James C Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, selectionsRobert Pogue Harrison, Forests, pp. 61-81.Harrison and Scott are in the my webspace folder: https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/xythoswfs/webui/_xy-39180961_1-t_Re9njwuKoptional background: Michael Williams, Deforesting the Earth, pp 87-149 (background information--you may skim this).
- QUESTIONS YOU MAY CONSIDER:
What is Scott's central argument about the ways the needs of the state affected land tenure and forest diversity? What evidence does Scott use to support his argument? Do you find it compelling
To help guide your reading, here are several critical concepts we'll consider from Scott.
- land tenure
- cadastral survey
- growing power of the state
- common property
If you're not certain what land tenure means, the FAO has a useful definition on its website (http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/Y4307E/y4307e05.htm).
Amanda and Cory will be leading the class discussion activity next Monday, focusing on Picnic Point. If you want to learn more about cadastral surveys and other types of records that are discussed in Scott's Seeing Like A State, the website for the Lakeshore Preserve has some great resources:
http://www.lakeshorepreserve.
Scott's central argument is that the needs of the state acted to simplify the cultural and ecological structures of and surrounding forests. By needing to manage forests on a regional and national scale, the state was unable to deal with the complexities of the local forests, and acted to remake forests and forest uses in a way consistent with its own management needs. Since the state often had different goals than the local forest users, this remaking was frequently incompatible with the local forest, but state power allowed the state's simplification to be codified over local practices.
ReplyDeleteAs an example of this on the ecological front, Scott cites German forest science. The primary use of the forest in the state's eyes was for timber, with some secondary importance attached to game. Local uses of the forest, on both a physical and cultural level, and the ecological complexity of the forest, were not accounted for in the state's valuation. Hence when German foresters implemented scientific forestry, the single (valuable timber species) tree in harvestable rows was the form of choice. It was only later that the state had to change its plan to reflect the unsustainability of such an arrangement, but the state's attempts had by that time irrevocably changed the character of the forests it was using.
On the cultural front, Scott especially points to tools like cadastral maps as examples of the kind of simplifications the state imposed. While local uses and land tenure were varied and often complex, the need for the state to assign a single owner and value to the land and to be able to consistently deal with land tenure issues across the state was manifested in the creation of cadastral maps, which had the effect of overriding local usage and tenure practices, at least in the legal sense. Local usage, Scott says, sometimes continued as usual (as in the case of interstripping) and failed to reflect the state's imposition.
I think Scott's argument is fairly convincing; in any case where two groups have different goals for or interests in something, they'll value different things about that object and handle it in different ways. Since the state generally has more power than local communities, it's not surprising that state interests would tend to overrun local interests. I especially found this reading interesting because it explored the state's motives for doing things and why those actions made sense for the state, rather than focusing exclusively on the loss of local practices.
-Erin
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ReplyDeleteAccording to James C. Scott, modern states have sought to render complex systems simple and “legible” to consolidate power over people and resources and to maximize monetary gain. In the case of land tenure, the primary interest has been to stake out taxable units and, in capitalist societies, to convert land into private property that can be bought and sold as a commodity. The development of cadastral surveys facilitated the process of simplification, allowing planners to represent complex landscapes as grids of more or less uniform blocks of land. For example, under the rectangular survey of the United States, set in motion by Thomas Jefferson, surveyors carved out townships comprising thirty-six one-mile square "sections," establishing the checkerboard pattern that defines many Midwestern and Western landscapes today. The rectangular survey literally configured how generations of Americans settled and developed the trans-Appalachian West.
ReplyDeleteFor its part, “scientific forestry,” which arose in eighteenth-century Germany, reduced complex ecosystems to simplified forests comprising a handful of species cultivated to fetch the highest returns on the market. However, Scott emphasizes that neither nature nor local land users automatically conform to such simplification schemes, rendering the “convenient, if partly fictional, shorthand” on paper infinitely more complicated in the on-the-ground execution. Once in place, however, the forester’s administrative grid, like the surveyor’s cadastral map, can exert a powerful influence on management regimes, transforming nature and societies in the process.
Scott’s legibility thesis is useful for explaining dynamics underlying systems that have shaped our world. If uniform systems of taxation and resource management have in some instances increased stability and standards of living, in other instances they have been profoundly disruptive of traditional cultural practices and ecosystems. I suspect that for Scott, as for Bill McKibben, a reassertion of local know-how would constitute an essential corrective to ill-conceived schemes of simplification.
