| Chapter 1: Geological
History 1000-1700 AD (25-56)
I. Introductory concepts (25-29)
A. Structures: shaped
accumulations of materials; interactions generate new structures
B. Mineralization
1. endo and exoskeletons as flow regulators of far from equilibrium systems
2. Body politic: both somatic and civic considered as interacting material
systems
C. Principles of urban
morphogenesis
1. Intensification of nonhuman energy:
a. Plants trapping solar energy (cereals)
b. Animals used in cereal production
c. Water power (p 34)
2. Cities arise from increased flow, but then their institutions react
back upon flow
a. [but for DG they are also presuppositions of agriculture – V. Gordon
Childe]
II. Medieval European urbanization
[1000-1300] (29-49)
A. Key insight: autocatalysis:
agriculture, monasteries, towns form autocatalytic webs
B. Types of cities
1. Planned, bureaucratic, hierarchical [hierarchies]
2. Spontaneous, interconnected, markets [meshworks]
C. Hierarchies and meshworks:
1. always de facto mixes and becomings:
2. hierarchy of meshworks; meshwork of hierachies
D. Size differences
1. Small market towns
2. Regional capitals
3. Great cities
E. State vs city competition
in Islam and China as stifling autocatalysis
1. McNeill and Braudel: the “Why Europe?” question
F. Money as catalyst
of all flows
1. Political origin of money
2. Standard vs. nonstandard monies
3. Advanced Islamic financial system
4. Intensification of money flow itself
G. Flow intensity breaching
a threshold and triggering self-organizing effects is key to European
explosion, not any psychic property (“thrift”; “rational calculation”)
1. [This is THE principle of critique: you can never appeal to the property
of a substance to explain an underlying process. Rather, you have
to provide an explanation of the morphogenesis of the substance
exhibiting that property. In this case, we have to show how inhabiting
a structured flow of matter and energy at a particular threshold necessitates
the inculcation of “rational calculation” in European town dwellers. In
other words, after a certain point, you have to have good bookkeeping,
or you go bankrupt.]
2. Transaction costs handled by new institutions [Douglas North]; so that
high transaction costs [long-distance trade] are “incubators” of new institutions.
3. Methodological note by DeLanda (37): types of cities provide analysis
of emergent wholes below level of “society”: ecologies of ecologies: interlocking
levels of institutions and cities. Homogeneity is to be morphogenetically
explained.
H. Central Place vs Gateway
City
1. Central place:
a. funneling inward of agricultural surplus
b. hierarchy
c. conservation of native tradition
2. Gateway city:
a. node in trading network
b. meshwork
c. transmission of foreign innovation
d. sequence of core cities (see 39n37 on DeLanda / Braudel vs Wallerstein)
e. psychological structures produced from and reacting back on flows
I. Classical locational
theory in geography [Christaller] assumed rational decision making arriving
a maximal efficiency [neoclassical economic model] for city location:
linearity and absence of friction
1. Nonlinear dynamical models of city development [and markets] assume
friction, uncertainty, information costs as important effects: “bounded
rationality” calls for morphogenetic explanation
2. Bureaucracies also function with bounded rationality in uncertain world;
must analyze not simply the rationality of individual decision makers,
but the dynamics of interacting populations of decision-makers along with
their institutional forms [cultural materials: rules of thumb, skills,
routines] and urban placements: levels of interacting nonlinear dynamic
systems
J. Towns as reservoirs
of cultural materials
1. The argument here about embodied skills vs abstract rationality is
as old as Plato and new as AI (Dreyfus critique).
2. Guilds and new specialities
K. Trade dynamics
1. Import substitution triggering autocatalysis for mid-range cities (Jane
Jacobs)
2. Luxury trade and big firms leading to capitalist anti-markets [economy
of scale]
L. Braudelian critique
of equation of corporations, capitalism, and free markets (and of stages
of capitalism)
1. Corporate capitalists have always been anti-market:
2. Oligopolistic rivalry is not market competition (see 47n58)
3. City monopolies (Venice, Hanseatic League)
4. Critique of left teleologies as linear progressions: need to see capitalist
firms as result of contingent triggering of a virtual bifurcation; and
as being part of total social ecology, existing alongside markets
a. DeLanda here specifies that he equates capitalism with anti-markets
b. Here we need to clarify: for Marx, it is conditions of production,
not market power, that is characteristic of capitalism: commodification
of labor power and extraction of surplus value are the key: realization
of that surplus value can occur in a variety of different exchange systems
(ranging from pure markets to pure monopolies)
5. Strategies of pre-industrial anti-markets: warehousing, long-distance
trade (separating information competencies of producer and consumer by
middleman)
6. Credit as accelerator of anti-markets
III. Slowing down of European urbanization
(1300-1700) (49-55)
A. Selection pressure
for larger towns
B. Consolidation of nation-states
impinged on autonomy of Gateway cities
1. Arms races between nation-states as another autocatalytic web
2. Changed forms of mineralization: walls vs landscape fortifications
C. Europe vs Islamic
and Chinese empires (Kennedy, Braudel, McNeill)
1. Contingent flow intensities rather than property of a substance (“rationality”
of European “peoples”)
2. Empires depend on skills of elites (and the production process of these
elites is fallible, because often nepotistic rather than meritocratic)
to manage flows
3. [Can’t we also say that once consolidated empires tend to convert from
positive feedback [growth] to negative feedback [homeostasis]?
