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“Seeing Like a State,” published a decade later, looked at the limitations of state power from the other end, examining — through examples as diverse as 18th-century German scientific forestry and “villagization” in 1970s Tanzania — the way that “high modernist” social engineering doomed itself by ignoring local custom and practical knowledge, which Mr. Scott, borrowing the classical Greek word for wisdom, calls “metis.”

Those policies include a population-resettlement program, the opening of Soviet-style collective farms and a "villagization" effort that moves farmers off their isolated homesteads and into government-built settlements.

The Ethiopian leader has launched two vast population projects that could eventually reshape his nation: resettlement and "villagization."

Addis Ababa's villagization program has relocated more than 3 million peasants from their scattered hilltop farms in Harar and neighboring provinces to centralized villages.

Plans call for villagization ultimately to relocate some 30 million people.