This book review was written by Eugene Kernes
“Certain forms of knowledge and
control require a narrowing of vision.
The great advantage of such tunnel vision is that it brings into sharp
focus certain limited aspects of an otherwise far more complex and unwieldy
reality. This very simplification, in
turn, makes the phenomenon at the center of the field of vision more legible
and hence more susceptible to careful measurement and calculation. Combined with similar observations, an
overall, aggregate, synoptic view of a selective reality is achieved, making
possible a high degree of schematic knowledge, control, and manipulation.” –
James C. Scott, Chapter 1: Nature and Space, Page 29
“An illegible society, then, is a hindrance to any effective
intervention by the state, whether the purpose of that intervention is plunder
or public welfare. As long as the
state’s interest is largely confined to grabbing a few tons of grain and
rounding up a few conscripts, the state’s ignorance may not be fatal. When, however, the state’s objective requires
changing the daily habits (hygiene or health practices) or work performance
(quality labor or machine maintenance) of its citizens, such ignorance can well
be disabling. A thoroughly legible
society eliminates local monopolies of information and creates a kind of
national transparency through the uniformity of codes, identities, statistics,
regulations, and measures. At the same
time it is likely to create new positional advantages for those at the apex who
have the knowledge and access to easily decipher the new state-created format.”
– James C. Scott, Chapter 2: Cities, People, Language, Page 100
“Legibility is a condition of manipulation. Any substantial state intervention in society
– to vaccinate a population, produce goods, mobilize labor, tax people and
their property, conduct literacy campaigns, conscript soldiers, enforce
sanitation standards, catch criminals, start universal schooling – requires the
invention of units that are visible. The
units in question might be citizens, villages, trees, fields, houses, or people
grouped according to age, depending on the type of intervention. Whatever the units being manipulated, they
must be organized in a manner that permits them to be identified, observed,
recorded, counted, aggregated, and monitored.
The degree of knowledge required would have to be roughly commensurate
with the depth of the intervention. In
other words, one might say that the greater the manipulation envisaged, the
greater the legibility required to effect it.” – James C. Scott, Part 3: The
Social Engineering of Rural Settlement and Production, Page 206
Is This An Overview?
States can intervene in societies
for plunder or public welfare. Although
a lack of information is acceptable when the intervention is small, a lack of
information is disabling for interventions which are extensive, large scale or long
term. State interventions into their
societies requires information about what to change and how to change, they
need to understand what they are governing.
More extensive interventions into society need more information about
the people and their behavior.
The interventions
into society can have disastrous outcomes.
Conditions for disastrous outcomes have four elements in common, which
are 1) information simplification, 2) ideology, 3) authoritarian methods of
change, 4) and a lack of resistance by those being changed. Simplification of information has the
advantage of developing measurable units, and focusing decision making on
certain prominent limited aspects of reality.
The disadvantage is missing other information that can affect the
outcomes, which can turn successes into failures. The interventions are motivated by an
ideology which justifies the prescribed changes. Authoritarian regimes override various social
obstacles to the plan, enabling a dictatorship of the planner. No compromises are possible with the singular
answer provided by the planner. The lack
of resistance means lack of tacit, specialized knowledge. An inability to properly adjust to local
conditions.
Caveats?
The focus is on how totalitarian
regimes misused information. The methods
of how government intervention failed to resolve collective action
problems. There is a lack of information
on how extensive interventions were or could be successful, with some support
for interventions that are limited and local.
