In this work, James C. Scott is attempting to evaluate high modernist ideology and how it has been implemented through various projects. He is interested in the logic of high modernism, as well as how that logic contributes to the failure of high modernist systems. Through a variety of case studies, including forestry, city planning, linguistic manipulation, collectivization and villagization, Scott evaluates how high modernism was developed, why it was so powerful as an ideology, how it was implemented and why those implementations failed.
Although Scott is focused specifically on high modernist ideology and its uses in the 20th century, there are several themes in this book that directly connect to our readings from previous weeks. Scott frequently talks about the belief in high modernism as if it were a faith. As with the Calvinists and the French Revolutionaries, these men and women believed that there was a problem (backwardness) that needed to be fixed and they held the solution to that problem (modernization). As with our discussion of French modernization, Scott highlights the importance of homogenization. However, Scott goes beyond cultural and linguistic homogenization as ways to exert political and financial control. He also emphasizes how the high modernist preoccupation with homogenization was manifest in agricultural practices, with polycropping being considered backwards and large monocropped farms being seen as the future of agriculture.
One of the strongest parts of Scott’s work is his emphasis on diversity. Scott takes great effort to explain the myopic view of high modernism and how such intense focus on certain aspects of any subject to the exclusion of other parts of the larger picture had such a detrimental impact on the success of high modernist projects. He successfully argues that high modernist plans for city building, collectivation and villagization failed to consider the impact of humans, who were likely to resist change, adapt the new rules to meet their own personal needs and publicly rebel against forced control. Scott uses Jane Jacob’s critique of planned cities as a basis for much of his criticism, citing her thesis that a diverse city where streets filled a variety of purposes was a healthier community.
One of the things that struck me as quiet odd about Scott’s work was his emphasis on gender in the critique of high modernism. He takes great care in emphasizing how important he thinks Jacob’s “woman’s eye” is to her frame of reference and ability to critique high modernist city planning. (p. 138) He also chooses women critics of Lenin and Bolshevism (Rosa Luxemburg and Aleksandra Kolontay). I think that the arguments put forth by these women are strong critiques of high modernist ideology and that Scott makes excellent use of these arguments throughout his book. However, I am skeptical of how he chooses to present these arguments. While I admit that I am no expert in high modernism or gender studies, I find it hard to believe that there were no men who were critical of high modernism, or for that matter, no women who espoused firm high modernist beliefs.
I think that Scott’s work also does an excellent job of highlighting the fact that despite the horrific outcomes of many of these plans, the goal of modernization was not to starve millions of people to death. These men and women were acting based on a system of beliefs they thought held the answer to solving the world’s problems. It is also easy to take the logic of high modernism, with its emphasis on legibility and homogenization, and see the connections to a global system that emphasized cultural homogenization and espoused forced migration and deportation, eventually leading to genocide.
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