WEBVTT Kind: captions; language: en-us NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.500 Have you ever thought about why modernity has so many straight lines and squares NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (HØY) 00:00:05.500 --> 00:00:11.600 why do we order nature into this particular shape NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:00:11.700 --> 00:00:20.750 some of you may have taken a flight across the US and I think it's really shocking you would see 00:00:20.750 --> 00:00:29.300 hours after hours of squares this grid formations where there are squares inside of squares and this 00:00:29.300 --> 00:00:36.000 right here is just a random part of Indiana you'll see it in many other places as well, modernity 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:42.400 is full of these squares which is sort of when you think about it's an arbitrary way of NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (HØY) 00:00:42.400 --> 00:00:44.700 ordering a landscape NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (HØY) 00:00:44.700 --> 00:00:53.000 why do we do it this way? and then James Scott has one kind of answer which is that it lies in a 00:00:53.000 --> 00:01:01.800 particular way that the state sees things. So you reading an excerpt from a book called seeing like a 00:01:01.800 --> 00:01:12.400 state and it's a very influential book very widely read book and after this book a lot of others have 00:01:12.400 --> 00:01:15.000 taken up this idea of seeing like NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 74% (MEDIUM) 00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:22.200 something something you have stuff like seeing like an oil company seeing like a survey and 00:01:22.200 --> 00:01:28.000 other things that I can't think of right now and some of you may notice that there's a lot here 00:01:28.000 --> 00:01:34.500 that resonates with Foucault if you read him so Scott shares with Foucault many ideas about 00:01:34.500 --> 00:01:42.400 how the states use its citizens they have similar ideas about the universal mission, Foucault has 00:01:42.400 --> 00:01:44.450 the idea of the panopticon NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:01:44.450 --> 00:01:50.700 there's this kind of an idea that we have a fancy modern fantasy that it's possible to have this 00:01:50.700 --> 00:01:57.600 God's eye view of everything from nowhere and part of the argument is that states 00:01:57.600 --> 00:02:06.850 has this urge to create a world where everything is visible and accountable and surveillable NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:02:06.850 --> 00:02:14.700 but what we see in the Scott reading is that modernity doesn't just describe, it also creates the 00:02:14.700 --> 00:02:20.600 things that it wants that it purports to describe so it's not just about measuring the world but 00:02:20.600 --> 00:02:27.600 about creating a world that's measurable not just that they perceive an ordered and measurable World 00:02:27.600 --> 00:02:34.600 instead of a disordered one but there are also actual interventions to make the world in their image 00:02:34.600 --> 00:02:36.850 for instance to remove the things that they NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:02:36.850 --> 00:02:43.400 Cannot easily measure so this is not just about perception not just seeing like a state it's not just 00:02:43.400 --> 00:02:51.100 perceptions it is interventions as well, making something measurable. So Scott writes about the history 00:02:51.100 --> 00:02:57.300 and development of scientific forestry in Germany and there's a really crucial point in this text 00:02:57.300 --> 00:03:03.600 which I'd like to narrow in on, it is one of the steps in the development of forestry in Germany and 00:03:03.600 --> 00:03:06.850 for the Foresters he writes about it was at that time NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 75% (MEDIUM) 00:03:06.850 --> 00:03:13.850 the next logical step in management of the forest after they had mapped the forests NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:03:13.850 --> 00:03:21.800 this step was the attempt to create through careful seeding planting and cutting a forest 00:03:21.800 --> 00:03:29.100 that was easier for state Foresters to count manipulate measure and assess so this is the point 00:03:29.100 --> 00:03:34.200 where they go from measuring to making something that's measurable from assessing to making 00:03:34.200 --> 00:03:39.000 something that's more easily accessible from counting to making something that can be easily be 00:03:39.000 --> 00:03:43.800 counted so before they reach this step what NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:03:43.800 --> 00:03:53.100 Scott describes is a sort of tunnel vision that they have a narrowing ambition that brings forth 00:03:53.100 --> 00:04:00.850 certain things bring certain things into focus while obscuring and excluding a lot of other things 00:04:00.850 --> 00:04:08.400 because it is a synoptic view of a selective reality. So the Foresters in Germany they saw the forest 00:04:08.400 --> 00:04:13.750 with this kind of constricted mission as focused in on