book

Seeing Like a State

by James C. Scott

Scott's argument that states can only manage what they can measure, so they flatten forests, farms and cities into legible grids — and that the grand schemes built on those simplifications (scientific forestry, Brasília, Soviet collectivisation, Tanzanian villagisation) fail because they erase the practical local knowledge, mētis, that made the original systems work. 'Legibility' became shared vocabulary on the left and right because of this book.