-John
I think Erin provided a great review of the reading, and I wanted to elaborate on one aspect of the reading- that of how land tenure can favor some while others do not have equal access. When the state attempts to control, measure and tax uses of the forest, those who have previously benefited from commonly held access to land, lose out from the process.
ReplyDeleteThe scientific foresters, as portrayed primarily by the German foresters, utilized a progression of controls that started out with precisely calculating forest yield (in terms of natural resources to be extracted from the sites) of existing old growth forests to “creating” forests where tree species were chosen for the quality of their yield relative to the need of the state. As “minimum diversity” gained a foothold, monocultures were valued for their preferred characteristics as well for their predictability. Rows of Norway Spruces, for example, were planted simultaneously and underbrush was cleared and in an effort to simplify management and harvesting of the “product.” These rows of similarly aged trees made economic sense for many reasons including that the simplified processes for maintenance meant that unskilled workers could be hired to work in these forests and the logs were similarly sized and predictably straighter than naturally occurring trees. This level of wresting control over nature seemed to be an ideal solution to the alternative to “chaotic” old growth forests.
Seemingly, this arrangement seemed like an ideal solution to the unruliness of nature, but it wasn’t ideal for local peasants who were accustomed to using the forests for a number of things. As John mentioned, nature and humans do not necessarily conform to changes made by authorities, however both nature and the common people “lose” in that scenario. People benefit from mixed forests by extracting wood for fuel primarily, but the “naturally arranged” forest produces so much more- from medicines to fruits to materials for domestic uses (thatch, bedding, etc.) And, although the state may not concern itself with the suffering of the peasantry in this situation, when nature “loses”, the bottom line is affected. Success in the short run did not spell long term economic success, because ultimately a monoculture is much more vulnerable to disease and insect infestation and, after a century of investment into “scientific forestry” of this ilk, the negative consequences outweighed the benefits.
In the issue of access to the “fruits” of the forest, it is not always the state that holds the upper hand when dealing with the peasantry. Within communities, there are inequalities as well. In describing a fictional, yet presumably realistically reflective scenario of land tenure, the author discusses a community where land is used communally, yet the division of the “profits” of the land are distributed inequitably. The scenario describes a caste system of sorts where, when resources are restricted (as in the case of crop failures), women from outside the community who have married into it, but have not borne children, are simply not fed. Younger men and “outcasts” are also treated similarly.
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ReplyDeleteScott's central argument that broadly speaking, society and the environment have been often negatively refashioned by state "maps of legibility" is useful in its exploration of how the loss of necessary local knowledge in social scheming can, in turn, negatively affect not only the environment but also, ironically, the social order the exclusion was intended to establish. I think Scott's main point is best illustrated in his comparison of the cadastral map to a photo of a current in a river. He describes the map as representative of the land as arranged and owned at that particular moment in time, but like a current in a river, in reality, that cadestral map is always moving and you cannot freeze a living process. For example, here, he supports his metaphor by citing the excluded living processes of soil class grade or history of rainfall from the cadastral map. Scott seems to suggest that the true advantage of local customary systems of land tenure is their adaptability to these "living" changes-- just as a more biodiverse forest is better adapted to change (Scott describes biodiversity as an insurance policy against possible changes like fire, disease and storms), an understanding of land tenure, too, benefits from a non-static lens that considers the ever-changing landscape. And although, as John writes, "uniform systems of taxation and resource management have in some instances increased stability and standards of living," it seems that in excluding local differences we, as Dee recaps, both (people and the environment) lose in the end. -Stevie
ReplyDeleteScott’s main argument is that the state needed a standardized system that could be used to provide an easily accessible overview of the land and its population in order to best be able to apply taxes, account for its natural resources, etc. He argues that in doing so, they applied a universal system that was not effective because it excluded the knowledge and experiences of local people.
ReplyDeleteForest diversity was negatively impacted as the focus shifted from “nature” to the control of “natural resources.” By attempting to better “manipulate, measure, and assess” the forests, the state actually did more harm than good by converting to monocultures, which were actually less able to support themselves, as well as the locals, due to the increased risk of pests, disease, and extreme weather.
Scott shows the reaction of the local people to the cadastral surveys of the land as evidence of the shift that they caused in land tenure. As Erin pointed out, in some cases local people continued to use the land as they had prior to the cadastral maps by rejecting the idea of single plots of land and instead practicing interstripping. This distinction between the legal land tenure and the actual utilized land tenure reveals how the state failed in its attempts to survey the land because they did not seek out what would work best for those people who actually lived on the land.