the forest as NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 71% (MEDIUM) 00:04:13.750 --> 00:04:19.200 Commercial wood and there were a lot of things that fell outside of this mission such as the 00:04:19.200 --> 00:04:26.200 understory and the animals living in the forest and all of the other parts of trees that were 00:04:26.200 --> 00:04:35.300 not just the log that could be sold for timber, they didn't see the whole complex 00:04:35.300 --> 00:04:41.200 trees Scott says but instead what they saw when they looked at the tree was an abstract tree that 00:04:41.200 --> 00:04:43.700 represented a volume of NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 73% (MEDIUM) 00:04:43.700 --> 00:04:50.500 Lumber. They sold the forest as a resource and he describes how they changed gradually their vocabulary 00:04:50.500 --> 00:04:58.300 to fit with their vision describing not nature but natural resources and not a forest but a 00:04:58.300 --> 00:05:04.900 crop of trees and the forest wasn't living in this Vision it was growing to deliver 00:05:04.900 --> 00:05:07.800 sustainable yield of timber. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 76% (HØY) 00:05:07.800 --> 00:05:14.500 So in the first few pages we're squarely in the realm of knowledge presented by 00:05:14.500 --> 00:05:21.700 These visual metaphors of how the forester see the forest, we get a sense of what their 00:05:21.700 --> 00:05:27.800 vision and their conceptual apparatus must have been like for a forest to be sort of legible as a 00:05:27.800 --> 00:05:29.350 resource NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (HØY) 00:05:29.350 --> 00:05:35.600 but then we get to this crucial point, the point at which the foresters no longer impose 00:05:35.600 --> 00:05:44.400 a logic but actually changed the physical forest in order for it to fit with their vision so 00:05:44.400 --> 00:05:52.200 through a range of interventions you can then go from forests to rationally ordered arrangement of 00:05:52.200 --> 00:05:53.650 trees. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (HØY) 00:05:53.650 --> 00:06:02.000 If at first every forest was the same conceptually sort of in their minds eye then now they 00:06:02.000 --> 00:06:10.500 intervene so as to make every forest as far as possible the same in actual reality so we planted 00:06:10.500 --> 00:06:18.400 monocultures for instance and they produce patches of trees where every tree was of 00:06:18.400 --> 00:06:23.900 the same age even aged patches so they focused on one single species NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:06:23.900 --> 00:06:31.500 That had large areas where every tree was the same age, now at first everything became a lot easier 00:06:31.500 --> 00:06:37.700 right so they could much more easily calculate the yield and growth rates the forest became easier 00:06:37.700 --> 00:06:45.800 to manipulate because there was less complexity and variation fewer other species of trees. 00:06:45.800 --> 00:06:52.100 Another really interesting feature was that this neat arrangement of ordered trees could now be 00:06:52.100 --> 00:06:53.850 surveyed by the chief NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 70% (MEDIUM) 00:06:53.850 --> 00:06:59.600 forester from back in his office, he wouldn't even have to go out there he could read it all from 00:06:59.600 --> 00:07:06.300 graphs and tables it could all be managed based on calculations and assumptions because the forest 00:07:06.300 --> 00:07:12.600 had been shaped according to those assumptions and graphs and tables were accurate measures of the 00:07:12.600 --> 00:07:18.600 forest because the forest was constructed so that they could be accurately represented by those 00:07:18.600 --> 00:07:23.900 graphs and tables and another thing is that this NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:07:23.900 --> 00:07:30.700 kind of scientific forestry involves making universal models if a complex forest in Germany can be 00:07:30.700 --> 00:07:35.900 physically transformed into a rationally ordered arrangement of trees, then it should in principle be 00:07:35.900 --> 00:07:46.000 possible to apply those same principles anywhere. So local variation can be rendered irrelevant 00:07:46.000 --> 00:07:52.500 and because of that this is something that can be done anywhere simply because local 00:07:52.500 --> 00:07:53.700 variation is NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (HØY) 00:07:53.700 --> 00:08:00.000 irrelevant right, so that the trees were in a particular part of Germany shouldn't matter anymore and 00:08:00.000 --> 00:08:06.300 you should be able to do the same thing in California or in India or in Australia or in Tanzania 00:08:06.300 --> 00:08:13.900 or in Norway or wherever and this move of going from measuring to making measurable I think that's a 00:08:13.900 --> 00:08:21.300 move that we see not just in forestry but in a lot of other places as well and we'll get more into 00:08:21.300 --> 00:08:23.950 that next week when we talk about plantations. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (HØY) 00:08:23.950 --> 00:08:29.600 For now let's look at another kind of landscape engineering. