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Manuel DeLanda 2006 Introduction

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Assemblages against Totalities 8
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3 Persons and Networks 47

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v
 Introduction

The purpose of this book is to introduce a novel approach to s ocial

ontology. Like any other ontological investigation it concerns itself with
the question of what kinds of entities we can legitimately commit
o u rselves to assert exist. The ontological stance taken here has
traditionally been labelled 'realist': a stance u sually defined by a
commitment to the mind - independent existence of reality. In the case
of social ontology, however, this definition must be qualified because
most social entities, from small communities to large nation-states, would
disappear altogether if human minds ceased to exist. In this sense social
entities are clearly not mind-independent. Hence, a realist approach to
social ontology must assert t h e a utonomy of social entities from the
conceptions we have of them. To say that social entities have a reality that
is conception-independent is simply to assert that the t h eories, models
and classifications we use to study them may be objectively wrong, that
is, that they may fail to capture the real history and internal dynamics of
those entities.
There are, however, important cases in which the very models and
classifications social scientists use affect the behaviour of the e ntities
being studied. Political or medical classifications using categories like
'female refugee' or 'hyperactive child', for example, may interact with the
people being classified if they become aware of the fact that they are
being so classified. In the first case, a woman fleeing terrible conditions in
her home country may become aware of the criteria to classify 'female
refugees' used by the country to which she wants to emigrate, and
change her behaviour t o fit that criteria. In this case, a n ontological

1
 I N T RO D UCT I O N
A N E W P H I L O S O P H Y O F S O C I ET Y

other social entltIes i s treated as conceptjon-independent. This realist

commitment to the referent of the term 'female refugee' would be hard to
solution is diametrically opposed to the idealist one espoused by
maintain, since the very use of the term may be creating its own
�
phenomenologically influenced sociologists, the so-cal ed 'social con­
referents. On the other hand, accepting that the referents of some general
structivists'. In fact. as Hacking points out, these soclOloglsts use the term
terms may in fact be moving targets does not undermine social realism: to
'construction' in a purely metaphorical sense, ignoring 'its literal
explain the case of the female refugee one has to invoke, in addition to
meaning, that of building or assembling from parts'.2 By contrast, the
her awareness of the meaning of the term 'female refugee', the objective
realist social ontology to be defended in this book is all about objective
existence of a whole set of institutional organizations (courts, immigra­
processes of assembly: a wide range of social entities, from persons to
tion agencies, airports and seaports, detention centres), institutional
nation-states, will be treated as assemblages constructed through very
norms and objects (laws, binding court decisions, passports) and
specifiC historical processes, processes in which language plays an
institutional practices (confining, monitoring, interrogating), forming
important but not a constitutive role_
the context in which the interactions between categories and their
A theory of assemblages, and of the processes that create and stabilize
referents take place. In other words, the problem for a realist social
their historical identity, was created by the philosopher Gilles DeJeuze in
ontology arises here not because the meanings of all general terms shape
the last decades of the twentieth century. This theory was meant to apply
the very perception that social scientists have of their referents, creating a
to a wide variety of wholes constructed from heterogeneous parts.
vicious circle, but only in some special cases and in the context of
Entities ranging from atoms and molecules to biological organisms,
institutions and practices that are not reducible t o meanings. As the
species and ecosystems may be usefully treated as assemblages and
philosopher Ian Hacking writes:
therefore as entities that are products of historical processes. This implies,
of course, that one uses the term 'historical' to include cosmological and
I do not necessarily mean that hyperactive children, as individuals, on
evolutionary history, not only human history. Assemblage theory may
their own, become aware of how they are classified, and thus react to
also be applied to social entities, but the very fact that it cuts across the
the classification. Of course they may, but the interaction occurs in the
nature-culture divide is evidence of its realist credentials. It may be
larger matrix of institutions and practices surrounding this classifica­
objected, however, that the relatively few pages dedicated to assemblage
tion. There was a time when children described as hyperactive were
theory in the work of Deleuze (much of it in partnership with Felix
placed in 'stirn-free' classrooms: classrooms in which stimuli were
Guattari) hardly amouiJt to a fully-fledged theory.3 And this is, in fact.
minimized, so that children would have no occasion for excess
correct. But the concepts used to specify the characteristics of assemblages
activity. Desks were far apart. The walls had no decoration. The
in those few pages (concepts such as 'expression' or 'territorialization')
windows were curtained. The teacher wore a plain black dress with no
are highly elaborated and connected to yet other concepts throughout
ornaments. The walls were designed for minimum noise reflection.
Deleuze's work. Taking into account the entire network of ideas within
The classification hyperactive did not interact with the children simply
which the concept of 'assemblage' performs its conceptual duties, we do
because individual children had heard the word and changed
have at least the rudiments of a theory. But this, in turn, raises another
accordingly. It interacted with those who were so described in
difficulty. The definitions of the concepts used to characterize assemblages
institutions and practices that were predicated upon classifying
are dispersed throughout Deleuze's work: part of a definition may be in
children that way.!
one book, extended somewhere else, and qualified later in some obscure
essay. Even in those cases where conceptual definitions are easy to locate,
In short, acknowledging the existence of troublesome cases in which
they are usually not given in a style that allows for a straightforward
the meanings of words affect their own referents in no way compromises
interpretation, This would seem to condemn a book on assemblage
a realist approach to institutions and practices. On the contrary, a correct
theory to spend most of its pages doing hermeneutics.
solution to this problem seems to demand an ontology in which the
To sidestep this difficulty I have elsewhere reconstructed the whole of
existence of institutional organizations, interpersonal networks and many
3
2
 A NEW P H I L O S O P H Y O F S O C IETY
Deleuzian ontology, including those parts that bear
assemblage theory, in a clear, analytic style that makes a preoccupation
with what Deleuze 'really meant' almost completdy unn ecessary.4 In this
book I will make use of a similar strategy: I will give my own definitions
of the technical terms, u s e my own arguments 10 justify them, and use
entirely different theoretical resources to develop them. This manreuvre
will not completely eliminate the need to engage
hermeneutics but it will allow me to confine that part of the job
footnotes. Readers who fee! that the theory devdoped here is not strictly
speaking Deleuze's own arc welcome to call it 'neo-assemblage theory',
'assemblage theory 2.0', or some other name.
The first two chapters o f this book introduce the fundamental ideas of
sllch a reconstructed theory of assemblages. This theory must, first of alL
account for the synthesis of the properties o f a whole not reducible to its
parts. In this synthetic function assemblage theory has rivals that are
historically much older, such as Hegelian dialectics. Thus, an important
task, one to be carried out in Chapter I, is to contrast assemblages and
Hegelian totalities. The main difference is that in assemblage theory the
fact that a whole possess synthetic or emergent properties does not
preclude the possibility of analysis. In other words,
totalities, the parts of an assemblage do not form a seamless whole. In
Chapter 2 I will argue that once historical processes are used to explain
the synthesis of inorganic, organic and social assemblages there is no need
for essentialism to account for their enduring identities. This allows
assemblage theory to avoid one of the main shortcomings of other forms
of social realism: an ontological commitment to the existence of essences.
Once the basic ideas have been laid out, the next three chapters apply
the assemblage approach to a concrete case-study: the problem of the link
between the micro- and the macro-levels of social reality. Traditionally,
this problem has been framed in reductionist terms. Reductionism in
social science is often illustrated with the methodological individualism
characteristic of microeconomics, in which all that matters are rational
decisions made by individual persons in isolation from one another. But
the phenomenological individualism of social constructivism is also
reductionist even though its conception of the micro-level is not based on
individual rationality but on the routines and categories that structure
individual experience. In neither one of these individualisms is there a
denial that there exists, in a ddition 10 rationality or experience,
something like 'society as a whole'. But such an entity is conceptualized
4 5
INTRO D U C T I O N
directly on properties that a r e more
a s a mere aggregate, t h a t is, as a whole without
solu tions
than the sum of its parts. For this reason we may refer to these
to the micro-macro problem as 'micro-redu ctionist'.
The other position that has been historicaJIy adopted towards the
problem is that social strw:.ture is what really exists,
micro-macro
individual persons being mere products of the society in which they are
in Deleuzian
born. The young Durkheim, the older Marx, and functionalists such as
10
Talcott Parsons are examples of this stance. These authors do not deny the
existence of individual persons but assume that once they have been
socialized by the family and the school. they have so internalized the
values of the societies or the social classes to which they belong that their
allegiance to a given social order may be taken for granted. This tends 10
make the micro-level a mere epiphenomenon and for this reason this
stance may be labelled 'macro-reduction ist'. There are many other
positions taken in social science towards the problem of the articulation of
the micro and the macro, including making an intermediate level. such a s
praxis, t h e true core of social reality, with both individual agency and
social structure being byproducts of this fundamental level. This seems to
be the stance taken by such prominent contemporary sociologists as
unlike organic Anthony Giddens, a stance that may be labelled 'meso-reductionist,.5
These three reductionist positions do not, of course, exhaust the
possibilities. There arc many social scientists whose work focuses on social
entities that arc neither micro nor macro: Erving Goffman's work on
conversations and other social encounters; Max Weber's work on
institutional organizations; Charles TiIIy's work on social justice move­
ments; not to mention the large n u mber of sociologists working on the
theory of social networks, or the geographers studying cities and regions.
What the work of these au thors reveals is a large number of intermediate
levels between the micro and the macro, the ontological status of which
has not been properly conceptualized. Assemblage theory can provide the
frame work in which the contributions of these and other authors
(including the work of those holding reductionist stances) may be
properly located and the connections bet ween them fully elucidated. This
is because assemblages, being wholes whose properties emerge from the
interactions between parts, can be u s e d to model any of these
intermediate entities: interpersonal networks and institutiona l organiza­
tions arc assemblages of people; sodal justice movements are assemblages
of several networked communities; central governments are assemblages
of several organizations; cities are assemblages of people, networks.
 A NEW PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIETY INTRODUCTION

