Локална и државна перспектива (James C. Scott)

NY Times©

Еден извадок од есеј на James C. Scott, антрополог кој ја проучува историјата преку еволуцијата на државниот апаратус:

The window and door tax established in France under the Directory and abolished only in 1917 is a striking case in point. Its originator must have reasoned that the number of windows and doors in a dwelling was almost perfectly proportionate to the dwelling’s size. Thus a tax assessor need only walk around the house counting the windows and doors to estimate its size. As a simple expedient, it was a brilliant stroke, but not without consequences. Peasant dwellings were subsequently designed or renovated with the formula in mind so as to have as few apertures as possible! While the fiscal losses could be recouped by raising the tax per opening, the effects on the long term health of the rural population lasted for than a century.

The window and door tax illustrates something else about “state optics”; they achieve their formidable power of resolution by a kind of tunnel vision that brings into sharp focus a single aspect of an otherwise far more complex and unwieldy reality. This very simplification makes the phenomenon at the center of the field of vision more legible and hence more susceptible to careful measurement and calculation. Combined with similar observations, an overall, aggregate, synoptic view of a selective reality is achieved, making possible a high degree of schematic knowledge, control and manipulation. [потенцирано од мене]

Есејот се вика "The Trouble with the view from above", издаден е во 2010 за либертаријанскиот Cato институт, а во него авторот прави споредба помеѓу државната и локалната номенклатура. Есејот се надоврзува на она што го објаснува во книгата "Seeing like a State" каде објаснува како утописки идеи од перспектива на државата пропаѓаат кога се имплементираат во комплексниот реален свет.

Неговиот начин на изразување е структуиран така што најпрво опишува историски примери кои потоа ги анализира давајќи им контекст. Ова можеби звучи едноставно, меѓутоа неговата теорија нуди кохерентен контекст за историјата од времето на hunter-gatherers па се до денес. Еве уште еден извадок кој се наоѓа негде на крајот од текстот каде авторот збори за како тоа Пруската администрација сакајќи да го предвиди точниот плод на дрва во шумите и да го максимизира истиот, ја осакатила шумата од голем дел од животински и растителен свет. Во овој извадок може да се најде суштината и идеата на есејот:

It is, however, the next logical step in German scientific forestry that commands our attention. That step was to attempt to create through careful seeding, planting and cutting, a redesigned forest that was easier to count, manipulate, measure, and assess. Thus was born the modern, “production” forest: a mono-cropped (Norway spruce or Scotch pine), same-age, timber-farm planted in straight rows. The very uniformity of the forest vastly simplified its management and exploitation. Forestry crews could follow a few simple rules for clearing the underbrush, trimming and fertilizing; the mature trees of comparable girth and length could be felled into the alleys and marketed as homogeneous units to logging contractors and timber merchants. For nearly a century, during which German scientific forestry as a codified discipline became the world standard, the “production forest” was a resounding success in terms of steady yields at low cost.

Redesigning the forest as a “one-commodity machine,” however, had, in the long run, catastrophic consequences for forest health and production. The mono-cropped, same-age forest was far more vulnerable to disease, blight, and storm damage. Its simplicity and formal order, together with the elimination of underbrush, deadfalls and litter dramatically reduced the diversity of the flora, insect, mammal, and bird populations so essential to soil building processes. Once the soil capital deposited by the old-growth forest had been depleted, the new forest entered a period of steep decline in growth and production. The term “Waldsterben” entered the vocabulary of modern forestry science and led, in turn, to huge outlays for fertilizers, rodenticides, fungicides and insecticides as well as efforts to artificially reintroduce birds, insects and mammals that had disappeared. By redesigning the complex and poorly understood ecology of the old-growth forest as a veritable wood-fiber farm and bracketing everything else, scientific forestry had destroyed a vernacular forest and a host of ecological processes that came back to haunt it.

The example of scientific forestry is meant here as a signal and cautionary example of the dangers of the forms of simplification typical of states and large bureaucratic organizations. 

За крај можете да го прочитате и ова кратко интервју за NY Times доколку ве интересира како живее и размислува авторот кој е политиколог на универзитетот Yale.