Authoritarian High Modernism Chapter 1 Summary

In chapter 3 of his book “Authoritarian High Modernism,” James Scott discusses the way in which the modern state has become authoritative by seeking control people’s public and private lives.

At the beginning of the chapter, it is said that the modern state has become utopian by trying to create an ordered society where the government knows about every movement and location of citizens.
Scott argues that the modern state uses physical planning of the built environment, such as cities, to help it manage people’s movements, such as where they go to work and where they live. In this way, the modern state has the characteristics of a map, which allows one to see how things are arranged or ordered. Unlike the modern state, in the state of the twentieth century, he believes that most of the troubles occurred because they represented the work of the rulers with grandiose and utopian plans for the reorganization of society, this meant that the people themselves allowed the state to establish full power, which later began to disregard democracy, violate

civil rights, because the state power began to use the most unbridled means to achieve it, which led to a distortion of the original purpose and image of utopia. Although initially in both cases the state wanted only to see the order in people's lives.
In the second part of this chapter, the writer suggests that the journey towards the establishment of the modern state started with the implementation of standards and a new cultural unity. The main idea of the state was the restructuring of whole societies in difference from the old concept where the main goal of the state was only people who increased the wealth and power of the sovereign. The statistical knowledge of the population and the establishment of a common language and laws, intended to make people behave in a predictable way in consequence of which the state could manage and transform it with the aim of improving it.
In the third part of the book, Scott suggested, the ideology of high modernism was to transform social habits and human nature, but the basic idea was to transform nature to benefit people in spite of possible sacrifices.

Since the vision of the intelligentsia of the great future often sharply contrasts with disorder, poverty, which was the boldness of high modernism, was in some ways extremely unfair. Eventually, the laws gave way into states, which took over governing people.
The final part of the chapter talks about the creation of authoritarian high modernism involved the use of technology to monitor people’s public and private lives. With the rapid development of technology, the state wants to be omnipresent; to imitate God by making sure it knows everything taking place in people’s lives. In addition, this level of technological development allowed the modern state to impose its own order on people and

communities.

In conclusion, the modern society has become authoritative because it seeks to control people’s lives, whether in public or private. This is seen through the requirement to have permanent addresses and physical planning of the built environment, which allows the state to know where people live. Similarly, modern technology allows the state to monitor people’s movements and conversations, creating an utopian society where people cannot enjoy privacy.