that I use the expression 'larger-scale'. Two

organizations, as well as of a variety of infrastructural components, from sense, not the geometric one.
buildings and streets to conduits for matter and energy nows; nation­ rpersonal networks, for example, will be compared in scale by the
inte
not by the extem of the geographical
states are assemblages of cities, the geographical regions organized by number of members they contain
a local community will be
cities, and the provinces that several such regions form. area they occupy, so that a network structuring
one linking geographical ly dispersed friends if it has
Chapters 3, 4 and 5 take the reader on a journey that, starting at the said to be larger than
rs, regardless of the fact that the latter may span the entire
personal (and even subpersonal) scale, climbs up one scale at a time all the more membe
way to territorial states and beyond. It is only by experiencing this upward Also, being larger in only one of the properties differentiating the
planet.
movement. the movement that in reality generates all these emergent entities to be discussed here. There are many others properties
social
or the degree of
wholes, that a reader can get a sense of the irreducible social complexity (such as the density of the connections in a network,
characterizing the contemporary world. This does not imply that the centralization of authority in an organization) that are not extensive but
will be
ontological scheme proposed here is not applicable to simpler or older intensive, and that are equally important. Finally, social entities
societies: it can be used in truncated form to apply it to societies without characteriz ed in this book not only by their properties but also by their

cities or large central governments, for example. I make, on the other hand,
no effort to be multicultural: all my examples corne from either Europe or
the USA. This simply reflects my belief that some of the properties of sodal
assemblages, such as interpersonal networks or institutional organizations,
remain approximately invariant across different cultures. But even the
illustrations from Western nations are often sketchy and, with the
exception of Chapter 5, the historical aspects of my examples are not fully
explored. This shortcoming is justified by the fact that my older publications
capacities, that is, by what they are capable of doing when they interact
with other social entities.
To those readers who may be disappointed by the lack of cross-cultural
comparisons, or the absence of detailed analyses of social mechanisms, or
the poverty of the historical vignettes, I can only say that none of these
worthy tasks can be really carried out within an impoverished ontological
framework. When social scientists pretend to be able to perform these
tasks without ontological foundations, they are typically using an

have already engaged history and historical dynamics, and that in this book
I am exclusively interested in a clarification of the ontological status of the
entities that are the a<.1ors of my earlier historical narratives.6 The shortage
of historical examples is also intended to reduce the time the reader spends
at each level of scale, that is, to increase the speed of the upward
movement, since for this book it is the reader's experience of the journey
from the micro to the macro that matters the most. It is my hope that once
implicit, and thereby uncritically accepted, ontology. There is simply no
way out of this dilemma. Thus, while philosophers cannot, and should
not, pretend to do the work of social scientists for them, they can greatly
contribute to the job of ontological clarification. This is the task that this
book attempts to perform.
Manuel DeLanda

the complexity of that forgotten territory between the micro and the macro New York, 2005

is grasped at visceral level. the intellectual habit to privilege one or the

other extreme will become easier to break.
On the other hand, a solution to the micro-macro problem in terms of
a multiplicity of social entities operating at intermediate levels of scale
calls for a few words to clarify the meaning of the expression 'larger­
scale'. Its usual meaning is geometric, as when when one says that a
street is the longest one in a city, or that one nation-state occupies a larger
area than another. But there is also a physical meaning of the expression
that goes beyond geometry. In physics, for example, length, area and
volume are classified as extensive properties, a category that also includes
amount of energy and number of components. It is in this latter extensive

6 7

1 Cicero,
Assemblages against Totalities
The p u rpose of this chapter is to introduce the theory of assemblages. Bu
this introduction is not meant as a n end in itself, but as a mean s t
elucidate the proper ontological status of the entities that are invoked b
sociologists and other social scientists. Is there, for example, such a thin
as society as a whole? Is the commitment to assert the existence of sue
an entity legitimate? And, is denying the reality of such an emit
equ ivalent to a commitment to the existence of o nly individual person
and their families? The answer to all these questions is a definitive no, bu
several obstacles must be removed before j ustifying this negativ
response. Of all the obstacles standing in the way of an adequate socia
ontology none is as entrenched as the organismic metaphor. In its leas
sophisticated form this stumbling-block involves making a superficia
analogy between society and the human body, and to postulate that jus
as bodily organs work together for the organism as a whole, so th
function of social institutions is to work in harmony for the bendit 0
society. As historians of social thought Howard Becker and Harry Harne
have noted, there arc many variants of this centu ries-old metaphoL 80m
more sophisticated than others:
The theory of the resemblance between classes, groups, and institu­
tions in society and the organs of the individual is as old as soci
theory itself. We have already noted its presence in Hindu soci
thought a nd have also called attention to the fact that Aristotle, ill
book IV of his Politics, sets forth this organismic analogy with precisio
and clarity. The same conception appears clearly in the writings
8 9
. ASSEMBLAGES AGAINST TOTALITIES
Livy, Seneca, a n d Paul. In the Middle Ages elaborate
anthropomorphic a nalogies were drawn by John o f Salisbury a n d
Nicholas of Cues. In the early modem period, Hobbes a nd Rousseau
contrasted the organism and the state, holding that the organism was
the product of nature while the state was an artificial creation. In the
late eighteenth and e a rly nineteenth century fanciful notions of the
social and political organism appeared with such writers as Hegel,
Schelling, Krause, Ahrens, Schmitthenner, a n d Waitz.l
In the late nineteenth century the organismic metaphor achieved its
first systematic development in the work of Herbert Spencer a n d reached
its pinnacle of influence a few decades later in the work of Talcott
Parsons, the most important figure of the f u nctionalist school of
sociology. After this, the use of the organism as a metaphor declined a s
sociologists rejected functionalism, some because of its emphasis o n social
integration and its disregar d for conflict, others because of its focus o n
social structure a t the expense of phen omenological experience. But a
more sophisticated form of the basic metaphor still exerts considerable
influence in most schools of SOCiology, and in this form it is much more
difficult to eliminate. This version i nvolves not an analogy but a general
theory about the relations between parts and wholes, wholes that
constitute a seamless totality or that display an organic unity. The basic
concept in this theory is what we may call relations of imeriority: the
component parts are constituted by the very relations they have to other
parts in the whole. A part detached from such a whole ceases to be what it
is, since being this particular part is one of its constitutive properties. A
whole in which the component parts are self-subsistent and their
relations are external to each other does not possess an organic u nity.
As Hegel wrote: 'This is what constitutes the character of mecha nism,
namely, that whatever relation obtains between the things combined,
this relation is extraneous to them that does not concern their nature at all,
and even if it is accompanied by a semblance of u nity it remains nothing
more than composition, mixture, ag,qregation, and the Iike:2
Thus, in this conception wholes possess an inextricable u n i ty in which
there is a strict reciprocal determination between parts. This version of
organismic theory is much harder to eliminate because it is not just a
matter of rej ecting an old worn-out image and because its impact on
SOCiology goes beyond fun ctionalism. A good contemporary example is
the work of the influential sociologist Anthony Giddens, who attempts to
 ASSEMBLAGES AGAINST TOTALITIES
A NEW PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIETY

y of relations implies a certain autonomy for the

transcend the duality of agency and structure by arguing for their mulu words, the exteriorit
constitution: agency is constituted by its involvement in practice whic or as Deleuze puts it, it implies that 'a relation may
terms they relate,
changing'? Relations of exteriority also imply
in turn, reproduces structure. Structure is conceived as consisting change without the terms
of the component parts can never explain the relations
behavioural procedures and routines, and of material and symboIi that the properties
that is, 'relations do not have as their causes
resources, neither one of which possesses a separate existence outside which constitute a whole,
of the [compon ent partsJ between which they are
their instamiation in actual practice. 3 In turn, the practices whle the properties
instantiate rules and mobilize resources are conceived by Giddens as . :8 although they may be caused by the exercise of a
established .

cominuous flow of action 'not composed of an aggregate or series 0 ent's capacitie s. In fact, the reason why the properties of a whole
compon
its parts is that they are the result not of an
separate intemions, reasons, and motives'.4 The end result of this is cannot be reduced to those of
properties but of the actual exercise
seamless whole in which agency and structure mutually constitute o n aggregation of the components' own
s do depend on a component's
another dialectically. 5 of their capacities. These capacitie
since they involve reference
Following Hegel, other defenders of this approach argue that withou properties but cannot be reduced to them
relations of interiority a whole cannot have emergem propertie s of other interacti ng entities. Relations of exteriority
to the propertie
becoming a mere aggregation of the properties of its components. e that assembla ges may be taken apart while at the same time
guarante
may result in a true
may be argued, however, that a whole may be both analysable int allowing that the interactions between parts
separate parts and at the same time have irreducible properties, propertie synthesiS.
the interiority of relations tend to use
that emerge from the interactions between parts. As the philosopher While those favouring
towards other
science Mario Bunge remarks, the 'possibility of analysis does not entai organisms as their prime example, Deleuze gravitates
ns, such as the symbiosis of plants and
redU(·tion, and explanation of the mechanisms of emergence does no kinds of biological illustratio
In this case we have relations of exteriority between
explain emergence away'.6 Allowing the possibility of complex interac pollinating insects.
tent componen ts such as the wasp and the orchid relations
tions between component parts is crucial to define mechanisms 0 self-subsis
n. This
emergence, but this possibility disappears if the parts are fused togethe which may become obligatory in the course of coevolutio
A
into a seamless web. Thus, what needs to be challenged is the very idea 0 illustrates another difference between assemblages and totalities.
seamless whole is inconceivable except as a synthesis of these very parts,
relations of imeriority. We can distinguish, for example, the propertie
defining a given emity from its capacities to interact with other entities that is, the linkages between its components form logically necessary
While its properties are given and may be denumerable as a closed list, i relations which make the whole what it is. But in an assemblage these
capacities are not given - they may go unexercised if no entity suitable fo relations may be only contingently obligatory. While logically necessary
interaction is around - and form a potentially open list, since there is n relations may be investigated by thought alone, contingently obligatory
ones involve a consideration of empirical questions, such as the
way to tell in advance in what way a given entity may affect or be affecte
by innumerable other entities. In this other view, being part of a who} coevolutionary history of two species. In addition to this Deleuze

involves the exercise of a part's capacities but it is not a constitutiv considers heterogeneity of components an important characteristk of

property of it. And given that an unexercised capacity does not affe assemblages. Thus, he would consider ecosystems as assemblages of

what a component is, a part may be detached from the whole whil thousands of different plant and animal species, but not the species

preserving its identity. themselves, since natural selection tends to homogenize their gene pools.

