Recommended books about an idea of uniformity?

September 16, 2018 7:58 AM

I'm interest to learn more about rise of uniformity during 17th and 18th century and its application in the culture, science and society.

I read Seeing Like a State by J. C. Scott, Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle by S. J. Gould and From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932 by D. Hounshell.

Can you provide some more good books on the era or shed more light on the underlining philosophical questions?

Thank you.

posted by salowski to Education (5 answers total)

Between Science and Literature by Ira Livingston.
posted by Buddy_Boy at 8:18 AM on September 16, 2018 [2 favorites]

A couple of your examples remind me of Control through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management by JoAnne Yates.
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:48 AM on September 16, 2018

The first thing that comes to mind is Discipline and Punish, by Michel Foucault.
posted by lilies.lilies at 12:24 PM on September 16, 2018 [1 favorite]

Chris Bayly's sprawling & still-classic Birth of the Modern world has an embedded argument about global modernity after the 1750s as being fundamentally about the accelerating uniformity of societies across the world.
posted by idlethink at 12:49 PM on September 16, 2018

Henry Glassie wrote about this in relation to common buildings. I know there's a section in his book Vernacular Architecture, but it appears in other of his writing as well.
posted by sepviva at 1:43 PM on September 18, 2018