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critique of techno-fetishism and techno-utopianism? I would argue that
there is nothing inherently “wrong” with eco-desire, just the ways in which
eco-desire is mobilized in the cases that I discussed in this topic. What it
more necessary and more complex is what is missing in these cases: a sense
of humility, a “pause” on capitalist growth and development, and the ability
to get past a staunch refusal to see how technological and engineering solu-
tions create their own environmental and social burdens.
What characterizes the city optic (what Warren Magnusson calls seeing
like a city) versus Scott's “seeing like a state” is a fundamental faith in
change, fl uidity, and humility. Scott explores these values suppressed by the
state in the Greek concept of mêtis. Mêtis is practical and cunning intelli-
gence, and it stands as an eff ective antidote to the natural and social failures
of state power. h e essence of mêtis—the characteristic that failed state proj-
ects disregard—is knowledge about when and how to apply rules of thumb to
concrete situations. In his exhaustive study of contemporary Chinese envi-
ronmentalism, the journalist Jonathan Watts interviewed hundreds of dedi-
cated environmentalists working today. In just one tiny yet illustrative
example of mêtis, he quotes an expert on alpine ecology working in Yunnan
to show how village forest collection practices are demonstrably more sus-
tainable than current government and business practice. h is call to revalue
traditional ecological and indigenous knowledge has strong scientifi c bases
when analyzing the data, but it not merely a scientifi c imperative. It is also a
rejection of the state-sanctioned impulse to “see like a state” and to seek
mastery over nature.
We need more humility and self-refl exivity in the pressing nature of
environmental problems in what has been called the Anthropocene, or the
era in which human impacts have shaped geologic time. In the very decade
in which overall carbon emissions from China have exceeded that of the
United States, a sophisticated analysis of global environmental problems,
such as climate change, that takes race, space, history, and global power