Today, the main theoretical alternative to organic totalities is what t h In what follows I will not take heterogeneity as a constant property of

philosopher Gilles Deleuze calls assemblages, wholes chara('terized b assemblages but as a variable that may take different values. This will

relations of exteriority. These relations imply, first of all, that a componen allow me to consider not only species but also biological organisms as

part of an assemblage may be detached from it and plugged into a

asse mblages, instead of having to introduce another category for them as

different assemblage in whkh its interactions are different. In other does Deleuze.9 Conceiving an organism as an assemblage implies that

11
10
 A N E W P H I LOSO P H Y OF SOCI E T Y
despite the tight integration between its component organs, the relations
between them are not logically necessary but only contingently
obligatory: a historical result of their close coevolution. In this way
assemblage theory deprives organismic theories of their most cherished
exemplar.
In addition to the exteriority of relations, the concept of assemblage is
defined along two dimensions. One dimension or axis defines the variable
roles which an assemblage's components may play. from a purely material
role at one extreme of the axis, to a purely expressive role at the other
extreme. These roles are variable and may occur in mixtures. that is, a
given component may play a mixture of material and expressive roles by
exercising different sets of capacities. The other dimension defines
variable processes in which these components become involved and that
either slabilize the identity of an assemblage, by increasing its degree of
internal homogeneity or the degree of sharpness of its boundaries, or
destabilize it. The former are referred to as processes of territorialization
and the latter as processes of deterritorialization. iO One and the same
assemblage can have components working to stabilize its identity as well
as components forcing it to change or even transforming it into a different
assemblage. In face one and the same component may participate in both
processes by exercising different sets of capacities. Let me give some
simple social examples of these four variables.
The components of social assemblages playing a material role vary
widely, but at the very least involve a set of human bodies properly
oriented (physically or psychologically) towards each other. The classic
example of these assemblages of bodies is face-to-face conversations, but
the interpersonal networks that structure communities, as well as the
hierarchical organizations that govern cities or nalion-states, can also
serve as illustrations. Community networks and institutional organiza­
tions are assemblages of bodies. but they also possess a variety of other
material components. from food and physical l abour, to simple tools and
complex machines, to the buildings and neighbourhoods serving as their
physical locales. Illustrating the components playing an expressive role
needs some elaboration because in assemblage theory expressivity cannot
be reduced to language and symbols. A main component of conversations
is, of course, the content of the talk. but there are also many forms of
bodily expression (posture, dress, facial gestures) that are not linguistic. In
addition, there is what participants express about themselves not by what
they say but by the way they say it or even by their very choice of topic.
12
ASSEMBLAGES A G A I NS T TOT A L I T I ES
These are nonlinguistic social expressions which matter from the point of
view of a person's reputation (or the image he or she tries to project in
conversations) as much as what the person expresses linguistically.
Similarly, an important component of an interpersonal network is the
expressions of solidarity of its members, but these can be either linguistic
(promises, vows) or behavioural, the solidarity expressed by shared
sacrifice or mutual help even in the absence of words. Hierarchical
organizations, in turn, depend on expressions of legitimacy, which may
be embodied linguistically (in the form of beliefs about the sources of
authority) or in the behaviour of their members, in the sense that the
very act of obeying commands in public, in the absence of physical
coercion, expresses acceptance of legitimate authority.!l
The concept of territorialization must be first of all understood literally.
Face-to-face conversations always occur in a particular place (a street­
comer, a pub, a church). and once the participants have ratified one
another a conversation acquires well-defined spatial boundaries. Simi­
larly, many interpersonal networks define communities inhabiting spatial
territories, whether ethnic neighbourhoods or small towns. with well­
defined borders. Organizations, in tum, usually operate in particular
buildings, and the jurisdiction of their legitimate authority usually
coincides with the physical boundaries of those buildings. The exceptions
arc governmental organizations, but in this case too their jurisdictional
boundaries tend to be geographical: the borders of a town, a province or a
whole country. So, in the first place. processes of territorialization are
processes that define or sharpen the spatial boundaries of actual
territories. Territorialization, on the other hand, also refers to non-spatial
processes which increase the internal homogeneity of an assemblage,
such as the sorting processes which exclude a certain category of people
from membership of an organization, or the segregation processes which
increase the ethnic or racial homogeneity of a neighbourhood. Any
process which either destabilizes spatial boundaries or increases internal
heterogeneity is considered deterritorializing. A good example is com­
munication technology, ranging from writing and a reliable postal
service, to telegraphs, telephones and computers, all of which blur the
spatial boundaries of social entities by eliminating the need for co­
presence: they enable conversations to take place at a distance, allow
interpersonal networks to form via regular correspondence, phone calls
or computer communications, and give organizations the means to
operate in different countries at the same time.
13
 ASSEMBLAGES AGAINST TOTALITIES
A NEW PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIETY

While the decomposition of an assemblage into its different parts, and linked to spatial relations of contiguity, linguistic vocalizations display a

the assignment of a material or expressive role to each component, temporal linearity that endows its information patterns with an even

exemplifies the analytic side of the approach, the concept of territor­ reater autonomy from their material carrier. J3 These two specialized

ialization plays a synthetic role, since it is in part through the more or less �nes of expression must be considered assemblages in their own right.

permanent articulations produced by this process that a whole emerges Like all assemblages they exhibit a part-to-whole relation: genes are made

from its parts and maintains its identity once it has emerged. But there is up of linear sequences of nucleotides, and are the component parts of

another synthetic process in assemblage theory that complements chromosomes; words are made of linear sequences of phonetic sounds or

territorialization: the role played in the production and maintenance of written letters, and are the component parts of sentences. Some of these

identity by specialized expressive entities such as genes and words. component parts play a material role, a physical substratum for the

Although Deleuze considers all entities, even nonbiological and nonsocial information, and through elaborate mechanisms this information can be

ones, as being capable of expression, he argues that the historical expressed as proteins, in the case of genetic materials, or as meanings, in

appearance of these specialized entities allowed a great complexification the case of linguistic ones.14

of the kinds of wholes that could be assembled in this planet. Let me «

In assemblage theory, these two specialized expressive media are

i
elaborate this point starting with the idea that physical or chemical viewed as the basis for a second synthetic process. While territorialization

entities are capable of expression. When atoms interact with radiation provides a first articulation of the components, the coding performed by
� genes or words supplies a second articulation, consolidating the effects of
their internal structure creates patterns in this radiation through the I
selective absorption of some of its wavelengths. In manmade photographs t the first and further stabilizing the identity of assemblages. IS Biological

this pattern appears as a spatial arrangement of light and dark bands (a organisms are examples of assemblages synthesized through both

spectrograph) which is correlated in a unique way with the identity of the territorialization and coding, but so are many social entities, such as

chemical species to which the atom belongs. In other words, the hierarchical organizations. The coding process in the latter will vary

absorption pattern expresses the identity of the chemical species in the depending on whether the source of legitimate authority in these

form of physical information which can be used by astrophysicists, for hierarchies is traditional or rational-legal. as in modern bureaucracies. In

example, to identify the chemical elements present in a given celestial the former the coding is performed by narratives establishing the sacred

process. 12 origins of authority, while in the latter it is effected by constitutions

On the other hand, this expressivity is clearly not functional in any spelling out the rights and obligations associated with each formal role. It

sense. That is, while the information patterns do have an objective is tempting to see in the fact that both biological organisms and some of

existence, in the absence of astrophysicists (or other users of spectro­ the most visible social institutions are doubly articulated, the source of

graphs) the patterns do not perform any function. These patterns may be the appeal of the organismic metaphor: the isomorphism of the processes

compared to the fingerprints that are expressive of human organic giving rise to some biological and social entities would explain their

identity, but that in the absence of a law-enforcement organization that resemblance. On the other hand, this real resemblance should not license

collects them, stores them and retrieves them as part of a process of the idea that 'society as a whole' is like an organism, since many social

identification, perform no real biological function at all. But, Deleuze assemblages are not highly coded or highly territorialized.

argues, there have been critical thresholds in the history of the planet In fact, in both the biological and the social realms there are

when physical expressivity has become functional. The first threshold is processes of decoding, yielding assemblages which do not conform to the

the emergence of the genetic code, marking the point at which organismic metaphor. In biology such decoding is illustrated by animal

information patterns ceased to depend on the full three-dimensional behaviour which has ceased to be rigidly programmed by genes to be

structure of an entity (such as that of an atom) and became a separate learned from experience in a more flexible way. This decoding produces,

one-dimensional structure, a long chain of nucleic acids. The second for example, animal territories, the assemblages generated when

threshold is the emergence of language: while genetic linearity is still animals have gone beyond the passive expression of information