4. Central Place-dominated nations in Europe {France: Paris; Spain: Madrid;
Austria: Vienna} also had slower growth due to consumption by courts and
bureaucracy [here again, DeLanda ignores DG’s “anti-production” analysis:
courts are positive structures for warding off capitalist axiomatic decoding
of flows]
5. Cities like London and Amsterdam as joint Central Place and Gateway
were better suited as engines of imperial growth because of contact w/
sea: tap into oceanic and atmospheric energy via navigational skills.
6. [differences between French vs English slave systems as examined by
Blackburn an interesting point in showing that states are not the root
of all evil: relative ability of English free enterprise / civil society
to influence state policies to support them, but also leave them alone
enabled English slave system to be much more productive than Spanish or
French]
IV. Conclusion (55-56): how
nonlinear science can help social analysis
A. Energy flows at certain
thresholds enable access to natural self-organizing powers
B. Structures generated
by these powers react back on flows as catalysts or inhibitors
1. Mineral infrastructure
2. Institutions
3. Cultural materials
a. Embodied skills
b. Money and credit
c. Rules and norms
4. Wars, arms races, oligopolistic rivalries, state vs city dynamics,
etc
C. Naturalism: autocatalysis
occurs in chemical, biological, and social registers
Chapter 2: Sandstone and Granite (57-70)
I. Introductory concepts: meshwork and hierarchy
A. These are not metaphors,
but common physical processes in different registers
B. Engineering diagrams
[DG: “abstract machines”]: e.g., heat engine
C. Abstract machines
for hierarchies [stratification] and meshworks [consistency]
II. Stratification (59-62)
A. Mechanism: double
articulation:
1. sorting/sedimenting:
a. begin w/ heterogenous collection [matter],
b. then sort into homogenous layers [content]
2. cementing/consolidation [expression]
a. formation of new substances
b. with emergent properties of their own
B. Examples
1. Geological: sedimentary rock (sandstone)
2. Biological: speciation
a. Sorting by selection pressures
b. Consolidation by reproductive isolation
3. Social: class formation
a. Sorting by occupational / role prestige (cf. David Grusky on class)
b. Consolidation by theological and legal codification
III. Consistency (62-67)
A. Preliminary discussion
of Maturana and Varela’s research on autocatalytic loops
1. Catalysts
2. Stable states
3. Growth by drift
a. Immanent development of new attractors / bifurcators
b. Environmental constraint rather than prescription
B. Mechanism
1. Articulation of superpositions (interlocking of heterogenous elements)
a. Interconnection of diverse but overlapping elements
b. In autocatalytic loops, this is joining by functional complementarity
2. Intercalary elements (e.g., chemical catalysts)
3. Capable of generating endogenous stable states
C. Examples
1. Geological: igneous rocks (granite)
a. Interlocking of heterogenous elements: interlocking crystals
b. Intercalary elements: nucleation events, etc: anything that brings
about local immanent articulation
c. Endogenous stable states
2. Biological: ecosystems
a. Interlocking of heterogenous elements:
(1) animals and plants by functional complementarity
(2) food webs: predator/prey and parasite/host
b. Intercalary elements: symbiotic relations aid in building food webs
c. Endogenous stable states
3. Social: markets
a. Interlocking of heterogenous elements: people w/ different need brought
together by price mechanism
b. Intercalary elements: money, property rights, contract enforcement
c. Endogenous stable states
IV. Linear vs nonlinear thought
patterns (67-70)
A. Simple vs complex
causal relations have been preferred area of study
1. Is this because of methodological limitations? [internalist]
2. Or because military projectiles need only linear formulas? [externalist]
B. Norbert Weiner and
cybernetics: negative feedback: hierarchies / homogenization
C. Positive feedback:
diversification: must become meshwork to avoid explosion
D. Experimentation and
evaluation: it’s not the case that meshworks are “better” than hierarchies:
they’re always mixed and becoming in any case: the point is to experiment
and find proper ratio of tendencies toward either pole.
E. DeLanda admits to
a preference for heterogenization and meshworking because of modern dominance
of centralized hierarchies. Is he already outdated in this preference
[cf. Empire]? Or should we be more nuanced? His warnings about increasing
biological homogeneity seem well-founded, but not necessarily at the cultural
level.