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (HØY) 00:08:29.600 --> 00:08:37.200 Jerry Zee in Machine Sky gives us another example. There's a lot that is 00:08:37.200 --> 00:08:42.650 similar to Scott but this is also a challenge or a corrective to some of the things that Scott 00:08:42.650 --> 00:08:52.900 argues, Zee describes a mega project of sand control initiated by the Chinese state. So these 00:08:52.900 --> 00:09:00.300 sandstorms frequently happen in Beijing and sandstorms for Zee this is an interesting argument NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (HØY) 00:09:00.300 --> 00:09:07.400 in itself it's sort of a phenomenon that can't be reduced to either land or whether it's as 00:09:07.400 --> 00:09:15.300 closely tied to the landscape as it is to the wind, so the storms they cover Beijing in 00:09:15.300 --> 00:09:23.000 these encompassing clouds of dust and sand that block out the sun and give the sky this eerie tinge 00:09:23.000 --> 00:09:28.700 as you can see on the picture here and this is what the the Chinese government wants to avoid then 00:09:28.700 --> 00:09:30.250 and so to do that their NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 63% (MEDIUM) 00:09:30.250 --> 00:09:36.000 Ambitions of control you might say they extend into the skies. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 75% (MEDIUM) 00:09:36.000 --> 00:09:43.400 I don't know about you guys but to me this high modernist fantasy of controlling the 00:09:43.400 --> 00:09:49.500 weather it has something almost Godlike about it there's something godlike about being able 00:09:49.500 --> 00:09:56.800 to control the weather right, so this is one of those pinnacles of human efforts to gain mastery over 00:09:56.800 --> 00:10:05.100 nature or at least that's what it seems like, and cloud seeding experiments or projects are a 00:10:05.100 --> 00:10:06.350 good example NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (HØY) 00:10:06.350 --> 00:10:12.450 you might have heard of this so cloud seeding is it's a technology that revolves around spraying 00:10:12.450 --> 00:10:19.700 either dry ice or some kind of salts into clouds from the airplane with the aim of getting those 00:10:19.700 --> 00:10:25.600 clouds to produce rain and as you can see here this is actually done in many places eight 00:10:25.600 --> 00:10:30.500 states in the US are are doing this right now but it's also at the same time very unclear whether or 00:10:30.500 --> 00:10:36.100 not it's actually working so you know in keeping with the theme of you know becoming NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (HØY) 00:10:36.100 --> 00:10:42.100 Godlike and controlling the weather there seems to be an element of Faith also in this these 00:10:42.100 --> 00:10:52.000 projects and but anyway so the Chinese States tries to shape the weather and to control dust 00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:58.400 storm in a somewhat similar but also sort of more indirect way compared to those cloud seeding 00:10:58.400 --> 00:10:59.700 experiments NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:10:59.700 --> 00:11:07.750 so the Chinese government they see the Chinese interior the interior parts of China as a windshed 00:11:07.750 --> 00:11:16.400 for Beijing and you know it's a it's a wind shed it's a similar thing as a watershed right. So 00:11:16.400 --> 00:11:22.000 north of Beijing in the interior parts of the country there are large areas of desert and there 00:11:22.000 --> 00:11:29.900 are also these persistent winds that persistently blow in the same NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 67% (MEDIUM) 00:11:29.900 --> 00:11:40.250 Direction that carries sand southwards so sand dunes up in northern China are in the eyes of Chinese 00:11:40.250 --> 00:11:45.400 landscape managers they are dust storms in the making. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:11:46.400 --> 00:11:55.000 One way to avoid these dust storms is through Sand Dune stabilization upwind of Beijing, 00:11:55.000 --> 00:12:01.500 concretely what they do is they plant seeds in order to make vegetation grow in areas with a lot of 00:12:01.500 --> 00:12:08.000 sand and if there's vegetation there then the wind won't as easily pick up the sand and you won't 00:12:08.000 --> 00:12:09.950 get sandstorms NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 75% (MEDIUM) 00:12:09.950 --> 00:12:17.400 and in the process they sort of they tried to use the patterns of air flow through to 00:12:17.400 --> 00:12:25.300 their advantage. So wind effects the landscape right they create sand dunes and picks up sand and 00:12:25.300 --> 00:12:33.400 so on but the landscape and the vegetation also affects the the movement of the air so at first they 00:12:33.400 --> 00:12:40.550 plant where they can where it's possible to plant things and then those first plants create NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (HØY) 00:12:40.550 --> 00:12:50.050 wind Shadow which we say we say in Norwegian "le" wind shadow which creates more possible plants 00:12:50.050 --> 00:12:58.500 places to plant after that and and on and on so it goes. And all this very very local on-the-ground 00:12:58.500 --> 00:13:08.400 stuff that's going on in the north of China this stuff affects the skies in in Beijing so the 00:13:08.400 --> 00:13:10.300 interaction that the very local NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:13:10.300 --> 00:13:18.900 interaction between wind sand dunes and vegetation up in the Arid parts of northern China can 00:13:18.900 --> 00:13:23.450 either become or prevent sandstorms in Beijing NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (HØY) 00:13:23.450 --> 00:13:32.250 the Chinese Foresters then in theory can manipulate Beijing Skies by shaping landscapes in the North. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:13:32.250 --> 00:13:40.600 Zee writes about this as a strategy for affecting the Dynamics of sand and wind and they sort of 00:13:40.600 --> 00:13:48.200 they work with the landscape to channel the wind and in this process they try to turn the wind from 00:13:48.200 --> 00:13:57.900 a troublesome problem thing into something that they can harness as a tool and the same with sand 00:13:57.900 --> 00:14:02.800 dune so they turn something troublesome the dunes where the wind can easily pick up NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (HØY) 00:14:02.800 --> 00:14:10.100 sand into a resource or a tool and namely a vegetated landscape which then acts as a barrier for 00:14:10.100 --> 00:14:18.100 sandstorm so for the land managers landscapes in northern China our approach as components for the 00:14:18.100 --> 00:14:25.100 modulation of downwind sky, the Landscapes up there are like buttons they can push and tweak to 00:14:25.100 --> 00:14:33.000 change or program the weather in China these Landscapes are sort of in a sense like NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (HØY) 00:14:33.000 --> 00:14:44.000 the control panels for Beijing skies, and here we see a shift again shift from problems turning 00:14:44.000 --> 00:14:51.050 Troubles into tools and this is a different shift than the German Foresters shift from 00:14:51.050 --> 00:14:56.800 measuring forests to making forts measurable and I think that the difference highlights two 00:14:56.800 --> 00:15:00.800 different kinds of landscape engineering. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (HØY) 00:15:01.000 --> 00:15:09.300 One thing is that air and wind much more clearly and dramatically than European forests poses some 00:15:09.300 --> 00:15:18.400 challenges to notions of mastery and control you just simply cannot master the wind right, you cannot 00:15:18.400 --> 00:15:25.800 create a weather system that fits with your ambition and your plans and your tables and your 00:15:25.800 --> 00:15:31.650 calculations that just doesn't work you might as well try NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (HØY) 00:15:31.650 --> 00:15:38.900 catch the wind as the old song goes right. Another point is that engineering is not always about 00:15:38.900 --> 00:15:47.100 Mastery and control it might also be about experimental programming of unruly more than human 00:15:47.100 --> 00:15:55.700 machines so according to Zee there's an appreciation here of the unruliness of landscapes and 00:15:55.700 --> 00:16:01.700 there's an appreciation that they are more than human and this is also in reference to NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:16:01.700 --> 00:16:08.600 Anna Tsing but it's still transforming them so while there's an appreciation that 00:16:08.600 --> 00:16:15.300 they are unruly and more than human is still an effort to transform them from something 00:16:15.300 --> 00:16:17.900 Troublesome into a resource. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:16:17.900 --> 00:16:25.200 It's not also about forcing nature into the straight lines of modern fantasies these are not 00:16:25.200 --> 00:16:32.300 mastered environments but environments approached through an engineering rationality and this is an 00:16:32.300 --> 00:16:40.750 important point to end with here, so the engineering rationality sees the world kind of as a machine 00:16:40.750 --> 00:16:47.600 where anything can be made into an input that you can tweak and and NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:16:47.600 --> 00:16:54.400 and then outputs that you can get from tweaking inputs, where every element has a function and can be 00:16:54.400 --> 00:17:01.000 manipulated to yield some kind of output force for instance in this imaginary is an element 00:17:01.000 --> 00:17:06.599 you can manipulate to yielding outputs the same wind it's it's something at that you can harness 00:17:06.599 --> 00:17:13.200 in order to draw some resource, nature becomes a set of tools and resources and then the 00:17:13.200 --> 00:17:17.550 engineers can then harness landscape processes and proclivities in NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:17:17.550 --> 00:17:25.300 in their engineering puzzles, this logic works not just within China but on a larger scale as well 00:17:25.300 --> 00:17:33.100 where the world the whole world is sort of seen as a machine that is tweakable and and tunable by 00:17:33.100 --> 00:17:35.500 the Chinese States.