I agree with John’s final statement that Scott seems to support the return of the idea of utilizing local knowledge. It struck me that Scott would support such things as community based conservation efforts, since he clearly believes that it essential to incorporate local people into land management practices.
-Kendall King
It is so interesting reading the history of man’s relationship with the forest. How we have tried to simplify it to its most basic parts, but that did not work because a forest is a complicated web of interconnections that all rely on one another. However, we still attempt to simplify the natural world around us, this is an example of where we need to take a page out of the history book and realize that nature just cannot be simplified…or fully understood for that matter. It was also very interesting reading the history of dividing up land for taxes; I had never thought of how complicated this actually was.
ReplyDeleteThe blogs before me have all addressed Scott’s arguments and made excellent points, so I will focus on Harrison’s writing. In the section “Forest Law,” he compares forests to churches, by drawing out their similarity as sanctuaries. He uses the royal forest, because at the time it was a protected forest, only for the use of the king. “The royal forest granted wildlife the same sort of asylum that the Church granted criminals or fugitives who entered its precincts.” This is a dated example, but draws a clear image.
The wildlife had refuge and protection because of the king’s passion for the hunt. No one else could disrupt the forest, because the king wanted to keep all of his wild game in peak condition to make for an exciting hunt. It is interesting seeing the connection between a desire to kill and preservation of the natural system. For a forest or the land in general to be taken care of, a person must feel a connection to it and for some that connection may be sport, hunting. For others it may be farming, a connection through necessity, the person needs the land to survive.
Harrison discusses in more detail man’s connection to the forest or wilderness in the section “The Knight’s Adventure.” Here he discusses the fascination of medieval imagination with wild men. That most knights wander off into the forests looking for adventure. To them adventure is testing their prowess and bravery outside of the court, but a wild man does not understand this, because he already embodies these qualities. I saw this as another way man connects with nature. It was an important part of a man’s life, to go out and have an adventure in nature. I think many people (men and women alike) are still looking for this connection, this adventure, but it is no longer a common path or almost rite of passage.
-Hanna
I found Scott’s reading very enlightening, not having learned about medieval land rights before. He seemed very in favor of local laws and using local knowledge instead of state control. This kind of reminds me of the ideas of McKibben and how he talked about community. It seems that many times local knowledge and ways of doing things are often better than broad ideas from a state government which lumps everything together and does not look the intricacies that make places different. One thing I did notice though was that Scott did not mention many good things about the state ordering of land and other things. He did mention how making standard measurements often helped the lower classes to get a fair deal, but he didn’t talk at all about how reordering the landscape helped anyone but the people taking taxes. I do not know much about this time in history, but I wonder if it might have given land to some people who did not have it before, or if it provided a means for secure holdings over land that was once debated.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I do not agree with the way in which land was divided. Particularly in the example about the Russian communities where the land was originally divided by type and quality so that everyone got their fair share. The cadastral surveys divided land based on large allotments, not on the type of land. I found it very interesting the local people ignored this new allotment even though I’m sure that some people got a better deal with the new plan.
One last thing I found interesting was the idea that the new land lines gave no leave for the physical layout of the land. This has been one big downfall of our county and state lines in the United States. It is problematic to govern things like water quality and pollution because it does not stay in governmental lines. A better way would have been to lay out the lines along watersheds so it is easier to manage.
Previous comment by Mallory Berrey
ReplyDeleteWhen there is a conflict between two people or groups who want rights and access to the same commodity it will always go to the group who is most powerful, at least in title. This is true also of the state taking control of forests. The state restricted control and access to forests by assigning single owners; however they could not completely stop locals who had been using the forests for a long time from some continuing use.
ReplyDeleteI think it is ironic that so called “Forest Scientists” helped to destroy forests. Instead of improving the forests they reduced biodiversity and turned forests into tree plantations. This type of structure was an improvement to the state who sought mainly monetary gain from forests. However it was a huge loss for the local people who depended on the natural diversity of forests. I thought that John brought up a good point with the cadastral surveys and how it, “established the checkerboard pattern that defines many Midwestern and Western landscapes today.” I think this is very true and easy to observe when you fly over the United States. In this reading Scott brought up many points about land tenure that I had not considered and they were very interesting to reflect on.
