Chris Tamasi
Encounters with Nature
Scott Abstract
Scott, James C. "Nature and Space." In Seeing Like a State, 11-52, 359-369. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1998.
In Scott’s first chapter, “Nature and Space”, he pushes one to view how
simplification, legibility, and manipulation operate in forest management. He explores
the application of these lenses through urban planning, rural settlement, lands
administration, and agriculture. The views of the state’s utilitarian logic and the
naturalists’ belief in preservation conflicted over the transformation of forests into fiscal
capital gains. Scientific forestry emerged in 1765-1800 in a time where the preservation
of natural land was a rising issue. Techniques were developed scientifically to account for
the available plots of land as well as calculating the sustainable yield of commercial
timber. Linear alleys were then created within the woodland allowing workers and
scientists to accomplish tasks easily. Scott explains that, “Although, like all utopian
schemes, controlling the forest well short of attaining its goal, the critical fact is that it did
partly succeed in stamping the actual forest with the imprint of its designs”(Scott, pg. 19).
Measurement comes to be a key division among upper and lower socioeconomic
classes. There was a need for simplifying the communication of measurement between
these polar views. The “metrical revolution” was made possible by the growth of market
exchange, popular sentiment and Enlightenment philosophies favored a single standard
throughout France, and the Revolution enforced the metric system in France and the
empire. These methods were applied in the making of maps that put one’s visual plans on
paper for universal understanding. The states simplifications to transform the natural
world must be viewed alongside the capacity of society to modify and make the
categories imposed upon them suitable to their needs. Without these advancements of the
world’s natural space, the way we perceive life would be altered. Scott does a great job
organizing his writing into sections with pictorial evidence of the ideas he discusses.
James Scott, ch. 8 “Taming Nature,” in Seeing Like a State (Yale UP, 1998), 262-306.
In Scott’s eighth chapter of Seeing Like a State, he questions why the simplified
model of scientific agricultural thrives in the industrialized West, but fails to be
successful in the developing Third World. He outlines his reasoning for this question with
four distinct parts. First, people wrongly assumed the modern agricultural techniques
such as monocropping that worked in the West would also work in other inclimate areas.
Secondly, the schemes used were continually bent to benefit the official powers. Third,
the long-term outcomes of land and soil were overlooked by short-term benefits. Lastly,
the strength of scientific agricultural experimentation ignored agricultural practices that
did not complement its techniques. Polycropping began to develop after analyzing this
weakness, which protected the soil and gave long-term life to land. Scott goes on to
answer his original question by stating that the scientific agricultural experimentation is
hegemonic in nature. The similar organization of Scott’s writing, use of scientific lab
knowledge, and pictorial additions add to the strength of this chapter. This topic is
applicable to our lifestyles today and remains a current issue in the agricultural world.