Seeing Like a State

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James C. ScottPaperback, 464 pages9780300246759 How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed “A powerful, and in many [ways] insightful, explanation as to why gra ndiose programs of social reform, not to mention revolution, so often end in tragedy. . . . An important critique of visionary state planning.”—Robert Heilbroner Hailed as “a magisterial critique of top-down social planning” by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail—sometimes catastrophically—in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. ContentsPart 1. State Projects of Legibility and SimplificationPart 2. Transforming VisionsPart 3. The Social Engineering of Rural Settlement and ProductionPart 4. The Missing Link Show more