According to Scott, governments have fought hard for a sedentary, bracketed society to simplify taxation, conscription, and prevention of rebellion. Before relating the government’s tendency to simplify nature to forest history, he talks briefly about state designed social programs. In an attempt to reduce their populations to simple classifications, states have been unable to effectively implement socially engineered projects even when they were well intentioned. Among other elements, Scott blames the administrative ordering of nature and society for causing state designed social programs to fail. Whether it social or natural systems, simplification destroys the essential diversity that allows a system to buffer itself against threats.
ReplyDeleteThe tunnel vision of scientific forestry reduced forest value to nothing but potential profits. Goals of precision planning and administering a grid system came from thinking minimal diversity would equal high efficiency. Minimal diversity ended up destroying both the forests and profits following first harvests because systems were left exposed.
The cadastral map is “the crowning artifact” from the time when European states began to administer gross simplifications to their populations. The cadastral maps documented private land holdings to make assessing taxes easier. Like most government assessments, the cadastral map only recorded “productive” assets and dismissed all other values the land provided. Anything that could not be directly sold was aesthetic, ritual, or sentimental, which held no value for the state.
Sam Reuter
February 14, 2011
I found Scott’s argument for the State’s need to simplify control and establish order not only in cultural terms but in forestry terms quite interesting. By establishing order and simplifying control, the state was able to manipulate society, hence making it malleable and presenting the potential for change. This however affected forest history and diversity in many aspects.
ReplyDeleteWhen the state realised the opportunity for standardizing a system in which it could make monetary gains, through such ways as land taxes, this had a detrimental effect on forest diversity. Through the implementation of cadastral surveys, Scott argues that this “chopping up” of the land for state revenue; as well as seeing the forest now as a “natural resource”, as opposed to “nature”, which lead to the shift on land tenure.
It was interesting to see forest history from Scott’s viewpoint. The desire for knowledge and power of the state and their need for controlling all facets of land tenure, for economic gains is a glimpse into the complexity of human greed. However, I wonder whether it is better that someone “owns” the land, so that an individual is responsible for the land, and that taxing that person is simplified; whereas if nothing was standardized and forests were allowed to be utilised on a local individual’s desire, it may have only lead to a slower exploitation of the forests resources, with an end product being similar to what we have today.
I think back to McKibben’s call for smaller local governments, and my concern with his argument was how large scale conservation changes can be implemented with small scale un-standardized governments sits in the back of my mind when thinking about some of Scott’s arguments.
-Roxanne Wienkes
Reading through Scott’s chapters gave me some insight into how land ownership is defined today. Scott focuses mainly on Europe, where people have been staking claims and working the land for millennia. Much of this had gone on informally without the intervention of a higher state authority outside of the local community. Once taxes and royalties needed to be paid to the centralized entity, this system no longer worked. That is to say it did not work for the lords seeking payment. The systems that had been in place had worked for communities, and even though not easily understood by the outsider, they worked for the people. The lords needed a way to easily categorize parcels of land and assess taxes.
ReplyDeleteIn redrawing the property lines, a social history was changed. What a farmer had previously valued was now useless in the eyes of the state. His assessment of a field worth 20 bushels of corn or taking 15 hours to plow had now been devalued. Changes in value such as this were common across the peasant population. One particularly interesting thing mentioned by Scott was the door and window tax in France. I had never heard of this before and at first I thought it was kind of comical. Taking this pragmatic approach, France never sought to change the lives of its people, however, with the door and window tax implemented, life changed for all those who did not want to pay out more money to the central authority.
Here in the US, it was a slightly different story. The vast expanses of land that stretched beyond the Appalachians and Mississippi called to early Americans to expand westward. In order to efficiently dole out land, the feds developed the Public Land Survey System. In this system, dividing property lines were drawn on the previously blank maps of the US. Instantly the parcels had value and meaning. Unfortunately, there were problems with this system. The federal government ignored Native Americans already inhabiting the land. There were great incentives to “improve” or farm the land, vastly changing the developing landscape of the US. Additionally, many prime areas were already occupied by adventurous pioneers who were living and working the land already. Furthermore, ecological boundaries were ignored.
It is interesting to think how the landscape and our lives would be different in this country if a different method of land tenure was chosen by the government. What different values would we hold? Would the environment be better off or worse?
