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From Planning to Prototypes

New Ways of Seeing Like a State

Bibliographic Data

ID9197267
AuthorsFleur Johns (0000-0002-8351-7608, Aptiv (United States), corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume82
Issue5
Pages833-863
Publication date2019-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueModern Law Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0026-7961 • E-ISSN: 1468-2230
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1468-2230.12442
OpenAlexW2951637585
LanguageEN
Citations received24

All states have pursued what James C. Scott characterised as modernist projects of legibility and simplification: maps, censuses, national economic plans and related legislative programs. Many, including Scott, have pointed out blindspots embedded in these tools. As such criticism persists, however, the synoptic style of law and development has changed. Governments, NGOs and international agencies now aspire to draw upon immense repositories of digital data. Modes of analysis too have changed. No longer is legibility a precondition for action. Law‐ and policy‐making are being informed by business development methods that prefer prototypes over plans. States and international institutions continue to plan, but also seek insight from the release of minimally viable policy mock‐ups. Familiar critiques of law and development work, and arguments for its reform, have limited purchase on these practices, Scott's included. Effective critical intervention in this field today requires careful attention to be paid to these emergent patterns of practice

Action (physics) · Advertising · Business · Criticism · Field (mathematics) · Intervention (counseling) · Law and economics · Legibility · Legislature · Plan (archaeology) · Political science · Precondition · Public relations · Sociology · State (computer science) · Style (visual arts) · Work (physics) · Comparative and International Law Studies · Computer Science · Engineering · History · Human Rights and Development · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law · Psychology · Public Administration

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    Open Access•Marion Fourcade, Jeffrey Gordon•Journal of Law and Political…•2020

  • The (non‐)performance of the financial frontier

    Open Access•Abbie Yunita•Transactions of the Institute of…•2025

  • Objects at Work

    Open Access•A Leander•Global Studies Quarterly•2024

  • Digital Humanitarianism

    Open Access•Louis Ravn, Fleur Johns et al.•Critical Humanities•2025

  • Governance by Data

    Fleur Johns•Annual Review of Law and Social…•2021

  • Crafting Prefigurative Law in Turbulent Times

    Open Access•D Cooper•Feminist Legal Studies•2023

  • Style Management

    Open Access•Isobel Roele•Law and Critique•2022

  • State Changes

    Open Access•Fleur Johns•Law and Critique•2022

  • Is This the Rhizome? Thinking Together with Fleur Johns

    Open Access•Dimitri Van Den Meerssche, Gerald Gordon•Law and Critique•2022

  • Tech-based Prototypes in Climate Governance

    Open Access•Andrea Leiter, Marie Petersmann•Law and Critique•2022

  • Down and Dirty in the Field of Play

    Open Access•Daniela Gandorfer•Law and Critique•2022

  • From Mock-Up to Module

    Open Access•Deval Desai, Andrew Lang•Law and Critique•2022

  • Gov-tech as capture

    Burcu Baykurt•Information Communication & Society•2025

  • Expert Ignorance

    Open Access•Deval Desai•Expert Ignorance•2023

  • Prototyping as a Means to Innovate Affordable Housing Policies and Provision

    Open Access•Sophia Maalsen, Robyn Dowling et al.•Housing Theory and Society•2025

  • Loops, ladders and links

    Open Access•Marion Fourcade, Fleur Johns•Theory and Society•2020

  • Seeing, speaking and trawling like an authoritarian state

    Open Access•Nandini Sundar•The Journal of Peasant Studies•2026

  • Critique and the Coloniality of Being

    Open Access•David Chandler•Law and Critique•2022

  • Understanding the role of physical spaces in social de-segregations

    Open Access•S Harikrishnan, John Doyle et al.•Land Use Policy•2024

  • Reflexive institutional reform and the politics of the regulatory state of the south

    Open Access•Deval Desai•Regulation & Governance•2024

  • Ordinal citizenship

    Open Access•Marion Fourcade•British Journal of Sociology•2021

  • Seeing Like a State, Enacting Like an Algorithm

    Open Access•Chuncheng Liu•Science Technology & Human Values•2022

  • Making development legible to capital

    Open Access•Abbie Yunita, Felix Biermann et al.•Environment and Planning E Nature…•2023

  • The Temporality of Disaster

    Open Access•Caroline Compton•Anthropocenes – Human Inhuman…•2020

Unique citing works24
Citations per year4
Citation span2020 - 2026 (7)
Citation velocitycurrent
Highly citedNo
Citation typesNeutral: 22
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