12 Best nonfiction books like Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C. Scott

Cover of Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C. Scott

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

By: James C. Scott

4.20

Format: 461 pages, Paperback

Compulsory ujamaa villages in Tanzania, collectivization in Russia, Le Corbusier’s urban planning t…

"An urban space where the police are the sole agents of order is a very dangerous place."

-James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

"Just as the general design of the city militates against an autonomous public life, so the design of the residential city militates against individuality."

-James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

"The authorized histories of revolutions, as Milovan Djilas points out, “describe the revolution as if it were the fruit of the previously planned action of its leaders."

-James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

"After seizing state power, the victors have a powerful interest in moving the revolution out of the streets and into the museums and schoolbooks as quick as possible, lest the people decide to repeat the experience."

-James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

If you liked the nonfiction plot in Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C. Scott , here is a list of 12 books like this:

Cover of The Anti-Politics Machine: "Development," Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho by James   Ferguson

1. The Anti-Politics Machine: "Development," Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho

By: James Ferguson

4.27

Format: 336 pages, Paperback

Development, it is generally assumed, is good and necessary, and in its name the West has intervene… read more

Similar categories in James Ferguson's The Anti-Politics Machine: "Development," Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho book and James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

  • history
  • nonfiction
  • economics
  • sociology
  • anthropology
Cover of The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs

2. The Death and Life of Great American Cities

By: Jane Jacobs

4.30

Format: 472 pages, Hardcover

A direct and fundamentally optimistic indictment of the short-sightedness and intellectual arroganc… read more

Similar categories in Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities book and James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

  • nonfiction
  • history
  • sociology
"We expect too much of new buildings, and too little of ourselves."

-Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

"Traffic congestion is caused by vehicles, not by people in themselves."

-Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

"Most sentimental ideas imply, at bottom, a deep if unacknowledged disrespect."

-Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

"When distance and convenience sets in; the small, the various and the personal wither away."

-Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Cover of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney, Vincent Harding

3. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

By: Walter Rodney , Vincent Harding

4.42

Format: 312 pages, Paperback

The decisiveness of the short period of colonialism and its negative consequences for Africa spring… read more

Similar categories in Walter Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa book and James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

  • history
  • theory
  • nonfiction
  • economics
  • sociology
"It was economics that Europe should invest in Africa and control the continent's raw materials and labour. It was racism which confirmed the decision that form of control should be direct colonial ru…"

-Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

"On any basic figure of the Africans landed alive in the Americas, one would have to make several extensions- starting with a calculation to cover mortality in transshipment. The Atlantic crossing, or…"

-Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

"There was a period when the capitalist system increased the well-being of significant numbers of people as a by-product of seeking out profits for a few, but today the quests for profits comes into s…"

-Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

"Governor Cameroon of Tanganyika in the 1920s was known as a "progressive" governor. But when he was attacked for trying to preserve the African personality in the educational system, he denied the ch…"

-Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Cover of The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy by David Graeber

4. The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy

By: David Graeber

3.61

Format: 160 pages, Hardcover

Where does the desire for endless rules, regulations, and bureaucracy come from? How did we come to… read more

Similar categories in David Graeber's The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy book and James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

  • history
  • philosophy
  • nonfiction
  • economics
  • sociology
  • anthropology
Cover of Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber

5. Debt: The First 5,000 Years

By: David Graeber

3.61

Format: 192 pages, Hardcover

Before there was money, there was debt Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was inve… read more

Similar categories in David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years book and James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

  • nonfiction
  • economics
  • history
  • anthropology
Cover of The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter by Joseph Henrich

6. The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter

By: Joseph Henrich

3.91

Format: None pages, Kindle Edition

Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, ofte… read more

Similar categories in Joseph Henrich's The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter book and James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

  • nonfiction
  • history
  • anthropology
Cover of Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen

7. Development as Freedom

By: Amartya Sen

3.50

Format: 185 pages, Paperback

By the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics, an essential and paradigm-altering framework fo… read more

Similar categories in Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom book and James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

  • philosophy
  • political science
  • economics
  • nonfiction

8. Freedom's Forge: How American Business Built the Arsenal of Democracy That Won World War II

By: Arthur Herman

3.99

Format: 32 pages, Hardcover

Remarkable as it may seem today, there once was a time when the president of the United States coul… read more

Similar categories in Arthur Herman's Freedom's Forge: How American Business Built the Arsenal of Democracy That Won World War II book and James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

9. White Nation

By: Ghassan Hage

3.17

Format: 319 pages, Paperback

Anthropologist and social critic Ghassan Hage explores one of the most complex and troubling of mod… read more

Similar categories in Ghassan Hage's White Nation book and James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

Cover of The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist

10. The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

By: Iain McGilchrist

4.35

Format: 608 pages, Hardcover

In a book of unprecedented scope, Iain McGilchrist presents a fascinating exploration of the differ… read more

Similar categories in Iain McGilchrist's The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World book and James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

  • philosophy
  • nonfiction
  • history
  • sociology
"We don't need a lot more quick fixes. We need a change in the paradigm."

-Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

"[C]hildren with right-brain deficit disorder ignore task obstacles, accept impossible challenges, make grossly inadequate efforts, and are stunned by the poor outcomes. These children act fearless be…"

-Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

"The left hemisphere prefers the impersonal to the personal, and that tendency would be in any case be instantiated in the fabric of a technologically driven and bureaucratically administered society.…"

-Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

"Believing is not to be reduced to thinking that such-and-such might be the case. It is not a weaker form of thinking, laced with doubt. Sometimes we speak like this: ‘I believe that the train leaves …"

-Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

11. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism

By: Benedict Anderson

3.77

Format: None pages, Paperback

What makes people love and die for nations, as well as hate and kill in their name? While many stud… read more

Similar categories in Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism book and James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

12. The Collapse of Complex Societies

By: None

4.50

Format: 144 pages, Paperback

Twenty-four examples of societal collapse help develop a new theory to account for their breakdown.… read more

Similar categories in None's The Collapse of Complex Societies book and James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

Cover of Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C. Scott

13. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

By: James C. Scott

4.20

Format: 461 pages, Paperback

Compulsory ujamaa villages in Tanzania, collectivization in Russia, Le Corbusier’s urban planning t… read more

Similar categories in James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed book and James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

  • social science
  • international relations
  • history
  • theory
  • philosophy
  • nonfiction
  • political science
  • economics
  • sociology
  • anthropology
"An urban space where the police are the sole agents of order is a very dangerous place."

-James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

"Just as the general design of the city militates against an autonomous public life, so the design of the residential city militates against individuality."

-James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

"The authorized histories of revolutions, as Milovan Djilas points out, “describe the revolution as if it were the fruit of the previously planned action of its leaders."

-James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

"After seizing state power, the victors have a powerful interest in moving the revolution out of the streets and into the museums and schoolbooks as quick as possible, lest the people decide to repeat…"

-James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

14. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

By: Robert A. Caro

3.25

Format: 40 pages, Paperback

One of the most acclaimed books of our time, winner of both the Pulitzer and the Francis Parkman pr… read more

Similar categories in Robert A. Caro's The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York book and James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

15. The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority

By: Martin Gurri

3.16

Format: 192 pages, Kindle Edition

Riding a tsunami of information, the public has trampled on the temples of authority in every domai… read more

Similar categories in Martin Gurri's The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority book and James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

16. Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society

By: Lila Abu-Lughod

3.00

Format: None pages, Paperback

Updated Edition With a New Preface Lila Abu-Lughod lived with a community of Bedouins in the Wester… read more

Similar categories in Lila Abu-Lughod's Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society book and James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

17. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World

By: Mike Davis

4.01

Format: 448 pages, Paperback

Examining a series of El Nino-induced droughts and the famines that they spawned around the globe i… read more

Similar categories in Mike Davis's Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World book and James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

Cover of The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber

18. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

By: David Graeber

4.20

Format: 692 pages, Hardcover

A dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions abo… read more

Similar categories in David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity book and James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

  • history
  • philosophy
  • nonfiction
  • economics
  • sociology
  • anthropology
"Humans - from this other perspective, which is just as extreme in its own way - are at best an arbitrary constellation of cultural elements, perhaps assembled according to some prevailing spirit, cod…"

-David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

"One might ask, how could that most basic element of all human freedoms, the freedom to make promises and commitments and thus build relationships, be turned into its very opposite: into peonage, serf…"

-David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

"There is an obvious objection to evolutionary models which assume that our strongest social ties are based on close biological kinship: many humans just don’t like their families very much. And this …"

-David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

"In the Middle Ages, most people in other parts of the world who actually knew anything about northern Europe at all considered it an obscure and uninviting backwater full of religious fanatics who, a…"

-David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

Cover of Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity by Daron Acemoğlu

19. Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity

By: Daron Acemoğlu

3.90

Format: None pages, Audiobook

The bestselling co-author of Why Nations Fail and the bestselling co-author of 13 Bankers deliver a… read more

Similar categories in Daron Acemoğlu's Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity book and James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

  • nonfiction
  • economics
  • history
Cover of Order without Design: How Markets Shape Cities by Alain Bertaud

20. Order without Design: How Markets Shape Cities

By: Alain Bertaud

4.38

Format: 432 pages, Hardcover

An argument that operational urban planning can be improved by the application of the tools of urba… read more

Similar categories in Alain Bertaud's Order without Design: How Markets Shape Cities book and James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

  • economics
  • nonfiction
"Beaune plays the role of Wall Street for Burgundy wine."

-Alain Bertaud, Order without Design: How Markets Shape Cities

"If we look at the way an industrial producer creates new products, we see a long list of trials and errors and eventually improvement in quality at a lower cost. Urban policies and strategies, by con…"

-Alain Bertaud, Order without Design: How Markets Shape Cities

"For electric vehicles, the power plant generators alimenting the electrical grind will then produce the GHGs, not the car engine itself. Concerns for GHG emissions would then shift to the source of e…"

-Alain Bertaud, Order without Design: How Markets Shape Cities

"I want to make it clear that I am not implying here that all housing issues can be solved through market solutions. Many cases of homelessness, for instance, particularly in affluent cities, stem fro…"

-Alain Bertaud, Order without Design: How Markets Shape Cities

10 must-read history books like Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C. Scott

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James Ferguson

4.27

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Jane Jacobs

4.30

Transform Your Habits

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Walter Rodney , Vincent Harding

4.42

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The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy

David Graeber

3.61

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Matthew Yglesias

4.03

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Joe Studwell

4.26

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Philip E. Tetlock , Dan Gardner

3.95

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Tim Marshall

3.94

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