James Scott, RIP
On meeting the author of one of the most important governing books of the 20th century
Three books must be read by anyone interested in contemporary American governing. The first is Friedrich Hayek’s 1960 The Constitution of Liberty, which explains, among other things, how freedom naturally produces over time some of the most valuable elements of society.
The second is Robert Nisbet’s 1953 Quest for Community, which explains, among other things, humans’ need for interpersonal bonds, how such bonds form, and what breaks those bonds apart.
The third is James Scott’s 1998 Seeing Like A State, which explains, among other things, how a mindset develops among certain leaders that ultimately leads to the destruction of communities and ways of life.
James Scott was a brilliant, prolific scholar and longtime Yale professor. He passed away this week at the age of 87.
These three books are connected by their appreciation for the importance and organic development of pluralism, community, and custom. Scott’s unique contribution was his studied understanding of small-scale social life and how distant authorities misunderstand it and generally undermine it.
His book became an unlikely classic. Seldom do heavy tomes about mechanized agriculture, scientific forestry, and city planning become must-reads. But that was part of its genius. Scott’s reasoning and conclusions were wonderfully inductive. Rather than coming up with a theory and then applying it far and wide, he first came to understand lots and lots of small societies. Seeing similarities in their behaviors and how faraway governments never seem to understand them, he developed a way to explain what was happening and why.
Scott ended up describing old concepts in new and profound ways: practical wisdom, longstanding practice, tradition, localism. He also ended up showing the dangers of behavioral economics, data-based decision-making, technocracy, centralization, inexperienced reason, and revolutionary authority.
The title of the book refers to one of his key insights: That those in centralized positions of governing power inevitably see the world differently than everyone else. This affects their understanding of housing, schools, crime, transportation, wetlands, social services, and so much more. By the time I read the book, I had already worked in fancy centralized positions—Congress, the White House, and a federal cabinet agency. The book made me understand that I had fallen victim to many of the forces he described. It is a reason why I’ve spent much of the last 15 years working on state and local issues.
There’s another reason this book was a surprise hit among people like me. Scott was a devoted socialist who flirted with anarchism. This is a magical thing about the greatest researchers and the greatest research. He didn’t have a political mission for his work. He simply sought the truth and found some of it. It ultimately appealed to people from a vast array of disciplines and ideologies.
I had the chance to spend an afternoon with Professor Scott. A friend (who sees the world very differently than I do but also admires Scott) arranged a meeting with Scott at his Connecticut farm. He lived the small-scale life he wrote about.
I told him an embarrassing story. When I first read Seeing Like A State, I knew he was a communitarian conservative, someone who loved Burke and Hayek and Tocqueville. His reasoning and conclusions made that obvious. But in various parts of his book, he had what I thought were throwaway lines about how the problems he was describing can apply to big businesses just like big governments. I told Scott that I smiled widely when I read those lines. I just knew that he was a conservative who had written a conservative book but when it was reviewed by progressive university colleagues and publishing editors, they demanded that he take some swipes at industry. So, I told him, I imagined that he didn’t want to add that anti-industry stuff, but knowing it was the price to be paid for getting progressives to publish his work, he reluctantly added it. I only learned later that he was not a conservative.
When I told him this story red-faced, Scott laughed and laughed. But he wasn’t totally surprised. He said that when the book first came out, he was contacted by several conservative think tanks. They loved his conclusions. Scott was shocked and a little shaken. But pleasing your opponents is one of the costs you might pay when you do research.
We ended up talking mostly about the organization of urban school districts, my consuming passion at the time, and my unfortunate experience seeing like a state. I think he was touched and more than a little amused that a young-ish conservative had made a pilgrimage to his farm to talk “high modernism” and “metis.”
As I was leaving he gave my copies of three other books he had written and—no lie—a carton of fresh eggs his chickens had just laid.
Rest in peace, professor.