The Hunger Games: Where the Districts Have “Order” Because We Can Count Twelve of Them

In his work Seeing Like a State, James Scott makes the observation that any state or governing body requires some extent of social organization. High levels of migration and complex city landscapes can make collecting taxes or policing populations extremely difficult. While modern civilizations with civil engineers, extensive personal records, and national languages have been able to simplify these processes, simplification has also led to negative consequences. Any agency that is created to organize a large, complex society is also an agency that can be used to oppress individuals.

The grid system that is used to design many neighborhoods is a fantastic strategy for navigation and making it easy for police officers to patrol an area. When the state has decided that certain individuals should be monitored more closely due to their socioeconomic status or race, however, this mechanism becomes a tool that can be used to amplify a state’s oppressive capability. Similarly, the application of surnames to a population makes possible many bureaucratic processes. Conversely, as Scott points out, entire groups of people have been forced to adopt second names in order to benefit the state (that supposedly is meant to serve them) without any cultural consideration or sensitivity. In the fourth century, China began “imposing surnames” in order to enforce “taxes, forced labor, and conscription” (65). Similar arguments could be made about national languages that simplify commerce but strategically give an economic and social disadvantage to new immigrants or foreign visitors.

Like Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games, modern society is divided into states and then subdivided into easily policed districts, and regulations can identify national languages or mandatory annual televised events. While these organizational mechanisms make it easy for the state to perform a job, they do not ensure that the actions of the state are just.