Seeing Like a State (Yale University Press, 1998)

James C. Scott · c. 1998

James C. Scott did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this book, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The book prints chapter headings its extracted text does not preserve, so the claims below are in the book's order but not grouped. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
Legibility is a condition of manipulation

Their wordsLegibility is a condition of manipulation.
Our reading
Any large social process is far more complex than the schemes we devise to map it

Their wordsAny large social process or event will inevitably be far more complex than the schemata we can devise, prospectively or retrospectively, to map it.
Our reading
Formal order always depends on informal processes it does not recognize and cannot create

Their wordsFormal order, to be more explicit, is always and to some considerable degree parasitic on informal processes, which the formal scheme does not recognize, without which it could not exist, and which it alone cannot create or maintain.
Our reading
Planned social order is schematic and always ignores essential features of real social order

Their wordsDesigned or planned social order is necessarily schematic; it always ignores essential features of any real, functioning social order.

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