IS
14
 ASSEMB L A G E S AGA I NST T O T A L I T I ES
A N E W P H I L O SO P H Y OF SOCI E T Y

their own,
the populations with some properties of
patterns (patterns o f the fingerprint kind) actively t o use a variety of intera ctions endow
growth or certain averag e distrib utions of
rate of
means - from faeces and urine to song, colour and silhouette as an _ such as a certain
ties. The second questio n regards the possibility that
expression of their identity as owners of a particular geographical area.16 a ssemblage proper
assemblages may emerge of which the
A social example of the result of a process of decoding would be informal within these collectivities larger
words, the
tion are the component parts. In other
conversations between friends. As social assemblages, conversations do members of the popula
of a collectivity may lead to the formation
not have the same durability of either interpersonal networks or interactions between members
articulations betwee n them yieldin g a macro­
institutional organizations, and no one would feel tempted to compare of more or less permanen t
capaci ties of its own. Since the proces ses
them to organisms. But they do involve rules, such as those governing assemblage with properties and
enduri ng articul ations are thems elves
.
turn-takmg. The more formal and rigid the rules, the more these social behind the formation of these
assemblages will be created leading to
encounters may be said to be coded. But in some circumstances these rec urrent. a population of larger
emerging.
rules may be weakened giving rise to assemblages in which the the possibility of even larger ones
The combin ation of recurre nce of the same assembly processes at any
participants have more room to express their convictions and their
of the same kind of assembly
own personal styles.17 one spatial scale, and the recurrence
) at successive scales, gives
Nevertheless, and despite the importance of genetic and lingUistic processes (territorialization and coding
approa ching the problem of linking
component.s for the consolidation of the identity of biological and social assemblage theory a unique way of
social reality . The bulk of this book will be
assemblages, it is crucial not to conceptualize their links to other the micro- and macro-levels of
les of how we can bridge the level of
component.s as relations of interiority. In other words, the interactions spent giving concrete examp
social entities (such as territorial
of genes with the rest of a body's machinery should not be viewed as if individual persons and that of the largest
lages in a succession of micro­
they constituted the defining essence of that machinery. And Similarly for states) through an embedding of assemb
will prove useful to give a simple
.
the mteractlOns of language with subjective experience or with social and macro-scales. But at this point it
t approach is that it allows the
institutions. In an assemblage approach, genes and words are simply one illustration. One advantage of the presen
l entitie s (like 'the market' or 'the
�
more comp( nent entering into relations of exteriority with a variety of replacement of vaguely defined genera
. What would replace, for example, 'the
�
other mat nal and expressive components, and the processes of coding state') with concrete assemblages
approa ch? Marke ts should be viewed, first of
:
and de odmg based on these specialized lines of expression operate side b y market' in an assemblage
zation s (that is, concre te marke t-places or bazaars)
. all, as concrete organi
SIde with nongenetic and nonlinguistic processes of territorialization and
made out of people and the
and this fact makes them assemblages
deterrilorialization. To emphasize this point in the chapters that follow I
exchange.
will always discuss language last and as a separate component. This ';m material and expressive goods people
Fernand Braudel argues, these
In addition, as the economic historian
allow me to distinguish clearly those expressive components that are not
te physical locale, such as a
linguistic but which are mistakenly treated as if they were symbolic, as organizations must be located in a concre
countr yside, a locale which should also be
well as to emphasize that language should be moved away from the core small town and its surrounding
of the assem blage. In these terms, the smallest
of the matter, a place that it has wrongly occupied for many decades now. considered a component
as Braudel says:
There are two more questions that must be discussed to complete the economic assemblage has always been,

characterization of the assemblage approach. The first regards the

town, perhaps the site of a fair,
a complex consisting of a small market
processes of assembly though which physical. biological and social
d it. Each village had to be
entities come into being, processes that must be conceptualized as with a cluster of dependent villages aroun
to be possib le to go to the market and
close enough to the town for it
recurrent. This implies that assemblages always exist in populations,
actual dimen sions of the unit would equally
back in a day. But the
however small. the populations generated by the repeated occurrence
le means of transp ort, the density of settlement
of the same processes. As the assemblages making up these collectivities depend on the availab
on.18
and the fertility of the area in questi
interact with one another, eXercising a variety of capacities, these
17
16
 A NEW PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIETY

�oughly, prior to the emergence of steam-driven transport. ASSEMBLAGES AGAINST TOTALITIES

the average
size 0: these complexes varied
between 160 and 170 square kilom
etres. In ch aracterizes processes in which these components are involved:
the hIgh MIddle Ages, as Euro
pean urbanization intensified
, these local processes which stabilize or destabilize the identity of the assemblage
markets multiplied, generatin
g a large population of similar (territorialization and deterritorialization). In the version of assemblage
assemblages.
Then, some of the market-pl
aces belonging to these popu theory to be used in this book, a third dimension will be added: an extra
lation were
assembled together into region
al markets, larger assemblage
s with an axis defining processes in which specialized expressive media intervene,
average area of 1. 500 to 1,700
. square kilometres. Each such processes which consolidate and rigidify the identity of the assemblage or,
. region
tYPICally eXhIbIted a dominant
city as its centre and a recog on the contrary, allow the assemblage a certain latitude for more flexible
. nizable
:
cultural Iden Ity, both of whic
h are parts of the larger assem
blage. Next operation while benefiting from genetic or linguistic resources (processes
came provinCIal markets, with dime
nsions about ten times as large of coding and decoding).21 All of these processes are recurrent, and their
as the
regIO nal markets they assem
bled, but a lesse r degree of variable repetition synthesizes entire populations of assemblages. Within
internal
homogeneity.19 Finally, when
several such provincial mark these popUlations other synthetic processes, which may also be
ets were
�
stIt hed together, as they were
in England in the eighteenth characterized as territorializalions or codings but which typically involve
century,
national markets emerged.
entirely different mechanisms, generate larger-scale assemblages of
This brief description yields a very
clear picture of a series of differ which some of the members of the original population become
ently
scaled assemblages, some of whic
h are component parts of other component parts.
s which
i� �
tu n, become parts of even
hlstoncal details behind the assem
larger ones. Although I left
out th � To conclude this chapter I would like to add some detail to the
bly of local market-places into description of the synthetic aspects of assemblage theory. In particular, to
regional
markets, or those behind the creat
ion of national markets, it is clear speak of processes of territorialization and coding which may be
that
in each case there was a proce
ss through which larger entiti instantiated by a variety of mechanisms implies that we have an
es emerged
from the assembly of smaller ones.
As Braudel notes of national mark adequate notion of what a mechanism is. In the case of inorganic and
ets
:
they wer 'a network of irreg
ular weave, often constructed
: �
odds agamst t e over-powerful
against al l organic assemblages these mechanisms are largely causal, but they do not
cities with their own policies, again necessarily involve linear causality, so the first task will be to expand the
. st the
provmces whIch reSIst ed centralization, against forei
. gn intervention notion of causality to include nonlinear mechanisms. Social assemblages,
?
whIch reached frontiers, not
to mention the divergent inter
ests of on the other hand, contain mechanisms which, in addition to causal
productIon and exchange'. 20 The
situation is, indeed, even more interactions, involvt� reasons and motives. So the second task will be to
complex
because I am leaving out long-
distance trade and the intern show what role these subjective components play in the explanation of
ational
� arkets to which this type of
trade gave rise. But even this the working of social assemblages. The first task is crucial because the
. simp lified
picture IS already infinitely bette
r than the reWed generality shortcomings of linear causality have often been used to justHy the belief
of 'the
market'.
in inextricable organic unities. In other words, the postulation of a world
�et me summarize the main featu
res of assemblage theory. First of as a seamless web of reciprocal action, or as an integrated totality of
all.
unlIke wholes in whi h parts are
� linked by relations of interiority functional interdependencies, or as a block of unlimited universal
(that is,
�
relallons which cons Itute the
very identity of the paris) assem
blages are interconnections, has traditionally been made in opposition to linear
� �
mad u of parts whICh are self-s
ubsistent and articulated by relati causality as the glue holding together a mechanical world. Hence if
ons of
extenonty, so that a part may
be detached and made a comp assemblages are to replace totalities the complex mechanisms behind the
onent of
another assemblage. Assemblage
s are characterized along two synthesis of emergent properties must be properly elucidated.
dimen­
SIOns: along the first dimension
are specified the variable roles In addition to supplying an excuse for the postulation of a block
which
�
compo ent parts may play,
from a purely material role universe, the formula for linear causality, 'Same cause, same effect.
to a purely
expressive one, as well as mixtu
res of the two. A second dime always', has had damaging effects on the very conception of the relations
nsion
18 between causes and effects. In particular, the resemblance of that formula

19
 A N E W P HI L O S O P H Y O F S OC I E T Y
A S S E M BLAGES A G A I N S T TOTAL I T I E S

with the one for logic al impl

icati on ( ,If C , then E nece challenged. Violating this second pan, t h e part involving strict necessity,
. ssari ly') has misl ed
man y phli osop hers into thin
king that the relat ion betw resuhs in statistical causality, a form of causality that becomes important
een a caus e and it
�
:
effect is b sical ly t!lat the
occurrence of the former
impl ies that of th th e mom ent we start to consider not single entities but large popUlations
:
latte . B ut If caus ahty is to
prov ide the basis for obje ctive
synt hese s caus al of su ch entities. Thus, when one says that. in a given population of
relat IOns mus t be character
ized as productive, that is, as
a relat ion in which smoke rs, 'Smoking cigarettes causes cancer', the claim cannot be that one
? � �
ne ev n ( t he caus e) prod
uces anot her event (the
effect ) , not j ust repe ated event (smoking) produces the same event (the onset of cancer)
�
Imph. es I . 2 The even ts whic
h are prod uctiv ely conn ecte
d by ca usali ty i n every single case . The genetic predispositions of the members of the
can b� Simp le or atom istic
even ts such as mec hani cal population must also be taken into a ccount, and this implies that the
colli sion s. B u t
caus ahty may also conn ect
com plex entit ies, such a s t
h e component part s cau se will produce its effect only in a high percentage of cases.
that mak e up a who le In this
. case, whil e the entit y itself Furthermore, statistical causality does not depend on the existence of
cannot act as a
caus e bec.ause it is not an even
t, a change in its ddining prop complex internal processes in the members of a population. It may also
� erties can be
a caus e, smce changes, even simp le quan
titati ve ones, are even ts. For obtain without such internal orga nization given that, outside of
the
:
sam reas on, act ions perform
ed by a complex entit y can laboratory conditions, no series of events ever occurs in complete
. also be caus es.
Lme ar caus alIty is typic ally defin ed in term
s of atom istic even ts, but isolation from other series which may interfere with it. Thus, even if we
once :v
e depa rt from thes e we mus
t cons ider the role that the had a population of genetically identical humans, smoking would still not
. inter nal
orgalllzatl on of a n entit y may
play in the way it is affected always lead to the onset of cancer, since other activities (physical exercise,
. . by an exte rnal
caus e. ThiS mter nal orga niza
tion may , for exam ple, dete for example) may play a part in counteracting its effects. The most that
rmin e that a n
exte rnal caus e of large inten
sity will prod uce a low- inten one can say about external causes in a population is that they increase the
sity effect ( or n o
effect a t a l l ) a n d vice vers
a, that sma ll caus es may probability of the occurrence of a given effect. 25
have large effects.
These are case s of nonlinear
caus ality, defined by thre shol It is dear that assemblage theory, in which assemblages can be
ds belo w o r
abov e ��
.
JCh exte rnal caus es fai l to prod
uce a n effect, t h a t i s , thre shol component parts of other assemblages (leading to the internal organiza­
dete rmmmg the capacitie s ds
of an entit y to be caus ally tion behind nonlinear and catalytic ca usality), and in which assemblages
affec ted. In som e
case s, this capacity to be affec
ted may gain the upper hand are always the product of recurrent processes yielding populations
to the poin t
that exte rnal ca uses beco me
mere trigge rs or cata�ysts for (involving statistical ca usality), can accommodate these complex forms of
a n effec t. As
B u nge puts it, i n this case
'extr insic caus es are effi cien causal productivity. And i n doing so it takes away the temptation to use
t solel y to the
�
exte n to whic .
h they take a grip on the prop
er nature and inne r processes seamless-web imagery. For example, the idea that there are reciprocal
of thmgs'. 2 3 Cata lysis deep
ly violates linea rity since forms of determination between parts can be accommodated via
it implies that
�
diffe re n t ause s can lead to
one and the sam e effect - nonlinear mechanisms involving feedback (such as the negative feedback
a s whe n a swit ch
_
from one lIlte rnal state to
anot her is triggered by diffe characterizing thermostats ), mechanisms that do not imply a fusion
rent stim uli and
that one a n d t h e s a m e
caus e may prod uce very between the parts of a whole. The chance encounters between
diffe rent effects
�
d >pen ding on the part of
the who le it acts upon -
��
as when horm ones independent series of events at the source of statistical causality can also
stlm �late rowth � en appl ied to the tips of a
plan t but inhib it it whe n contribute to eliminate totalities and the block universe they imply. As
�
ap hed to ItS root s. It is impo rtan t to emphasiz B u nge puts it:
e, how ever , that to refer
to m ner proc esses (or to an
intern al orga niza tion) does
. not impl y that
� on!m ear or catal yti intera ction
� s are exam ples of relat ions A further test of the falsity of the doctrine of the block un iverse is the
o f inter iorit y:
mne r proc esses are Simp ly .
mter actio ns betw een the com existence of chance (that is, statistically determined) phenomena;
pone nt part s of
an entit y and do not impl
y that thes e parts are m u tuall most of them arise from the comparative independence of different
y cons titut ed.
Thes e two depa nure s from
linea rity viola te the first part emities, that is, out of their comparative reciprocal contingency or
, of the for mula
( sam e caus e, sam e effec
t'), but the seco nd part ('alw irrelevancy. The existence of mutually i n dependent lines of evolution
ays') may a l so be
20
21
 A N E W P H I L O S O P H Y OF S O C I ETY
A S S E M B L A G E S A G A I N S T T O T A L I T I ES

