GCPH Seminar Series 4: - Prof James C Scott - 'Seeing Like a State: why certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed'

Looking back over the twentieth century we can see many examples of utopian schemes which have inadvertently brought disruption to millions; from compulsory ‘extended family’ villages in Tanzania, collectivisation in Russia, Le Corbusier’s urban planning, the Great Leap Forward in China and agricultural ‘modernization’ in the tropics. Why do well-intentioned plans for improving the human condition go tragically awry? Drawing upon his highly original book of the same title, and his long-term work in South East Asia (Burma in particular), Professor Scott helps us to understand how potentially harmful “state-spaces” are constructed. He shows how large-scale authoritarian schemes fail through the violence which they impose upon complex interdependencies which cannot be fully understood. He suggests that design for successful social organisation – like cities – depends on the recognition that local, practical, knowledge is as important as formal, abstract, knowledge in addressing the challenges which we now face.