Manuel de Landa Part 2: Capitals and Metropolises

SECOND LECTURE: Capitals and Metropolises.

How should we conceptualize cities?. Where in the continuum between individuals and societies should they be located? This class tackles this question by examining social entities smaller than cities (communities, organizations) as well as larger ones (provinces, nation states). It also introduces a basic typology of urban centers. Cities from ancient times have engaged in two quite different types of activities, one characterized by centralized decision-making, the other by multiple decisions made in a decentralized way. Those functions we associate with the government of cities are of the first type, while those related to trade are of the second type. Some urban centers tend to be dominated by one or another of these types of activities, becoming either the capital or organizing center of a hierarchy of towns, on one hand, or a gateway to foreign markets linked into a transnational network, on the other.

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Education

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• deLanda

[tronuberfist]

When talking about various open source projects (Linux etc.), it would be helpful to compare them to the "free software movement". as in GNU/Linux. This can lead to very interesting differences between and insights into copyright, patent, and "intellectual property".

[Krelianx]

What a sack of inanity. I think DeLanda's books have much of worth, but this is an utterly patronizing flood of banalities: there are assemblages of people who interact and whose emergent properties are not reducible to those of individuals, these include factors such as reputation, societal imposition of punishment, collective memory support, bonds of solidarity, etc. All of this to say: people assemble into societies which do all kinds of stuff individuals by themselves can't. Honestly: meh.

[paintspace]

Would you please change the syndication settings to allow viewing via mobile devices.