the state (all james c. scott)

States exercise control through:

institutions

laws

administrative systems

States shape (1) and regulate (2)

1: identity (citizenship)

2: regulate everyday life

how states make society legible

states simplify and standardize complex social realities to make them legible and governable

State legibility is done through three manageable categories:

Censuses

Maps

Standardization

Enlightenment rationality

17th and 18th century European thinkers believed that reason, science, and knowledge could improve society, moving from faith to reason (classification systems of the natural world and human world were created to easily collect useful information on them)

3 things legibility does

Complex reality can be simplified through classification.

Modern governance depends on categorizing people and societies; these categories shape how reality is understood

However, categories distort reality and reinforce power hierarchies

State failure

Top-down, high-modernist planning often fails due to over-simplification

State simplification (rigid models) enables control but removes nuance, ignoring diversity, lived realities, and local contexts and knowledge (metis), leading to misrepresentation and failure especially under authoritarian conditions

Four Elements of State-Driven Disaster

Administrative ordering of society and nature

High-modernist faith in scientific/social engineering

Authoritarian state to impose the plan

Weak or destroyed civil society was unable to resist