Really interesting; I’d never read it before despite having read many references to it. The core idea is “legibility”: standardization and simplification—of rules if not of reality—make it easier for outsiders, including government, to understand a community. A colonizer who needs a “native guide” is worse off than one who doesn’t, which is one reason that colonies often had more comprehensive systems of land titling and clearer ownership rules than the colonizing nation itself. Common property may not be less productive than individually owned plots, but it is much harder to tax, and thus much less useful to the state. This power can be used for good (working sewers, less cholera) but can easily be turned to ill, especially if the state is wrong about the lines it has drawn (collective farms, monocultures). Although he repeatedly emphasizes that the organic societal formations that states have sought to replace with regimentation are regularly discriminatory and flawed, he’s ultimately skeptical of big state ideas. At the same time, while he criticizes compulsory villagization in Tanzania—and there’s plenty to criticize—he doesn’t ever address whether there was an alternative, given the country’s resources, to the concentration of population in order to deliver things like schools and famine relief. Maybe the correct answer is “you just can’t have schools with a scattered rural population and really low wealth,” but that’s a pretty serious tradeoff that deserves some discussion.
Another interesting point: the “high modernism” he criticizes focuses on visual order—neatly laid out rows of plants, streets, etc. But, as he points out, visual disorder can also mean high-functioning complexity—the intestines of a rabbit, in his striking example, are not visually orderly but do a great job at their actual job.
I also found it notable that, at the end, Scott acknowledges that non-state actors can do the same thing. Capitalists are interested in control and appropriability; they will adopt less efficient rules if they can appropriate more of the outputs. Scott described what’s now known as “chickenization” as a capitalist, high-modernist project, offloading risk onto individual farmers who would be easy to surveil precisely because their practices were so rigidly dictated by the chicken processor. ( )

This is a fascinating book on the perils of "high modernist" aspirations. The book focuses on the processes that lead to failures in megaprojects.

Many of us have an instinctive knee-jerk reaction to large-scale projects. Yet it's hard to put into words why. At the outset, it sometimes just seems like blind resistance to change. Scott not only provides an explanation for understanding these reactions, but also a framework for thinking about when those reactions are actually justified and when they might be overreactions.

High modernists come in all shapes and sizes. They range from autocrats to revolutionaries, bureaucrats to visionaries, socialists to capitalists. What unites them are their top-down visions that seek to reorganize life, production, or work.

High modernism is a form of tyranny of "experts" over others, symptomized by:

-Top-down visions with little interest, or appreciation of the local context or stakeholders.
-Over-rationalization and standardization leading to ignoring, rejecting, and wiping out local knowledge.
-The consequences of failed high modernist projects range from catastrophic to wasteful.

Going through diverse cases, the book also paints an interesting historical backdrop to trending topics in society, politics, and business. I.e. Systems thinking, user-centered design, and business anthropology all aim to better understand and integrate local knowledge into solutions big and small. Therefore it's also a book on the mistakes that have brought us to this point. ( )

Please read it before extolling city-planning genius of Le Corbusier et al. Because otherwise to listen to you is akin listening to someone praising living in communal paradise under omniscient gaze of comrade Stalin.

Heard about this book in an article by Cass Sunstein ( https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-10-11/five-books-to-change-liberals... ). Liked the book a lot, although it could have been trimmed a bit - some of the points were made many times, although they were already convincing and well written the first time.

( )

A counter-blast against high modernism in all its guises. Fascinating start and first 7 chapters - surnames, planning cities to stop social conflict, the continuity between dumb colonial development plans and Nyerere’s utopian dreams; all with excellent notes and wide, interesting references…But then the author becomes plodding and repetitive and guilty of the same boxed thinking he lays on all the thin planners he pillories. Technology and AI have made some of his criticisms of scientific agriculture and scientific forestry very particular.
He comes to …rules of thumb that, if observed, could make development planning less prone to disaster: take small steps, favour reversibility, plan on surprises, plan on human inventiveness (p. 345). One might be reminded of Chen Yun’s remark about crossing the river by feeling the stones.
But Scott is very down on pilot programmes - all of which fail when the pilot support is withdrawn.
“Without denying the incontestable benefits either of the division of labor or of hierarchical coordination for some tasks, I want to make a case for institutions that are instead multifunctional, plastic, diverse, and adaptable—“ ( )