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fwrench's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
4.0
It's quite agriculture-forward, much more so than the description suggests, but is interesting nonetheless.
mikefromco's review
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
This book fundamentally changed how I view the world and state. As a high-modernist this was an essential and profound critique of my beliefs and I will think about this book for years to come.
Other leftists, strong state advocates, and generally anthropologist-interested people should read this book.
Other leftists, strong state advocates, and generally anthropologist-interested people should read this book.
cchapple's review
5.0
Fascinating and important analysis of the importance of local adaptive approaches, and how attempts to improve the world that ignore these approaches, or worse, deem them backward, are doomed to fail
premature_insecurity's review against another edition
informative
reflective
Read the first half for a uni assignment, listened to the rest on my own.
Though a rather dull book, it has some interesting ideas and gives a very detailed (one could argue too detailed) description and analysis of different instances and interventions where high modernism has been an integral part.
Though a rather dull book, it has some interesting ideas and gives a very detailed (one could argue too detailed) description and analysis of different instances and interventions where high modernism has been an integral part.
david_sharick's review
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.25
Seeing Like a State is a political science book about, as the tagline says, "how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed"; in other words, its focus is how states attempt to simplify, control, and reshape the societies they govern, often to disastrous results. It starts with the "simplify" aspect by giving examples of such simplifications, like standard units of measure, obligatory surnames, and maps of land ownership, that are used to make those aspects of society easy to understand and thereby manipulate. After this, it moves on to examples of the "certain schemes" themselves, including top-down planned cities like Brasilia, Soviet collectivization, and Tanzanian villagization, before concluding with the overall thesis of the "practical knowledge" that it argues such top-down plans lacked, leading to their failures.
The most interesting thing about this book was that it gave me a lot to think about regarding state capacity in the US today, both how incredible it is historically speaking and the ways that it falls short, which has a lot of possible policy implications. The thesis about practical knowledge, while interesting, isn't as relevant to that, and so it wasn't my favorite part of the book, but it's still a useful lens of historical analysis. There's also a heavy focus on agriculture in the examples, which isn't too surprising as the author co-directs Yale's Agrarian Studies program, but is still less interesting to me than some of the other topics. Overall, the first section of the book (about state simplifications) was my favorite, and the rest was less interesting but still pretty good.
The most interesting thing about this book was that it gave me a lot to think about regarding state capacity in the US today, both how incredible it is historically speaking and the ways that it falls short, which has a lot of possible policy implications. The thesis about practical knowledge, while interesting, isn't as relevant to that, and so it wasn't my favorite part of the book, but it's still a useful lens of historical analysis. There's also a heavy focus on agriculture in the examples, which isn't too surprising as the author co-directs Yale's Agrarian Studies program, but is still less interesting to me than some of the other topics. Overall, the first section of the book (about state simplifications) was my favorite, and the rest was less interesting but still pretty good.