The state's increasing concern with productivity, health, sanitation, education, transportation, mineral resources, grain production, and investment … - James C. Scott

Changing the rules of regulations is simpler than eliciting the behavior that conforms to them.

Redesigning the physical layout of a village is simpler than transforming its social and productive life. For obvious reasons, political elites–particularly authoritarian high-modernist elites–typically begin with the changes in the formal structure and rules.

Following the illuminating studies of Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, we can find in the Greek concept of metis a means of comparing the forms of knowledge embedded in local experience with the more general, abstract knowledge deployed by the state and its technical agencies.