i s i n turn ensured by the attenuation of physical interactions with compre­

no t sign ifica tion in mind when he wrote about 'meaningfully
di stance, a s well as their finite speed of p ropagation - the most social action is clear from the fact that he thought his method
h ensible'
effective looseners of the tightness of the block universe.26
worked best when applied to cases involving matching means to an end,
or
th at is, social action involving choices and goals.3o Understanding
The two roles that components play
in a n assemblage, mater ial and typically involves assessing the a dequacy
making sense of such activities
expre ssive, are relate d to these differe
nt forms of causal ity. While
of th e way in which a goal i s pursued, or a problem solved, or the
mater ial components indud e the entire
repertoire of causal intera ctions
relev ance or importance of a given step in the sequence. Some of these
expres sive ones typically involv e cataly
that territo rial anima ls use as expres
sis. The odour s, sound s or colour � will be assessments of causal relevance when the sequence of actions
sions of their identit y, for examp le,
involves interacting with material objects, as in the activities of black­
act only as trigger s for behav ioural respon
ses in both rivals and poten tial smiths, carpenters or cooks. But even when it is not a matter of
mates , both of which must posses s
compl ex nervo us system s to be interacting with the material world, j udgements about goal-oriented
capab le of being a ffected this way.
This is also true of genes, many of
lingu istic performance will typically be about the adequacy of a line of
which code for enzym es that are highly
effective and specifi c catalys ts, argumen t or the relevance of a piece of information, and not about
althou gh genes also code for protei ns
which play a mater ial role, such a s semantics. Means-to-ends matching is an example of social action that
being buildin g-blocks f o r cellula r memb
ranes. Langu age, on the other demands motives as part of its explanation.
hand, typica lly plays a cataly tic role
which assum es that both speake rs What about the case of social action involving reasons? Some
and listene rs have complex intern al
organi zation s. This intern al order, examples of this type of social action may not involve semantic
howev er, i s only partia lly explai ned
by mater ial causes ( such as interpretation at all. These are the cases in which the weight of tradition
posses sing a nervo us system ) and implie
s more elabor ate mecha nisms. or the intensity of the feelings may be such that the social activities
It� particu lar, the capaci ty of huma n
beings to be affecte d by linguis tic involved may lie 'very close to the borderline of what can j u stifiably be
tngge rs (as well as by nonlin guistic expres
sions of solida rity, legitim acy or called meanin gfully oriented action, and i ndeed often on the other
prestig e) deman ds explan ations in whic
h reasons for acting are involv ed side , . 3 1 (The other side being social action explained in p urely causal
a n d, i n some cases, by explan ations
involv ing motives. Rough ly, while terms, a s in reactions triggered by habitual or affective stimuli.) But there
reason s may be exemp lified by traditi
onal values or person al emotions, are other cases of explanation by reasons that do not reduce to causal
motives are a special kind of reason involv
ing explicit choices and goals.2 7 ones and do not involve any deliberate choices by social actors. In these
As the sociolo gist Max Webe r a rgued
long ago, causes , reason s and cases, making sense of social behaviour involves giving reasons su(:h as
motiv es are typica lly combi ned i n the
interp retatio n of social action , that the belief in the existence of a legitimate order, or the desire to live up to
is, a ction orient ed towards the behav
iour of others . As he writes : 'A the expectations associated with that order. Belieh and desires may be
correct causal interp retatio n of a concre
te course of action is arrived at treated as attitudes towards the meaning of declarative sentences (that is,
when the overt action and the motiv
es have been correc tly appreh ended towards propositions), and to this extent they do involve reference to
and at the same time their relatio n has
become meani ngfully compr e­ semantics. Propositional attitudes are also involved in social action
hensib le:28 The fact that Weber speaks
of 'causa l interp retatio ns' is explained by motives, of course, such as the belief i n the causal adequacy
conve nientl y ignore d by most studen
ts of his method of under standi ng of some means or the desirability of the goals. But i n the case of
(or Verstehen ) . This metho d by no means
license s the conclu sion that all traditional reasons for action, causal adequacy may not be a motivating
sodal action may be read like a text,
or that all social behav iour can be factor, and the desirability of a course of action may not depend on
treate d as an enacte d docum ent.29 The
source of this mistak en assessm ent specific goalsY It is only i n this case that the relations between the
of Webe r's metho d i s a confu sion of
two differe nt mean ings of the word propositions themselves, such as the relations between the propositions
'mean ing': signification and significance
, one referr ing to seman tic content, that make up a religiolls doctrine, become crucial to make sense of social
the other to impor tance or releva nce.
That Weber had signifi cance and activities. And yet even this case will demand a mixture of semantic
22
23
 ASSEMBLAGES AGAINST TOTALITIES
A NEW P HILOSO P H Y OF SOCIETY

sociali zation must, in additio n, be conce ived in

interpretation of the sacred texts involved and of assessments of the sch ools. But this
Much a s the effects of genes on �t : bodily
relative importance of different portions of these texts for the explanation p roba bilistic terms. .
d anima ls are a matter o f probab IlIties (not
of concrete courses of action, cha racteri stics of plants an
ations
and that, theref ore, in descri bing popul
Weber's method gives us a way to approach the question of linea r causa l determ inism)
the statist ical distrib ution of the variat ion in these
mechanisms in social assemblages: mechanisms which will always w e are intere sted in
be pictur ed
effects of sociali zation should a lways
involve complex mixtu res of causes, reasons and m o tives , 3 3 Not bodily proper ties, so the
of study should be h ow this variat ion is
acknowledging the hybrid nature of social mechanisms can b e a source as variab le and the prope r object
.
of misunderstanding and mystification in social science, For example, distri buted in a given popu lation
assem blage theory . The nex t
social activities in which means are successfully matched to ends are This concludes the introd uction of
nent which 1 left out here (the
traditionally labelled 'rational'. But this label obscures the fact that these chapte r will add the only compo
assem blage) after which the ontolo gical status
activities i nvolve problem-solving skills of different kinds ( not a single topolo gical diagra m of a n
b e prope rly elucid ated. It will also expan d the
mental faculty like ' rationali ty' ) and that explaining t h e successful of assem blages will
n that figure s so promi nently in t h e
solution of practical problems will involve consideration of relevant
causal events, such as physical interactions with the means to achieve a
1:.
.
discus sion of the part-t o-who le relatio
distinc tion betwe en assem blages and
totalit ies, and show in more detail
frame the proble m of the relatio n­
goal, not j ust calculations in an actor's head. Similarly, when giving how assem blage t heory can help to
macro -levels of social pheno mena.
traditional routines as explanations one may reduce these to ritual and ships betwe en the micro - and the
tly posed the other chapt ers will
ceremony (and label these 'irrational'), but this obscures the fact that Once the proble m has been correc
many inherited routines are in fact problem-solving procedures which attempt t o flesh out a solut ion.
have been slowly refined by successive generations. These practical
routines may be overlaid by ritual symbolism, while at the same time
being capable of leading to successful causal interactions with material
entities, sllch as domesticated plants and soil.
In addition to preserving the objective and subjective components,
social mechanisms must include the full variety of causal interactions,
that is, they must take into account that the thresholds characterizing
nonlinear causality may vary from one actor to another (so that the same
external cause may affect one but not the other) and that causal
regularities in the behaviour of individual a ctors are, a s Weber himself
argued, only probabilistic.34 Statistical causality is even more important
when we consider populations of actors. Thus, in the case of explanation
b y motives, we may acknowledge that individual actors are capable of
making intentional choices, and that in some cases such intentional
action leads to the creation of social institutions (such as the written
constitutions of some modern nation-states), while at the same time insist
that the synthesis of larger social assemblages is many times achieved as
the collective unintended consequence of intentional action, that is, as a kind
of statistical result. I n the case o f explanations by reasons, on the other
hand, the collective a spect may already be taken into account if the
beliefs and desires involved are the effect o f socialization b y families or
25
24
 N CES
A S SE M B L A GES A G A I N ST ESSE

b e furth er divid ed,

or hors e. These spec ies may
2 a spec ies'. hum an
leveI 0f e whI ch are blac k or
.

