Sublime

Suddenly, processes as disparate as the creation of permanent last names, the standardization of weights and measures, the establishment of cadastral surveys and population registers, the invention of freehold tenure, the standardization of language and legal discourse, the design of cities, and the organization of transportation seemed... See more

The premodern state was, in many crucial respects, partially blind; it knew precious little about its subjects, their wealth, their landholdings and yields, their location, their very identity. It lacked anything like a detailed “map” of its terrain and its people. It lacked, for the most part, a measure, a metric, that would allow it to... See more

𝗝𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘀 𝗖. 𝗦𝗰𝗼𝘁𝘁 passed away on July 19. He was a political scientist and specialist in Southeast Asia. He was a dissident within Political Science. Yet his books opened up lines of research on central issues, such as the exercise of power and resistance to power.👇 https://t.co/FjFUd68Gts

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (1999), James C. Scott details the ways the modern state has run roughshod over local, customary, and undisciplined forms of knowledge in order to rationalize and simplify social, agricultural, and political practices that have profit as their primary motivation. In

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