July 22, 2024 at 10:13 AM
Anarchist calisthenics: basically, everyday acts of resistance against capitalism and tyrants who want to control our every move. Prince Shakur of @thedugoutpod.bsky.social on taking revolutionary actions between revolutions on the most recent Sad Francisco ep. #jamescscott
April 26, 2026 at 2:55 AM
Anarchist calisthenics: basically, everyday acts of resistance against capitalism and tyrants who want to control our every move. Prince Shakur of @thedugoutpod.bsky.social on taking revolutionary actions between revolutions on the most recent Sad Francisco ep. #jamescscott
I’m reading Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by #JamesCScott.
#books #BookSky
#NationalReadABookDay
#books #BookSky
#NationalReadABookDay
September 6, 2025 at 6:08 PM
I’m reading Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by #JamesCScott.
#books #BookSky
#NationalReadABookDay
#books #BookSky
#NationalReadABookDay
My #best reads list for 2025 was, well, hopelessly #eclectic: #CharlesTaylor, #ManueldeLanda, #VaclavSmil, #PhilipKDick, #IrisMurdoch, #AlisdairMacIntyre, #JamesCScott, #HPLovecraft, etc
#books #BookSky #BestReads #fiction #nonfiction #reading doncurren.blogspot.com/2026/01/five...
#books #BookSky #BestReads #fiction #nonfiction #reading doncurren.blogspot.com/2026/01/five...
Five Most Notable Books I Read in 2025
doncurren.blogspot.com
January 5, 2026 at 3:14 PM
My #best reads list for 2025 was, well, hopelessly #eclectic: #CharlesTaylor, #ManueldeLanda, #VaclavSmil, #PhilipKDick, #IrisMurdoch, #AlisdairMacIntyre, #JamesCScott, #HPLovecraft, etc
#books #BookSky #BestReads #fiction #nonfiction #reading doncurren.blogspot.com/2026/01/five...
#books #BookSky #BestReads #fiction #nonfiction #reading doncurren.blogspot.com/2026/01/five...
Practise your anarchist calisthenics by regularly breaking pointless laws and regulations so that, when the big test comes and you must stand against injustice, you are ready to do so #jamescscott
July 21, 2024 at 5:34 PM
Practise your anarchist calisthenics by regularly breaking pointless laws and regulations so that, when the big test comes and you must stand against injustice, you are ready to do so #jamescscott
2 “My case is that certain kinds of #states, drive by #utopian plans and an #authoritarian disregard for the values, desires and objections of their subjects, are indeed a threat to human well-being.” - #JamesCScott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
September 3, 2025 at 1:16 PM
2 “My case is that certain kinds of #states, drive by #utopian plans and an #authoritarian disregard for the values, desires and objections of their subjects, are indeed a threat to human well-being.” - #JamesCScott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
“As #Hayek proclaims, and as #Scott deplores, these vast machineries are simply incapable of caring if they crush the powerless or devour the virtuous. Nor is their crushing weight distributed evenly.” #JamesCScott #AI open.substack.com/pub/programm... #Singularity
Understanding AI as a social technology
Speed, shoggoths, social science
open.substack.com
September 12, 2025 at 5:18 PM
“As #Hayek proclaims, and as #Scott deplores, these vast machineries are simply incapable of caring if they crush the powerless or devour the virtuous. Nor is their crushing weight distributed evenly.” #JamesCScott #AI open.substack.com/pub/programm... #Singularity
Designed or planned #SocialOrder is necessarily schematic; it always ignores essential features of any real, functioning social order.
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
September 9, 2025 at 9:29 PM
Designed or planned #SocialOrder is necessarily schematic; it always ignores essential features of any real, functioning social order.
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
Without comparable units of measurement, it was difficult if not impossible to monitor markets, to compare regional prices for basic commodities, or to regulate food supplies effectively.
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
#HowCertainSchemesToImproveTheHumanConditionHaveFailed
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
#HowCertainSchemesToImproveTheHumanConditionHaveFailed
October 7, 2025 at 3:18 AM
Without comparable units of measurement, it was difficult if not impossible to monitor markets, to compare regional prices for basic commodities, or to regulate food supplies effectively.
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
#HowCertainSchemesToImproveTheHumanConditionHaveFailed
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
#HowCertainSchemesToImproveTheHumanConditionHaveFailed
#Nomads and pastoralists (such as Berbers and Bedouins), hunter-gatherers, #Gypsies, vagrants, homeless people, itinerants, runaway slaves, and serfs have always been a thorn in the side of states.
