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Political Optics and the Occlusion of Intimate Knowledge
In "Seeing Like a State" (1998), James Scott provides a comprehensive understanding of the optics of state power. He also shows how the bureaucratic logic of high-modernist official planning occludes the social and cultural worlds both of marginalized citizenries and of the bureaucrats the...
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| Published in: | American anthropologist 2005-09, Vol.107 (3), p.369-376 |
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| cites | cdi_FETCH-LOGICAL-c4339-f1d63aceb6c85cf9311da8e072890da3bf066b3170fa1471fcded9a4d05e47403 |
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| container_title | American anthropologist |
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| creator | Herzfeld, Michael |
| description | In "Seeing Like a State" (1998), James Scott provides a comprehensive understanding of the optics of state power. He also shows how the bureaucratic logic of high-modernist official planning occludes the social and cultural worlds both of marginalized citizenries and of the bureaucrats themselves, and accurately pinpoints the pernicious reductionism that has accompanied the modernist state's self-proclaimed "cult of efficiency." As in his earlier work, however, Scott overgeneralizes the idea of "resistance"; he also, and concomitantly, underestimates bureaucrats' complicity with local populations and the consequent modification of bureaucratic schemes (including the construction of national heritage) in actual practice. These absences reflect a relative lack of ethnographic specificity in the analysis as well as a partially uncritical endorsement of the master narrative of Western history. |
| doi_str_mv | 10.1525/aa.2005.107.3.369 |
| format | article |
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| ispartof | American anthropologist, 2005-09, Vol.107 (3), p.369-376 |
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| source | International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS); EBSCOhost MLA International Bibliography With Full Text; Wiley; Art, Design and Architecture Collection; JSTOR Archival Journals and Primary Sources Collection; Social Science Premium Collection; Sociology Collection; Worldwide Political Science Abstracts; ProQuest One Literature; Sociological Abstracts |
| subjects | Anthropology Bureaucracy Complicity Cultural anthropology Cultural heritage Democracy Ethnography Giddens, Anthony Hegemony heritage Idioms In Focus: Moral Economies, State Spaces, and Categorical Violence: Anthropological Engagements with the Work of James Scott Logic Marginality Modernism Modernist art Nation states Optics Political anthropology Politics Resistance Scott, James C State State Planning State Power States |
| title | Political Optics and the Occlusion of Intimate Knowledge |
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