Siren Song Called Legibility
In his book, Seeing Like a State , James C Scott wrote: “The pre-modern state was, in many crucial respects, particularly 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.” The land and the people were both “illegible” to the government. It therefore seemed obvious that knowing the land and the people, and even organizing them to make things “legible” to government would lead to better governance. From there, it is a short trip to what Venkatesh Rao describes : “(The state) merely views them as resources that must be organized in order to yield optimal returns according to a centralized, narrow, and strictly utilitarian logic.” That might sound ominous, but as Rao explains: “The attempt to maximize returns need not arise from the grasping greed of a predatory state. In fact, the dynamic is most often driven by a g...