Seeing like a STEM
In Seeing Like a State, James C. Scott
shows how central governments attempt to force legibility on their subjects, and fail to see complex, valuable forms of local social order and knowledge. (More)
Previously, people used concepts, norms, names, physical units, locations, and assets that were deeply entwined with local culture and practice. Concepts that states found hard to understand and apply, when they tried to enforce laws or extract taxes. So states, once they arose a few centuries ago, pushed people to instead use concepts that states could better see and apply from their bureaucratic distance. Such as unique names, global locations, and standardized languages, units, measures, laws, and accounting procedures.
It seems to me that the distinction between STEM and arts/humanities is related. STEM uses concepts and systems that allow very different and widely separated things to be compared and analyzed in similar and consistent ways, using a “view from nowhere.” Arts/humanities, in contrast tend to have a stronger grip on our aesthetic, emotional, and moral reactions in particular situations and communities, when we very much do and want to see our world differently than do outsiders.
Consider an analogy. Imagine you’ve lived in the same small town all your life. And you are thinking about where to move to live next in that town. Such thoughts would be richly informed by your emotions and life experience there. You’d let your intuitions flow on where you’ve lived, worked, and schooled before, where your friends live, and what areas seem pleasant and prestigious. You might do some calculations, but you’d be mostly vibing on feels. And anyone who is to usefully talk to you about this situation, or to describe it to others, will need to share many feels.
Now imagine that a flood is coming to your town, and you want to know where to go to be safe. For this analysis, you’ll want to set aside most of your feelings and just think about the physical structure of the town, and of the water that is rising. The water won’t care about what areas are precious to you, just about elevation of routes and stiffness of obstacles. A stranger who knows little about your town could use a objective STEM/state map of your town to calculate flood changes nearly as well as could a town resident.
While we moderns have learned to think about many things in state- and STEM-like terms, our aesthetic, moral, and cultural judgements are what we most do and want to see in rooted and partisan pre-state and arts/humanities ways, resisting STEM-like standardized views from nowhere.
This is a problem for those of us trying to get people to see our big problem of cultural drift. We need people to see their precious culture, which they love more than family, via a neutral STEM-like view from nowhere. In particular, we need them to see their cultural world using the robust and general biological concept of adaption. Which of course, like the STEM flood analysis of a town, ignores a great many details very important to us. Even so, when you actually face a flood-like crisis, STEM-like concepts and their implications are often ones you must master to survive.
The distinction between 'seeing like a state' (abstract) vs. local cultural is valuable and somewhat novel to me as an articulated concept (although I am a cross-cultural psychologist). Anthropologists and other social scientists traditionally haven't spoken this abstractly, although they discuss related ideas like high and low context; emic vs. etic perspectives, etc). This idea can explain flaws in the goals of rich countries to improve living situations in low-income regions. I also like the analogy with this idea and the STEM/humanities contrast. And I appreciate the flood / small town example.
Hansen notes that people do not want to give up their decades of local contextual information in favor of the abstract 'view from nowhere' principles. Why that reluctance is rational: Those ideas could be pinned down incorrectly. One needs an intense amount of knowledge to accept that those abstract principles will actually be helpful rather than an attempt for a group foreign to you to enrich itself (or signal their virtuosity and get promoted as in some of Scott's examples).
The above is most relevant to extensions of the flood scenario and less relevant to cultural drift. As far as I can understand Hansen, the negative outcomes expected for contemporary US and global cultures are decreased innovation and low fertility, which will mean high-fertility groups will take over, and those groups have norms which many of us moderns find aversive (such as controlling female agency to increase fertility). But those outcomes are both far off and far from certain.
For these reasons, it is hard for Hansen to galvanize his audience to take action against cultural drift. People feel more motivated by fixing what they view as clear and/or current problems like wealth inequality, political oppression and discrimination.
Great piece. You may be interested in "Seeing like a State University," showing how higher ed is structured by the Dept. of Ed in ways that prevent the integration of STEM and the humanities when the new goal is "job placement" not cultural expansion. I offer the case of a future plumber wanting to get a degree in English & the impossibility of doing so in ways the State approves. https://hollisrobbinsanecdotal.substack.com/p/seeing-like-a-state-university