-Cory Peters
I found it interesting in the introduction how Scott talked about four elements that made "state-initiated social engineering" possible. They included state simplifications, a high-modernist ideology, an authoritarian state to implement these simplifications, and a society that does not resist these changes. This combination of elements allowed the reorganization and simplification of agriculture, the control and regulation of land rights, social order, and the ability to monitor and record property, populations, and a capitalist market among other things. I think this was referring to early modern Europe. I guess one of my biggest questions refers to the high modernist ideology. I wonder how widespread this ideology was as far as how continuous was it across different societal classes? I also wonder how long this ideology lasted? A key concept of this ideology was a self-confidence about scientific and technical processes and social order. After some of this social order was put into place, such as scientific forestry and the reorganization of land with cadastral maps, what was the general public opinion?
ReplyDeleteIn the second chapter of the reading, Shadows of Law, I thought it was interesting to have some context about the view of forests from the medieval period. The forests were “outside” and were a place that knights went to seek adventure. I found the idea of Forest Law particularly interesting. Forest Law was put in place by the king, not necessarily because the forest itself seemed that valuable, but rather, because the wildlife within the forest was important. Hunting was a privilege, which was seen as import enough to protect. I thought this was very interesting because this parallels what occurred in the modern U.S. with conservation efforts. Game management began here in the 1930’s before it was expanded to non-game animals. This just shows how important game animals were throughout history as a reason to protect a landscape. That cultural aspect is very interesting to me.
--Amanda Rudie
The need for the state to simplify not only forests and their natural resources, but also simplification of cultures within in a state at first might make sense from the point of view of the state. The designed systems greatly increase efficiency as mentioned by Scott. A few people with little training could go out and get reliable data on an organized forests while the old-growth forests would require more specialized training to reliably produce useful information to the state (this only works if the end goal is as state by Scott, “highest revenue yield of the timber that might be extracted annually”). The uniformity of cultures within the state like the uniformity of the forests helps the states goals of efficiency and productivity, by allowing people across the state to interact using the same measurements. As discussed by Scott, can mean very different things to different people with diversified cultures. The local units of measurements also did not give an control to the state rather they played into local politics where each party would try to get the best deal for themselves. At first glance many of the simplifications by the state makes sense if the state was running as a business to make profit in the short term. The complete lack of insight and thinking about the future is pretty astounding because while it is important for a business to maximize profits each year, what is the point if the business goes under in 5? This should have been readily apparent after the inability to grow trees after a couple of fellings in a monoculture. The social short sightedness was also there, if the majority of the people within a state no longer have access to the food, raw material, and medicines from a diversified forests those needs will have to come from somewhere causing strain and resources to be put forth by the state to fix a need that was not always there. Scott also brings an interesting point that I do not think I have always thought off, what is the point of having say 10 acres if it can not sustain a family of four. An area measure of land has no real meaning to people that look to the land for subsistence.
ReplyDelete-matt
In my paintings and sculptures I frequently deal with issues of control in landscape. I am interested in how a landscape is abstracted in order to make sense of it. My work is about the borders between places, the places where land meets water, or open field meets the trees and the barriers we erect in an attempt to stabilize unstable ground. So I was particularly taken with Scott’s description of cadastral maps as a form of abstraction. He writes that this abstraction, which is necessary for the analysis by the governing system, becomes an aesthetic. The photographs of the mixed forest and the managed poplar forest on pages 16 and 17 effectively demonstrate how these two different aesthetics can be cultural.
ReplyDeleteSeveral people have written in their posts that in many cases after a governing body has reorganized the land with the cadastral map, the people living on the land go on using it as before. I would like to learn more about this. It is interesting to me that the barriers we erect, be they physical fences and walls, or the abstract borders of countries and crop land eventually deteriorate. They deteriorate because what lies beneath them is ever changing. Like Stevie wrote in her post, I also liked the image Scott gives of the cadastral map being a still photograph of a moving current.
I would like to learn more about the differences and similarities between the restructuring of France after the revolution and the the structuring of America after conquest and colonization. The image of dividing the American west into “hundreds,” ten by ten mile squares, as Scott writes about Thomas Jefferson’s vision seems so ridiculous. It is a vision of a man who had never even seen the west; a man who relied on his own fantastical notions of what the west was, a place where wholly mammoths still roamed, and he was rooted in the cultural desire to divide and conquer. I imagine some of this desire to simplify the land using the system of cadastral mapping is rooted not just in the need to make governing administratively simpler and more profitable (as might have been the case in an already known country like France), but also in the deep fear of the unknown.
Emily Belknap
Scott’s main argument is based in the fact that the rise of sedentarization elicited profound changes towards land valuation, oftentimes compromising the stability and productivity of the land/forest itself. Furthermore, the medieval conflict between local knowledge and the authoritarian state was incredibly complex and inefficient, eventually leading to the creation of universal standardization and seeing the forest through a “fiscal lens.” As Scott points out, the “regimentation” of the forest, exemplified by German forest scientists allowed for the development of commercial forestry and standardized methods for determining yields, forest health, and productivity.