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
September 6, 2025 at 4:41 PM
#Nomads and pastoralists (such as Berbers and Bedouins), hunter-gatherers, #Gypsies, vagrants, homeless people, itinerants, runaway slaves, and serfs have always been a thorn in the side of states.
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
Watch James Scott's online talk, "How to Talk Like a River" here.
Is it possible to write a book about rivers narrated in the first person… of the river itself? If it is possible, how might it be done?
niche-canada.org/2021/02/28/j...
#jamescscott #rivers #envhist #envhum
Is it possible to write a book about rivers narrated in the first person… of the river itself? If it is possible, how might it be done?
niche-canada.org/2021/02/28/j...
#jamescscott #rivers #envhist #envhum
James Scott: How to Write Like a River
James Scott asks: Is it possible to write a book about rivers narrated in the first person… of the river itself? Watch now.
niche-canada.org
July 22, 2024 at 10:01 PM
Watch James Scott's online talk, "How to Talk Like a River" here.
Is it possible to write a book about rivers narrated in the first person… of the river itself? If it is possible, how might it be done?
niche-canada.org/2021/02/28/j...
#jamescscott #rivers #envhist #envhum
Is it possible to write a book about rivers narrated in the first person… of the river itself? If it is possible, how might it be done?
niche-canada.org/2021/02/28/j...
#jamescscott #rivers #envhist #envhum
The revenue of the early modern state from levies on land implied attaching every parcel of taxable property to an individual responsible for paying the tax on it. As straightforward as this procedure seems in the context of the modern state, its achievement was enormously difficult.
#JamesCScott
#JamesCScott
October 19, 2025 at 12:58 AM
The revenue of the early modern state from levies on land implied attaching every parcel of taxable property to an individual responsible for paying the tax on it. As straightforward as this procedure seems in the context of the modern state, its achievement was enormously difficult.
#JamesCScott
#JamesCScott
2 " They assess the life of their society by a series of typifications that are always at some distance from the full reality these #abstractions are meant to capture." - #JamesCScott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
September 5, 2025 at 7:42 PM
2 " They assess the life of their society by a series of typifications that are always at some distance from the full reality these #abstractions are meant to capture." - #JamesCScott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
🅱️Revue Ballast🅱️ L’abécédaire de James C. Scott: L'ABC de James C. Scott.
L’article L’abécédaire de James C. Scott est apparu en premier sur BALLAST. #JamesCScott #Ballast #Politique #Sociologie #Résistance
L’article L’abécédaire de James C. Scott est apparu en premier sur BALLAST. #JamesCScott #Ballast #Politique #Sociologie #Résistance
L’abécédaire de James C. Scott
L'ABC de James C. Scott.
L’article L’abécédaire de James C. Scott est apparu en premier sur BALLAST.
www.revue-ballast.fr
August 27, 2025 at 3:55 PM
🅱️Revue Ballast🅱️ L’abécédaire de James C. Scott: L'ABC de James C. Scott.
L’article L’abécédaire de James C. Scott est apparu en premier sur BALLAST. #JamesCScott #Ballast #Politique #Sociologie #Résistance
L’article L’abécédaire de James C. Scott est apparu en premier sur BALLAST. #JamesCScott #Ballast #Politique #Sociologie #Résistance
The collective form of taxation meant that it was in the interest of local officials to misrepresent their situation in order to minimize the local tax burden. The point of the cadastral map and land register was precisely to eliminate this fiscal feudalism and rationalize the taxation
#JamesCScott
#JamesCScott
November 30, 2025 at 4:32 AM
The collective form of taxation meant that it was in the interest of local officials to misrepresent their situation in order to minimize the local tax burden. The point of the cadastral map and land register was precisely to eliminate this fiscal feudalism and rationalize the taxation
#JamesCScott
#JamesCScott
It is not so difficult to understand why so many human lives have been destroyed by #violence between ethnic groups, religious sects, or linguistic communities.
But it is harder to grasp why so many #well-intended schemes to improve the human condition have gone so tragically awry.
#JamesCScott
But it is harder to grasp why so many #well-intended schemes to improve the human condition have gone so tragically awry.
#JamesCScott
September 6, 2025 at 8:10 PM
It is not so difficult to understand why so many human lives have been destroyed by #violence between ethnic groups, religious sects, or linguistic communities.