Chapter 3: Geological History 1700-2000 (71-99)
I. Introductory concepts: (71-77)
A. Replacement of agricultural
intensification by fossil fuel
1. first coal / steam
2. then oil / electricity
B. Industrial age not
stage of development, but bifurcation
1. Change also in form of anti-production)
2. Same principle of structure formation and back-regulation:
a. energy flow changes towns
b. which then react back on energy flow
C. Types of towns
1. [Old towns: Gateway networks and Central Place hierarchies]
2. New towns: mining and factory towns explosively grow and form conurbations
D. Types of industrialization
1. Economy of scale: large industries; anti-market firms
2. Economy of agglomeration: small, skill-intensive industries
E. Cities as transformers
of matter and energy (as open, dissipative systems)
1. Positive feedback loops closed into autocatalytic systems (meshworks)
2. [Negative feedback loops seeking homeostasis (hierarchies, bureaucracies,
courts)]
II. English system (78-81)
A. Early English attempt
at takeoff (1560-1640) did not reach critical threshold
1. Later anti-market investment in agriculture was critical
2. [Marx / Blackburn analysis of national debt / slave system needed:
e.g, p. 94]
B. Skilled labor reservoirs:
“catalytic information” contra labor theory of value
1. [This needs nuancing: pure proletarianization / deskilling is limit]
2. [Embodied nature of skills allows for capitalist use of starvation
threat]
C. Creation of markets
for realization of industrial output / surplus value
1. Mercantilism and creation of national markets
2. Central bank and national debt: Meshwork of hierarchies growing by
drift
D. Urban morphogenesis
1. Elements of both Gateway and Central Place systems
2. Use of cast iron in factories
3. Railroad and telegraph: land transport
III. US system (81-94)
A. Import substitution
in American coastal cities: meshworks
B. Command hierarchies:
importation of military discipline
1. Relation of military and anti-markets: Venetian and French arsenals
2. American system: deskilling and routinization of processes
3. Non-military anti-market sources of deskilling and discipline
a. Mines
b. [Plantations: cf Mintz, Sweetness and Power]
C. Command vs meshwork
1. Company towns benefitting from economies of scale:
a. homogenization of economic function:
b. anti-market corporate control
2. Heterogenous cities yield economies of agglomeration
a. NB: DeLanda combines both “informal know-how” and “formal knowledge”
as “information” here: but this misses different relations to the body:
skill is essentially embodied, but formal knowledge can be syntactically
encoded (usual sense of “information”) and hence put into a long range
electronic network
3. Command economy holds back innovation but decreases transaction costs
a. Incentive for corporate growth (internalizing supply allows escape
from market)
b. Decrease in labor bargaining power from deskilling and discipline
4. State intervention to formalize and routinize transactions to lower
their costs
5. Joint-stock companies and creation of professional managerial class
a. [See Henwood, Wall Street, for 1980-90s rentier counterattack on managers]
b. Corporate growth: replacing markets w/ hierarchies
c. US vs England difference in growth of joint-stock companies
d. Different forms of corporate integration forming oligopolies / monopolies
D. Electrification
1. Internalization of economies of agglomeration (corporate research labs)
2. Economies of scale in production/transmission/consumption (new uses)
E. Changes in cities:
1. Centripetal: electrification and metallization (skyscraper)
2. Centrifugal: automobile [also land development, “white flight,” TV,
fast food]
a. ‘City-killing’: Jane Jacobs: internalized economies of agglomeration
allowed mobility of industrial production
b. Actually, I think this holds more for material vs immaterial production
(1) In other words, what about gentrification?
(2) suburbs are only a draw for a certain type of person:
(a) 50s organization man
(b) vs 90s creative affective work
(3) FIRE needs cities: NY, London, Tokyo
(a) geography debates about role of global cities (cf. Nigel
Thrift)
IV. Growing role of information
in production (94-99)
A. New institutions:
corporate research lab and technical university
B. Formalized knowledge
vs embodied skill
1. Corporate structure: limitation on command by reliance on tech committees
2. City / hinterland relations: economies of agglomeration
a. Silicon Valley: externalized networks of knowledge
b. Route 128: internalized networks of knowledge
C. Planned vs unplanned
autocatalytic loops: stability vs resilience
D. Transnational corporations
and distributed production / centralized management
1. Conflict w/ nation-states over flow control
2. EU / NAFTA / IMF as transnational administrative organizations
a. Here again, DeLanda’s apolitical perspective comes through: the contingency
of human history is not just the narrative of “missed opportunities to
follow different routes of development” in converting matter/energy flows
into “cultural products” but of struggles for control of control
structures (where catalysts can be experimented with). Here the emphasis
has to be on legal regulation of production processes: what can owners
get away with re: labor?
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