ReplyDeleteOverall, it seemed that Scott painted a fairly negative portrait of early German forest science practices, which in my opinion is a little unfair. Although the rise of the uniform forested monoculture tipped the otherwise stable ecological balance and put standardized geometry methods into practice, it is important to note how relevant early German forestry methods are in forestry today. Last year I took Forest 300, or Forest Biometry, which is essentially a class devoted to learning how to measure trees, growth over time, and project yields in the future (a great class if this topic is of interest to anyone). This field has come a long way, yet many of the methods are based in early German methods,many that are still used today internationally. Although Scott’s argument was based in how we as humans have altered and profoundly controlled natural forest systems, it is important to recognize the differences of scientific forestry then and now and what has been learned since of the ecological vulnerability of monoculture agroforestry.
Like John and Kathleen mentioned before, I found Scott’s mentioning of the cadastral mapping system remarkably similar to that of our own country, most particularly regarding the early surveying methods that created a checkerboard landscape pattern throughout the Midwest. Also, it is interesting to note the relationship between forestry and initial surveying techniques, as surveyors marked all the trees within a given line and also the concept of a “chain” (80 chains=1 mile), a measurement that is used ubiquitously in forestry today. As was evidenced by the medieval cadastral map, there are many conflicts in the U.S. with this systemized order of mapping, thereby recreating the landscape and its function within the larger constructs of societal demands.
-Joelle B.
Scott argues that as the state grew in its abilities to manage and manipulate land tenure (through cadastral surveys and "appropriate" taxation), that the concept of uniformity began to dominate.
ReplyDeleteThis uniformity not only applied to landowners, but was then also applied to the land itself. Cadastral surveys did not take into account unique or special purposes of land use in different areas, but instead supported the idea of simply accounting for potential yield of the "natural resources," and viewed the land as maximizing its potential through that one purpose.
It is well-known that achieving high yield of a resource is best done (at least for the short run) by implementing a more uniform, easily manageable land space, but what the state didn't realize in its realization of a more uniform society is that "uniform" is not always what's best (environmentally, economically, socially, etc).
Taking away things like common property and replacing it with strictly measured land rights and taxes not only decreased a sense of community, oneness and strength amongst smaller communities, but these ideas have trickled (better yet, they've flooded) beyond human-human relations and into human-environment relations. The state may have been simply looking for a more manageable way to measure and distribute taxes and to create a more reliable/civilized society, but the effects have been much more wide-ranging on the environment than anybody probably could have imagined (although for some, our current environmental situation is an exciting blessing rather than a scary curse).
In his discussion of conscious reorganization of society within a state in order to increase legibility, Scott successfully describes the power dynamics that play within a seemingly objective process: mapmaking. Scott describes how villagers were forced to discard their old, folk methods of measurement in favor of a set of standards set by the state. Replacing old, practical measures (like in the number of “morgen” it takes to plow a field) with standard measurements (acres, hectares), is a really interesting social, economic, and political phenomenon when it comes to cartographic concerns. Through these efforts to increase legibility of landscapes, I am reminded of the difficulties faced by cartographers when trying to project a spherical earth onto a two-dimensional piece of paper. In mapmaking, only one property of the landscape to be mapped can be preserved, like shape, area, or distance, and even that is at the sacrifice of all other properties. Taking this cartographic rule one step further, I think you could say the preserved property in the old local kinds of folk maps, is always something contextually practical, or as Scott says, “there is, then, no single, all-purpose, correct answer to a question implying measurement unless we specify the relevant local concerns that give rise to the question” (14). So what of the standardization imposed upon these local communities with working systems already in place? I believe that Scott is making the case that the removal of this contextualization that people formerly had to the landscape through their measurements adversely affected land tenure systems. His claim is backed up well through the example of the effects of simplification within German forestry: it only took into consideration the profitability of the forest, while neglecting crucial factors like biodiversity. Cadastral maps only took into consideration the property of land ownership, while neglecting factors like communal land use and local distinctions.
ReplyDeleteI do find this argument compelling, due to my education in environmental science and history where a recurring theme is the exploitation of land due to a land-human disconnect. I also sympathize with governments trying to increase legibility, though, because it would be very difficult for a state power to govern without some simplification of the land tenure system.