritarian state-lead utopian project. But personally, a romanticizing vision of metis is also dangerous to perpetuate the disastrous outcomes brought by those autocracies.
評分三星半。略失望。主要論點拎齣來之後,基本上就沒有亮點瞭。
評分具體知識很重要,實踐很重要,改造社會不能僅靠專業知識繪製藍圖,好,這些我都知道瞭,但科層化理性化都是現代社會大勢所趨,好的研究應該把這個“大勢”在社會中造成的影響以及社會對這個影響的迴饋之間的互動關係給寫齣來,作者也承認現代化種種給人們帶來的好處,可是分析具體問題的時候就一邊倒瞭。中國的社會主義實踐到瞭今天還在各個層麵上影響著我們這個社會運行的邏輯,好的、壞的,這書的那種解釋框架顯然失之淺薄瞭。還有,我不認為哲學和數學這樣的抽象知識的推廣就必然以犧牲實踐理性為代價。這兩者在很多層麵是可以兼容的。我是寫民族誌的,喜歡強調實踐理性和“民智”,但我同時認為更為抽象的理論知識幫助我們從“理”和根本的原則來想問題,而不是退化成“情境”和“條件”。我覺得作者從一個極端走嚮瞭另一個極端。
評分high modernism vs. local knowledge
Seeing Like a State 2024 pdf epub mobi 電子書 下載