divi de hum ans into thos

rse , sinc e we c a n
Assemblages against Essences of co u st, but thes e are not necessary
or unju
ical or not mus ical, just
hite, mus ning indi vidu als with
tal com bina tion s defi
�fferences, but mere acci den .
at the leve l of wha t
leve l of speC Ies, or
nam es.2 Thu s, it is at the
proper we find the esse nce or very
phil osop hers call 'nat ural kind s', that
modem
entities. 3
n a tu re of of argu men t wou ld be
ry, of cour se, this line
In evol utio nary theo
g one anim al spec ies from anot her,
prop ertie s diffe rent iatin
rei ected . The ider ed ever y bit as
exam ple, wou ld be cons
H; stick to Aris totle 's �
renc es betw een orga nism . The
e mar king the diffe
contin gen t a s thos �
Ju t as
utio nary proc esse s that
ies are the resu lt of evol
propertie s of spec of a gIve n
enduring identity
d have not occurred. The
they occu rred coul ral sele ctJo n
forms of natu
for in term s of the diffe rent .
Specie s is acco unte d .
atiO n 0 f gene tlc
accu mul
clim ate) that stee r the
Essentialism i s t h e m a i n reason offered b y m a n y social scientists t o j u stify (pre dato rs, para sites ,
a s wel l a s the proc ess
n of grea ter a dapt abili ty,
� �
th ir r jection of realism. Postulating social entities with an enduring and materi a l s in the dire ctio
mes sepa rate d into two
odu ctiv e com mun ity beco
mmd-mdependent identity, these critics would argu e, implies the thro ugh whi ch a repr
they cann ot mat e wit h one
com mun ities u ntil
existence of essences defining that identity. B u t what exactly are these progressi vely dive rgen t .
the difle rent iatin g prop ertIe s of a
. Wh ile the first proc ess yiel ds
essences supposed to be? While very few realists today would feel ano ther
tion ', mak es tho e �
calle d 'rep rodu ctiv e isola
onto logically committed to assen the existence of eternal archetypes, species, the seco nd one, �
to exte rnal ge etIc
ble by clos ing its gene pool
there are subtler forms of essentialism in which essences are introduced propertie s more or less dura
imp erm eabl e bam ers.
not resu lt in perfectly
w h e n taxonomists reify the general categories produced by their flow s. This isola tion need s
abili ty to exch ange gene
exam ple, mai ntai n thei r
classifications. It is therefore important to begin this chapter by explaining Man y plan t spec ies, for -run . But
fuzz y in the long
so thei r iden tity is
how assemblage theory does not presuppose the existence of reWed with othe r plan t spec ies,
ted anim als like
ning bou nda ries of fully reproductively isola
generalities. even t h e defi
of biot echn olog y, for
ched thro ugh the use
Taxonomic essentialism, a s opposed to its Platonic variety, may be ours elve s may b e brea
fact that con firm s the
actio n of retro viru ses, a
traced back to the work of the great philosopher Aristotle, who created a exam ple, or thro ugh the
bou ndar ies.
method for the classification of entities into a three-level hierarchy: the cont inge nt natu re of the
r end urin g properties,
the con ting ency of thei
genus, the species and the individual. For example, if the genus in In addi tion to shar ing
both are born a n d die:
are also alike in that
question is 'animaL the method demands that we find specific differences orga nism s and species
d of spec iatio n, that is, the
mar ks the thre shol
which divide this genus into lower classes: for example, 'two-footed' and reprodu ctiv e isola tion
spec ies, and exti ncti on defi nes its equ ally
'four-footed' animals. This new level. in turn, can be divided into even histo rica l birth of a new
is that a biol ogic al spec ies is a n
this imp lies
lower classes by differences of differences. But here one must be careful, histo rical deat h. Wha t
s that compose it,
sing ular a s the orga nism
since as Aristotle says, 'it is not proper to say that an animal which has the individual entity, a s uniq ue a n d
vidu al orga nism s
scal e. I n othe r wor ds, indi
suppon of feet, one sort we find with wings and another without them, if but l a rger in spat iote mpo ral
le, not the part icul ar
a larg er individu al who
one is to express oneself correctly . . . B ut it is correct to say so if one kind are the com pon ent parts of t appl ies to
.4 The sam e poin
gory or natu ral kind
has cloven, and another has feet that are not cloven; for these are mem bers of a gene ral cate sifie d in the
ical spec ies, as clas
exam ple, chem
differences of foot . : l This method, when properly followed, leads us to any othe r natu ral kind . For
mitm ent to the
, m a y be reifi ed by a com
.

tabl e of the elem ents

the point where we cannot find any further differences and reach the peri odic
27
26
 A NEW P H I L O S O P H Y OF S O C I ET Y A S S E M B L A G E S A G A INST E S S E NC E S

existen ce o f hydrog en, oxygen o r carbon i n need a different treatment. A

genera l . But i t i s possible to ' vertebrate animals belong
llU rna n s a s
acknow ledge t h e objectiv ity of the table while considered a n abstract hody-plan common to all
refusin g to reUy its natural hy l u m may be
kmds. Atoms of a given species would b e
� �
produ c d by re u rrent process es (proces ses
conside red individ ual entities � ertebrat es and, a s such, i t cannot
since
be specified
each
using metric notions such
realization of the body-plan will
of n u cIeosyn thesis) taking as leng ths, area or volumes,
.
place wIthm mdlvld .
ual stars. Even though , unlike organis ms, these set of metric relations. Therefore only non­
atoms e xh ibit a completely different
display much less variatio n, the fact that they the overall connectivity of the
were born i n a concret e rn etric or topological notions, such as
process gives each of them a history. This implies to specify it. To put this
that there is no need to diff erent parts of the body, can b e used
be onrolog ically commit ted to the existenc e of defines a space of possibilities ( th e space of all
'hydrog en in general ' but . differently, a body-plan
only to the objectiv e reality of large populat has a topological
ions of hydrog en atoms. possible vertebrate designs, for example) and this space
The lesson from these two exampl es i s that notion of t h e structure of a space of possibilities i s crucial in
taxonom ic essentia lism stru cture. The
relies on a very specific approac h to yield its of an
reified general ities: it starts assemblage theory given that, unlike properties, the capacities
with finished produc ts (differe nt chemic al or possible when not
biologi cal species ), discove rs assemb lage are not given, that is, they are merely
through logical analysis the endurin g propert not
ies that characte rize those exercised. But the set of possible capacities of a n a s s emblage i s
prod ucts, and then mak('s these sets of propert it may be, since different assemblages
ies into a definin g essence amorpholls, however open-ended
(or a set of necessa ry and su fficient conditio
ns to belong to a natural exhibit different sets of capacities.
kind ) . To avoid reificati on we must instead
focus on the historic al The forma l study of these possibility spaces i s more advanced in
process es that produc e those products, with
the term 'histori cal' referrin g physics and chemistry, where (hey are referred to a s 'phase spaces'. Their
to cosmolo gical and evolutio nary history in addition
to human history. structure is given b y topological invariants called 'attractors', a s well as by
Assemb lage theory, a s outline d in the previou
s chapter , avoids taxono mic the dimensions of the space, dimensions that represent t he 'degrees of
essentia lism through this man�u vre. The identity
of any assembl age at freedom', or relevant ways of changing, of concrete physical or chemical
a n y level of scale i s a l ways t h e product of a process
(territo rializati on and dynamical system s . 5 Classical physics, for example, discovered that the
in some cases, coding) and it is always precario
(deterri torializa tion and decodin g) can destabil
us, since other process e � possibilities open to t h e evolution of many mech a nicaL optical and
ize it. For this reason, the gravitational phenome n a were highly constrained, favouring those
ontolog ical status of assembl ages, l a rge or small,
i s always that o f unique, outcomes that minimize the difference between potential and kinetic
singula r individ u als. In other words, unlike
taxono mic essentia lism in energy. In other words, the dynamics of a large variety of classical systems
which genus, species a nd individu al are separate
ontolog ical categor ies, were attracted to a m i n i mum point in the possibility space, an attractor
the ontolog y of assemb lages i s flat since it contain
s nothing but differen tly defining their long-term tendencies. In the biological and social sciences,
scaled individu al singu la rities (or hacceities) . A
s far a s social ontolog y i s on the other hand, we do not yet have the appropriate formal tools to
concern ed, t h i s implies t h a t persons a re not
the only individ ual entities investigat e the structure of their much more complex possibility spaces.
involve d in social process es, but also individu
al commu nities, individu al B ut we may venture the hypothesis that they will also be defined as
organiz ations, individ ual cities and individ ual
nation- states. phase spaces with a much more complex distribution of topological
Natural kinds, on the other h a n d, are not
the only source of invariants ( a ttractors ) . We may refer to these topological invariants a s
essentia list myths. Aristot le begins his ana lysis
at a level above that of universal sin.qularities beca u s e t h e y are singular or special topological
natural kinds, with the genus 'animal ', and
via logica l d((ferentialion features that a re shared by m a n y different systems. It i s distributions of
�
reac les the level of species ( 'horse', 'huma
n ' ) . The questio n is, if his these universal singularities that would replace Aristotle's genera, while
speCies can b e replace d hy individ ual singula
rities, can t h e same b e done individual singularities replace his species . Moreover. the link from one to
to his genera? The answer is that the highest
levels of biologic al another would not b e a process of logical differentiatio n, but one of
classific ations, tha t of kingdom (the level
that includes plants and historical dzfferen tiation, that is, a process involving the divergent evolution
animal s) or even phyla - includin g the phylum
'chorda ta' to which o f all the different vertebrate species that realize the abstract body-plan.

