Sedenterization, Nomads and the State

ساکن شدن، عشایر و دولت

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Participants •Government •Theory •Coordinating Collaboration •Sustainability •Nomads •
Posted by Rezwan • Mar 02, 2009 • (0) Comments •
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In his book, "Seeing like a State", James C. Scott describes the mechanism at the heart of a state's (government's) tendency to sedenterize (settle) nomads as "the state's attempt to make a society legible." He further develops the thesis that legibility is "a central problem of statecraft."

Here are some quotes from the introduction:

Originally, I set out to understand why the state has always seemed to be the enemy of "people who move around," to put it crudely.

This question relates to Iran's nomads:

The question...transcended regional geography. Nomads and pastoralists (such as Berbers and Bedouins), hunter-gatherers, Gypsies, vagrants, homeless people, itinerants, runaway slaves, and serfs have always been a thorn in the side of states. Efforts to permanently settle these mobile peoples (sedentarization) seemed to be a perennial state project - perennial, in part, because it so seldom succeeded.

The mechanism involved has positive and negative aspects:

The more I examined these efforts at sedentarization, the more I came to see them as a state's attempt to make a society legible, to arrange the population in ways that simplified the classic state functions of taxation, conscription, and prevention of rebellion. Having begun to think in these terms, I began to see legibility as a central problem of statecraft. The premodern state was, in many crucial respects, partially blind; it knew precious little about its subjects, their wealth, their landholdings and yields, their location, their very identity. It lacked anything like a detailed "map" of its terrain and its people. It lacked for the most part, a measure, a metric, that would allow it to "translate" what it knew into a common standard necessary for a synoptic view. As a result, its interventions were often crude and self-defeating.

FYI, my dictionary defines synoptic as "taking or involving a comprehensive mental view."

In any case, all our favorite planning tools can here be seen as tools of control:

How did the state gradually get a handle on its subjects and their environment? Suddenly, processes as disparate as the creation of permanent last names, the standardization of weights and measures, the establishment of cadastral surveys and population registers, the invention of freehold tenure, the standardization of language and legal discourse, the design of cities, and the organization of transportation seemed comprehensible as attempts at legibility and simplification. In each case, officials took exceptionally complex, illegible, and local social practices, such as land tenure customs or naming customs, and created a standard grid whereby it could be centrally recorded and monitored.

These tools are misleading, however. The State still does not see its subjects clearly. Nevertheless, it has a great deal of power over them:

These state simplifications, the basic givens of modern statecraft, were, I began to realize, rather like abridged maps. They did not successfully represent the actual activity of the socieyt they depicted, nor were they intended to; they represented only that slice of it that interested the official observer. They were, moreover, not just maps. Rather, they were maps that, when allied with state power, would enable much of the reality they depicted to be remade. Thus a state cadastral map created to designate taxable property-holders does not merely describe a system of land tenure; it creates such a system through its ability to give its categories the force of law. Much of the first chapter is intended to convey how thoroughly society and the environment have been refashioned by state maps of legibility.

The book goes on to describe a number of tragic planning disasters brought on by overzealous planners, such as China's "Great Leap Forward", collectivization in Russia, and many Third World development projects.

While "legibility" may be a central problem for statecraft (how DO you legibilize the masses), it isn't a problem for people.

However, Legibilization, combined with "high-modernist ideology", when in the hands of an authoritarian state that is willing and able to force the ideology onto people - that has been a major problem for people.

The important thing to get out of this reading is that the state has certain tools at its disposal. These tools can be used to inflict great suffering in the name of planning (the book has many documented examples.) They can also be used to help coordinate collaboration.

They help to coordinate collaboration because, in addition to simplifying things for the state, these legibilization measures simplify things for citizens and enable them to conduct business with each other more efficiently. They reduce transaction costs all around.

It's a good idea to read Scott's book, along with the Webster/Lai book to solidify the distinction between controlling people, and coordinating their collaboration.

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