But it is harder to grasp why so many #well-intended schemes to improve the human condition have gone so tragically awry.
#JamesCScott
But it is harder to grasp why so many #well-intended schemes to improve the human condition have gone so tragically awry.
#JamesCScott
#TheState is the vexed institution that is the ground of both our #freedoms and our #unfreedoms. [Our task is] to weigh judiciously the benefits of certain state interventions against their costs.
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
#HowCertainSchemesToImproveTheHumanConditionHaveFailed
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
#HowCertainSchemesToImproveTheHumanConditionHaveFailed
September 10, 2025 at 3:44 PM
#TheState is the vexed institution that is the ground of both our #freedoms and our #unfreedoms. [Our task is] to weigh judiciously the benefits of certain state interventions against their costs.
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
#HowCertainSchemesToImproveTheHumanConditionHaveFailed
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
#HowCertainSchemesToImproveTheHumanConditionHaveFailed
#JamesCScott: I believe that the most tragic episodes of state development arise from the combination of high modernism and the unrestrained power of the modern state pursuing its designs within a weakened or prostrate civil society lacking the capacity to resist these plans.
May 26, 2026 at 5:31 PM
#JamesCScott: I believe that the most tragic episodes of state development arise from the combination of high modernism and the unrestrained power of the modern state pursuing its designs within a weakened or prostrate civil society lacking the capacity to resist these plans.
A project of legibility in statecraft inevitably aims to manipulate society, while at the same time being undermined by intrastate rivalries, technical limits, and, above all, the resistance of its subjects.
#JamesCScott
#JamesCScott
April 20, 2026 at 5:43 PM
A project of legibility in statecraft inevitably aims to manipulate society, while at the same time being undermined by intrastate rivalries, technical limits, and, above all, the resistance of its subjects.
#JamesCScott
#JamesCScott
Age, like landholding, meant something different to the state than in local practice. People used approximate ages or birth order; the state required exact years for taxes and conscription.
Strict chronological age, like surnames, was a state project.
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
Strict chronological age, like surnames, was a state project.
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
March 14, 2026 at 4:37 PM
Age, like landholding, meant something different to the state than in local practice. People used approximate ages or birth order; the state required exact years for taxes and conscription.
Strict chronological age, like surnames, was a state project.
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
Strict chronological age, like surnames, was a state project.
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
Where civil society was strong and organized, it resisted cadastral mapping, forcing it to be late, voluntary, and fragmented (England). Only where society was weak could a strong central state impose early, uniform maps — turning land into legible, taxable property (Napoleonic France)
#JamesCScott
#JamesCScott
January 1, 2026 at 7:21 AM
Where civil society was strong and organized, it resisted cadastral mapping, forcing it to be late, voluntary, and fragmented (England). Only where society was weak could a strong central state impose early, uniform maps — turning land into legible, taxable property (Napoleonic France)
#JamesCScott
#JamesCScott
Set up by the #Stolypin reform agricultural property system had not become legible to central tax officials as was demonstrated by the immensely damaging procurement policies pursued by the czarist government during World War I.
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
December 14, 2025 at 6:51 AM
Set up by the #Stolypin reform agricultural property system had not become legible to central tax officials as was demonstrated by the immensely damaging procurement policies pursued by the czarist government during World War I.
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
The #HistoryOfProperty in this sense is the inexorable incorporation of what were once the free gifts of #nature: forests, game, wasteland, prairie, subsurface minerals, water and watercourses, air rights, breathable air, and even genetic sequences, into a #property regime.
#JamesCScott
#JamesCScott
December 4, 2025 at 5:15 AM
The #HistoryOfProperty in this sense is the inexorable incorporation of what were once the free gifts of #nature: forests, game, wasteland, prairie, subsurface minerals, water and watercourses, air rights, breathable air, and even genetic sequences, into a #property regime.
#JamesCScott
#JamesCScott
The cadastral map and property register are to the taxation of land as the maps and tables of the scientific forester were to the fiscal exploitation of the forest.
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
November 18, 2025 at 10:13 PM
The cadastral map and property register are to the taxation of land as the maps and tables of the scientific forester were to the fiscal exploitation of the forest.
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
The very concept of the modern state presupposes a vastly simplified and uniform property regime that is legible and hence manipulable from the center.
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
November 8, 2025 at 4:50 AM
The very concept of the modern state presupposes a vastly simplified and uniform property regime that is legible and hence manipulable from the center.
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState
#JamesCScott
#SeeingLikeAState