Seeing Like a State

James C. Scott

Seeing Like a State is a critique of authoritarian high-modernism through a brief history of modern state. James Scott takes us through how the modern state came to be, using things like modern forestry as an example. However in doing so, his aim is to show how planned grand structures that are supposed to accommodate societies, both in literal and figurative sense, fail miserably. And efficient social systems originate only from where individual actors are allowed to make their own decision about their own situations, and thereby creating a collective intelligence of sorts and an “organic” society.  One curious thing about his narrative is he almost exclusively uses examples that are tangent to real societies but never really tries to examine societies directly. For instance, he mentions forestry, agriculture and architecture, and for all he shows examples where planned, grand projects fail, and unplanned  ventures driven by individuals’ free choices succeed. This can be a strength or a weakness for his thesis. One one hand, it is possible to argue all of these things are outputs of a society (or you may think of it as an “economy” too) hence observing these may free the observer from the natural biases that may arise from observing the society itself. But on the other hand, it is also possible to argue these areas are unique to their own situations hence observation in one doesn’t necessarily generalise to everything a society does. Nonetheless, it is an interesting book to read and can even be thought to outline the anthropological foundations of liberal theory. However, as always, I want to focus on a particular section that grabbed my attention and was only superficially explored in the book.

One of the main arguments of the book is that modern states craves legibility. And everything that is illegible it will ignore. Scott uses modern forestry as an example. He showcases that early modern German states established scientific forestry on the basis of measuring effectiveness of their observations in terms of the yield of wood they obtain as the result of the practices they developed through these observations. One unavoidable side effect of this was altering the forest based on the theoretical models they arrived through these observations. Mostly by simplifying the forest for better observation. So, we have a situation where the observation affecting the observed. James Scott goes on to argue that this principle is applicable to all facets of the state that aims to better the society through means of statistical and empirical observations. So, ultimately, we end up with a population that’s not merely mapped or surveyed but shaped to fit the techniques of observation. 

This is a strong argument but I think it misses an interesting point. We have at hand, a system that’s altered for better observation. Which is an oxymoron in and of itself as observation implies an uninfluenced system. So one cannot stop himself from trying to imagine a methodology of observation for social sciences that’s probabilistic. One that’s similar to observing subatomic particles in quantum mechanics. How would such a system look like? What does it need to change to eliminate bias introduced by the act of observation itself?  How can we formulate defining results as probabilistic outcomes that factor in the effects of observation?