Digifesto

We must keep in mind not only the capacity of state simplifications to transform the world but also the capacity of the society to modify, subvert, block, and even overturn the categories imposed upon it. Here is it useful to distinguish what might be called facts on paper from facts on the ground…. Land invasions, squatting, and poaching, if successful, represent the exercise of de facto property rights which are not represented on paper. Certain land taxes and tithes have been evaded or defied to the point where they have become dead letters. The gulf between land tenure facts on paper and facts on the ground is probably greatest at moments of social turmoil and revolt. But even in more tranquil times, there will always be a shadow land-tenure system lurking beside and beneath the official account in the land-records office. We must never assume that local practice conforms with state theory. – Scott, Seeing Like a State, 1998

I’m continuing to read Seeing Like a State and am finding in it a compelling statement of a state of affairs that is coded elsewhere into the methodological differences between social science disciplines. In my experience, much of the tension between the social sciences can be explained in terms of the differently interested uses of social science. Among these uses are the development of what Scott calls “state theory” and the articulation, recognition, and transmission of “local practice”. Contrast neoclassical economics with the anthropology of Jean Lave as examples of what I’m talking about. Most scholars are willing to stop here: they choose their side and engage in a sophisticated form of class warfare.

This is disappointing from the perspective of science per se, as a pursuit of truth. To see where there’s a place for such work in the social sciences, we only have to the very book in front of us, Seeing Like a State, which stands outside of both state theory and local practices to explain a perspective that is neither but rather informed by a study of both.

In terms of the ways that knowledge is used in support of human interests, in the Habermasian sense (see some other blog posts), we can talk about Scott’s “state theory” as a form of technical knowledge, aimed at facilitating power over the social and natural world. What he discusses is the limitation of technical knowledge in mastering the social, due to complexity and differentiation in local practice. So much of this complexity is due to the politicization of language and representation that occurs in local practice. Standard units of measurement and standard terminology are tools of state power; efforts to guarantee them are confounded again and again in local interest. This disagreement is a rejection of the possibility of hermeneutic knowledge, which is to say linguistic agreement about norms.

In other words, Scott is pointing to a phenomenon where because of the interests of different parties at different levels of power, there’s a strategic local rejection of inter-subjective agreement. Implicitly, agreeing even on how to talk with somebody with power over you is conceding their power. The alternative is refusal in some sense. A second order effect of the complexity caused by this strategic disagreement is the confounding of technical mastery over the social. In Scott’s terminology, a society that is full of strategic lexical disagreement is not legible.

These are generalizations reflecting tendencies in society across history. Nevertheless, merely by asserting them I am arguing that they have a kind of special status that is not itself caught up in the strategic subversions of discourse that make other forms of expertise foolish. There must be some forms of representation that persist despite the verbal disagreements and differently motivated parties that use them.

I’d like to call these kinds of representations, which somehow are technically valid enough to be useful and robust to disagreement, even politicized disagreement, as equilibrium representations. The idea here is that despite a lot of cultural and epistemic churn, there are still attractor states in the complex system of knowledge production. At equilibrium, these representations will be stable and serve as the basis for communication between different parties.

I’ve posited equilibrium representations hypothetically, without having a proof or example yet on one that actually exists. My point is to have a useful concept that acknowledges the kinds of epistemic complexities raised by Scott but that acknowledges the conditions for which a modernist epistemology could prevail despite those complexities.