28 29
 T ESSENCES
A S S E M B L AG E S A G A I N S
A N E W P H I L O S O P H Y O F S OC I E T Y

ities o f the
ee to whi ch the activ
form s - and the degr
The taxonomic categories bridging the level o f phyla to that o f species (h an. sl11at ic wou ld hav e the least
isma tic form .
are rout iniz ed - the char . .
would represent the successive points of divergence that historical!Y orga!1l'zati on � rout JIllz ed.
atio n, whi le the othe r two ",:�
uld be h l h ly
differentiated the body-plan. of rout iniz .
degr ee lant les, each m ItS own
way ,
al and univ ersa l sing u
In addition to the roles and processes described in the previous chapter In sho rt , indi vidu . The y also
ope rate with out esse nces
asse mbl age app roac h to
assemblages are characterized by what De/euze refers to as a diagram, a set a n0w the : c h . WI 'I
11 e m .
niqu es in th is aI proa
er use of ana lytic al tech .
of umversal singularities that would be the equivalent of body-plan, or defi ne th e prop Cal, deco mpo smg
of ana lysiS is pure ly logI .
c esse ntia lism the role
more pre Clsely, that would structure the space of possibilities associated taX ono mi d 'Isco very 0f
pon ent spec ies by the s u cceSSIVe
� rr:blage.6 Thus, into its com
wi h the asse while persons, communities, organizations, . a genu s theo ry ana IYSlS. must go
asse mbl age
renc es, for exa mpl e, in
Cltles a n d natIon-states are all individual singularities, each of these n ecessary diHe in rea :
ity, such as lesio ns
ions
invo lve causal intervent
entities would also be associated with a space of possibilities characterized beyon d logi C and omn
. g of enz yme s
, or the pOls
with in an orga nism
by its dimensions, representing its degrees of freedom, and b y a set of nad e to an orga n
effe ct on the who le's
wed by obse rvat ions of the
.
umversal singularities. I n other words, each of these social assemblages � ithin a cell, follo
inte rven tion s are nee ded
bec ause the caus al inte
rac­
would possess its own diagram? In the previous chapter 1 showed how a beha viou r. The se re, be care fully
and mus t, the refo
s may be non line ar
reWed generality like 'the market' could be replaced by a concrete tions amo ng part d of
ause the enti ty und er swd y may be compose
:
his[( rical entity such as a national market: an entity emerging from the dise ntan gled , and bec scal e mus t be
the corr ect
rent spat ial scal es and
umflcatIOn of several provincial markets, each of which in turn is born part s ope ratin g at diffe con cept ual but
ory is not
lysiS in asse mbl age the
from the stitching together of several regional markets, in turn the result loca ted. 9 In sho rt, ana g at
al mechanisms ope ratin
ed with the disc ove ry of the actu
of the historical union of many local market-places. Each of these causaL con cern �
the othe r han d, the topo
�
logi al stru ctur e defi ing r
differently scaled economic units must be regarded as an individual a give n spat ial scal e. On � lsm­
b u t vlTtual and mech a
mbl age is not actu al
singularity bearing a relation of part-to-whole to the immediately larger the diag ram of an asse mec ham sms ,
ety of actu al
bein g real ized in a vari
one, much as organisms are related to species. What would be a social independent, capa ble of atic s of pha se
The mat hem
rent form of ana lysis .
example of a diagram and its universal singularities'? so it dem and s a diffe d
the form al reso urce s that mus t be mob ilize
of
Max Weber introduced a classification for social entities in terms of space is but one exam ple a spac e of
a t stru ct u r e
u s a l con stra ints t h
what he called ideal types. I n his analysis of hierarchical orga nizations, for to reve al the qua si -ca
of ana lysi s a r e use d
C a usal a n d qua si-c ausa l form s
example, he found that there are three different ways in which their poss ibili ties. 1 O
rn to the example of
mbl age theo ry. To retu
authority may gain legitimacy: by reference to a sacred tradition or com plem enta rily in asse
teen th cen wry alre ady
this field had by the eigh
custom (as in organized religion ) ; by complying with rational-legal classical phy sics : whi le of
l sing ularity i n the form
es' (tha t is, a univ ersa
procedures (as in b u reaucracies ) ; or by t he sheer presence of a disc ove red 'lea st prin cipl the ca usal
ch for
did not mak e the sear
charismatic leader ( a s in small religious sects) . 8 I will use this classification a min imu m poin t) this
ach ieve d in each
whi ch acw al min imiz atio n is
in another chapter and add more detail to the description of the three mec hanis ms thro ugh tion s as wel l as
cau sal rela
Bot h the pro duc tive
types . At this point, however, it is important to clarify their ontological sepa rate case red und ant. the ove rall
wer e par t of
ical con stra ints
status because the term 'ideal type' seems to suggest essences. But we can the qua si - c a u sal top olog
ins its vali dity whe n
nom ena . Thi s insi ght reta
eliminate these essences by introducing the diagram of a n a uthority explan atio n of clas sica l phe
and soci olog y.
com plex case s of biol ogy
�
s ructure. In this space of possibilities there would be three universal app roac hing the mor e
qua si-ca usal forms �f
enta rity of cau sal and
smgularities defining 'extreme forms' that authority structures can take. Des pite the com plem
er. Ind eed , alth oug h I will
will emp hasi ze the form
The dimensions of the space, that is, the degrees of freedom of an a naly sis, in this boo k I
of ron cret e asse mbl ages
the inne r wor king s
authority structure, would include the degree to which a n office o r try to give exa mpl es of
e to desc ribe every cau sal
atte mpt will be mad
position in a hierarchy i s clearly separated from the incumbent - rational­ whe nev er poss ible , no how
is imp orta nt to defi ne
O n the othe r han d, it
legal forms have the most separation, followed by the traditional and mec han ism i n deta il.
31
30
 N ST ESS EN C ES
ASSE M B LAGE S AGA I
A N E W PHI LOSOPHY OF SOC IETY

these mechanisms should be properly conceptu alized, particularly tho it is eno ugh to poin t
out that they exis t and
�
t a.t, if
r but for now In add ItIon ,
cha ple lles t soci al scal e.
con side red t h e sma
mechanisms t h rough which social wholes emerge from the interactio be, t h ey may be . a t 'It
�

ne ed ,
mdi . vi'd ua I'Ism m ' th
between their parts. The qu estion of mechanisms of emergence has maj e theo ry dep arts from met hod olog ical
em blag bec ome
ass mbl age tha t may
consequences for social theory because it impinges directly on th . t subj ecti vity as an asse
ve s. of this eme rgen
con ceI b l age s: m
' con vers a-
. par ts of larg er asse m
problem of the linkages between the micro and the macro. This reca lcitran �I� . 'f're d as persons. bec ome ; lIl
,

ge or pers ona
) they pro ject an ima
C?
.

problem has resisted solution for decades because i t has been consistent! oth er soci al enc oun ters .
uo ns (and atio ns they acq UIre
s; and in org aniz
badly posed. Assemblage theory can help to frame the problem correctly, they play info rma l role
n et wo rks roles and
t h u s clearing the way for its eventual solution - a solution that wi " ld they may becom e ident ified with these
I es, al
forma l ro . In oth er wor ds, as I arge r
the ir iden tity
involve giving the details of every mechanism involved. akl' ng the m par t of
pe rsonas m com pon ent par ts, t e
h
Posing the problem correctly involves, first of aiL getting rid of the idea eme rge from the inte ract ions of the ir
ass emI}I a ges nt w h o i e reac t s·
laye rs a s the eme rge
t h a t social processes occur a t only two levels, t h e micro- and the macro­ par ts may acq uire new
identit y of the
levels, particularly when these levels are conceived in terms of reified cts them . . . ,
back a nd affe ce of sub ject iVit y can
b e'
bein g tha t the eme rgen
generalities like 'the individual' and 'society as a whole'. The example of el a ntin g for the tim e re? Can we use
we go from the
national m a rkets given in the previous chapter shows that t here may be e acc oun t, w h ere do
've an app rop riat
� mar ket s t
more than two scales. If this is the case, then the terms ' micro' and �� e sam e pro ced ure
illu stra ted by the exa mp le of n tion al � �
pro ble wit h t a t exa mp le L
n: �
'macro' should not be associated with two fixed l evels of scale but used to . tom -mo st leve l? The .
move up from this bot spa llal scal es IS a
denote the concrete parts and t h e reSUlting emergent whole at any given s tha t the rela tion between succeSSIVe
that it sug gest the
of Chi nes e box es. But
Rus sian doll or a set
spatial scale. Thus, a given provincial market would be considered 'macro' .
sImp Ie one , rese mbl ing a b eco me, for
Peop I e can
is rare ly this sim ple.
relative to its component regional markets, but 'micro' relative to the par t-to -wh ole rela tion t asse mb lage s,
ent par ts ' of two ver y diff eren ,
national market. The same approach could be used to eliminate 'society exa mp Ie , th e com pon atlo ns
.

org aniz atio s .� Org amz

s and inst itution al
as a whole' by bridging the smallest scale ( that of individual persons) and inte rpe rson al netw ork e to a
at es, from a nuc lear fam ily of thre
the largest ( t hat of territorial states) through a variety of intermediately !Tl a wide ran ge � scal .
eXIst. '
�.
FaITHTles ten d
a mllhon peop l
•

tion emp loyi ng hal!

