POLB91H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Urban Forestry, Social Control, Railways Act 1921
POLB91 – lecture 7
Whe deelopet fails ad h state led deelopet does’t alas result i great
outcomes
jaes sott readig → another book he wrote
schemes to improve human condition fail
eplai hat It eas to see like a state ad its ipliatios for failed deelopet
define legibility and simplification, and state moves behind such goals and give examples
analyse whether a state is limited to
state led development success and failure of
• Cotrast hia’s suessful ase of state-led deelopet ith jae sott’s aalsis of
failed cases of state led development
• They failed bc It seemed like a state. The pitfall of seemed like a state. State implements
in a top down perspective and does’t use loal efforts, akig it too siple ad
causing havoc to ppl
• He asks why schemes to improve the human condition gone terribly awry?
o Bc of seeing like a state
Recipe for disaster and failed development
1. Administrative ordering of nature and society
a. State tries to order and categorise society thru things like forcing citizens to
adopt last names, dictating language they should use, creating categories like
urban forestry + who has the land
2. High modernist ideology: planned social order and using rational/ scientific thought to
dictate policy
a. Projects such has huge dams – china dam. It provided electricity but killed
ecosystem and displaced so many citizens (they had to move)
b. High modernist planning
3. Authoritarian states
a. Only authoritarian states can carry massive social projects with an
uncoordinated manner
i. U do’t hae a sa it i. loal ppl do’t hae a sa ad get to deide
4. Prostrate civil society
a. Weak iil soiet that a’t orgaise a resistae agaist high odernised
projects and states
b. No checks on gov
c. No local knowledge
Legibility
• Ex. Contemporary seoul shows order
• Urban/city planning as a form of state development
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