.

scaled entities. Some contemporary sociologists have, in fact, proposed to tran sna tion al corp ora e larg e
net wor ks, wh ile som
frame the qu estion of the micro-macro link i n j u st these terms, breaking to b e com pon ent
par ts of com mu nity
ts, suc h as
I ork s as the ir par
with a long tradition of privileging one of the two sides of the equation. I tain a var iety of netw
org aniz atio ns can con etw ork s (such as
rpe rson al n
co-w ork ers. Som e inte
Given that at each scale one must show t h a t the properties of the whole networks of frie nds or do no �
f( :
r m par�
ns; oth ers
cut acro ss org aniz atio
emerge from the interactions between parts, this approach may be profess ion al net wor ks) . larg e
yet . oth. ers com e into bem g wnhm
c h a racterized as ontologically 'bottom-up'. B u t does such a bottom-up of any orgamza . t'10n , and
ent par ts. Non e. 0f ttliS ·
pon
n fun ctio n as com
approach, coupled with the assumption that individual persons are the org aniz atio ns and the
an- doll rela tion .
bottom-most level, commit us to the meth odological individualism of sug gest s a sim ple R ussi ��ks may
Inte rpe rson al net w
microeconomics? No, and for several rea sons
.
plex ities aris e at larg er scal es.
Sim ilar com mu m �
les tha t
litio ns of com
mb lage s l i ke the coa
First of a ll, methodological individualists invoke rdfied generalities give rise to larg er asse s, Inst Itut
.
lona l
mo vem ent
man y soc ial j u stic e
( ' the rational individual') and use them in an atomistic way: individuals form the bac kbo ne of s suc h a : the
er asse mb lage
, ten d t o form larg
making rational decisions on their own. In assemblage theory persons org aniz atio ns, i n rum a nat lona l:
always exist as part of populations within which they constantly interact hier arch ies of gov ern
men t org aniz atio ns tha t () era te at � , .
the SItu atIO n her e as If the
. ld pict ure
with one another. But more importantly, while the identity of those . I and loca l leve ls We cou wou W
� �� t
sep arat e Ime s, but tha
'

ply bifu rcat ed into two

.

persons is taken for granted in microeconomics, in assemblage theory it Rus sian doll had sim end � r ed
h e n i t has grow n and
soci al mov eme nt, w .
must be shown to emerge from the interaction between subpersona/ still be mis lead ing. A ,talll!Jze
give rise to one or more org aniz atio ns to
components. Just what these components are I will specify in the next for som e tim e, ten ds to
33
32
 ASSEMBLAGES AGAINST ESSENCES
A N E W P H I L OSO P H Y OF S O C I E T Y

on what they c a n d o while enabling novel

i t al d � �e rform
specialize d functions, such a s lobbying, i n the case of pla cin g l imitation s
network s characte rizing tightly knit commun ities,
sp Clal mterest organizat ions, or collective bargainin g,
� i n the case of performances . 1 3 I n the
UIl!O S an other worker associatio ns. That is, social movemen
� � lor example , a variety of resources become available to their member s,
ts are a
to emotion al support a nd advice. B u t
l yb nd of mterperso nal networks and institution al organizat
� ions. And from p h ysical protection and help
also constrain member s. News about
.
SImIlarly for governme nt hierarchie s, which at each j u risdictiona l the s a m e density of connect ions c a n
scale
not-hono u red commitm ents
:
must fo m networks with nongover nmental organizat ions broke n promises , unpaid bets and other
in order to be
property that allows them to act as
able to Implement centrally decided policies. travels fast in those network s : a
for local norms. Similarl y, many hierarch ical
�11 o f these larger assemblages exist a s part of populations: populations enforcement mechan isms
access to large reservoir s of resource s, which can be
o �mter� ersonal networks , organizat ions, coalitions and organizations have
government
ng certain formal position s in its authorit y
1: lerarc�l e� . S(Jm � members of these populations carry on availa ble to persons occupyi
their interac­
e , But the regulatio ns defining the rights and obligatio ns of these
tions wHh m phYSIcal locales, such a s neighbou rhoods, cities structur
or territorial
behavio ur of the incumbe nts.
.
states, whIle others may take a more dispersed form interacting with formal position s act as constrai nts on the
each
n and enable may go
other a t a distance thanks to communi cation a n d Because the capaciti es of a whole to constrai
tran sportation 1
that they afford their
I
. to say
technolog Ies. The physical locales themselve s, being spatial u nexercised, it would be more accurate
ent.ities, do
risks, opportu nity to use a
compon ent parts opportunities and such a s the
tend to relate to each other in a simple way: neighbou
rhoods are •
that may be missed) or the risk of violatin g a
resource (an opportunity
co posed o f many residentia l, commercial, industrial and governme
�
.
bUlldmgs; CltIeS are composed of many neighbou rhoods;
ntal
and territorial
I limit (a risk that may never be taken ) .
assembl ages that do
states are composed of many cities, a s well a s of D o these conclus ions still hold when w e deal with
rural villages and
not possess either clear
unpopula ted areas. B u t this a pparent simplicity disappear not have a well-def ined identity , that i s that do
s when we add
a s low-den sity, disperse d
t� thes locale s the recurring social activities taking place
� boundar ies or a homoge nous composi tion, such
in them. Thus, a
. . which decision -making is not
gIven �lty wIll I c lude in its component parts not only neighbou rhoods
� interper sonal network s, or organiza tions in
. they do, but there are some importa nt
but th c com umtJes and organizat ions inhabitin g those
� centralized? The answer i s that
neighbou rhoods.
. these more or less deterrito rialized assembl ages,
It wIll also mclude many interperso nal networks existing differences. In particula r,
in dispersed
. sly introduc ed termino logy, can still provide their
� :n
f r ' that IS, networks not structurin g well-defi ned, localized commu­ to use the previou
a diminish ed capacity to
I1ltJes, as well a s organizat ions without a hierarchi cal structure compon ents with resource s, althoug h they have
(such a s
everybo dy knows
market-p laces and t h u s without a well-defin ed spatial
! constrai n them. In a dense network i n which
j u risdiction or a
of roies, the information
homogen ous mternal compositi on. everybody else and people interact in a variety
all particip ants. It follows that a
It is ossible, however, to preserve the insight that a reified
� that circulates tends to b e well known to
generality
. y come not from olle of its component
lIke , socIety as
a whole' can be replaced by a multiscaled social reality, as novel piece of news will probabl
e outside the network , that is, from someone
long a s the part-to-w hole relation is correctly conceptu membe rs b u t from someon
alized to
s of the network through a weak link. This is the
accommodate all this complexity First of all, although a connected to member
. whole emerges
from the interactio ns among its parts, once it comes into basis of the famous argument about the strength
of weak links. J 4 Low­
existence it can
links, are for this reason
affect t ose parts. A s the philosopher Roy Bhaskar has a
� density networks, with more numero us weak
rgued, emergent
s with novel informa tion
wholes are real because they are causal agents capable of capable of providin g their compon ent member
acting back on
disperse d networks are
the matenals out f which they are formed'. 1 2 In other words,
� about fleeting opportu nities. On the other hand,
to give a
resource s (e.g. trust in a crisis) that define
complete ex lanatiOn of a social process taking place at a
� less capable of supplyin g other
given scale, we
strong Iinks. 1 5 They are also less capable of providing
need to elUCidate not only micro-macro mechanis ms, the strength of
those behind the
ts, such as enforcem ent of local norms. Th e resulting low degree
e m rgence of the whole, but also the macro-micro
� constrain
mechanis ms through
ways, implies that as a
whICh a whole provides its compone nt parts with of solidarit y, if not compen sated for in other
constraints and resources,
35
34
 ASSEMBLAGES AGAINST ESSENCES
A NEW P HILOSOPHY OF SOCIETY

s o f the activ ity o f eople

whole, dispersed communities are harder t o mobilize politically and less 01 peop le must inter act by mean
a sse mbla ges
�
these large r entit ies do have their own
likely act as causal agents in their interactions with other communities. time argue that
a n d at the same
to
.
comp rOiTIISe .IS th e concept
A similar point applies to institutional organizations in which decision­ The device that allow s such a
ca usal capa cities .
making is not centralized, such as local market-places. Prior to the advent ality.
0\ redundant caus
may not be
concret e social process it
of national markets (as well as department stores, superma rkets, a n d so In the expla natio n of a
a re the micr o-com ponents
her the causa l actors
on) market-places supplied their component parts with resources: they . medi ately clear whet
provided rural inhabitants with the opportun ity to sell their goods and
the town's residents with the opportunity p u rchase them. In addition,
:; the macr o-wh ole. The amb
iguit y can
of the proce ss in
be
ques
elim
tion
inate
at
d
the
if there
micr
are many
o-lev el, for
10
e uivalent expla nations
local markets were the places where 'townspeople met, made deals, :
e ampl e, if a coali tion betw een comm uniti es whic h
een a specific grou p of activ
was in fact creat ed by
ists coul d have been
quarreled, perhaps came to blows . . . All news, political or otherwise, was the nego tiations betw
in othe r word s,
ng othe r altern ative activists.
passed on in the market'. 16 In other words, market-places were the place
where people linked weakly to one another had an opportunity to pass
I
. created by nego tiatio ns amo
we may be justif ied in expl
ainin g the emer ging coali tion as the resul t of

novel i n formation. They also provided constraints, in the sense that the t the imeraction between
entir e com mun ities if an expla n atlon of the
o-cau ses wo ld

I
beca use sever al such micr
prices at which goods were traded were typically determined imperson­ micr o-de tails is u nnec essar y .
�
same way, a large orga mzat Jon
ally by demand a n d supply; while the decisions to buy and sell were led to a simil ar outc ome . I S In the
have
natio n of a n
relev ant actor in the expla
ma y be said to be the
intentional, prices emerged as a collective, unintended consequence of
·I. if a subs tituti on o f t h e p
�
op e occuPYI g
.
those intentional actions and imposed themselves on the actors. 1 7 But inter orga nizat iona l process
� �
nal pohCles
structure leave s the orgam zatlo
prices are a weaker constraint than formal regulations, and in any case specific roles in its a u thori ty
of cour se, have to
Such a subs tituti on would,

1.
s i t O e I O t e and its daily routi nes intac t .
agers , acco um nts by
replaced by other man
respect speci alties (man agers
�
�����:�: �:: �: :: ::: :�: �: :: �:: :: ::: : :: :� ::;��::::
i i a o I
there are the causal capacities they exenise when they interact with one
a l t acco unta nts, engi neer s by engi
capa cities of the orga nizat ion
neer s), but if
rema in roug
the
hly
eme
the
rgen
� ame
t prop ertie s and
after sll ch a
.
. z tlona
in the mter orgam l
ndan t to expla
another. Thus, as I said above, the comm u n ities structured by networks chan ge, then it wou ld be redu
t'
�
engm eers,
fic ma nagers, acco unta nts and
may interact among themselves to form a political coalition, and some outc ome by reference to speci
y othe r such spec ialist s wou ld have left the
organizations may interact as part of larger governmental hierarchies. whe n refer ence to man
riant .
These larger assemblages are emergent wholes in the sense j ust defined: outcome appr oxim ately inva
s inter act
being part of a political coalition provides a community with resources, And the same poin t appli es to large r assem blage s . Citie
for imm igran ts from rural
by com petin g
like the legitimacy derived from n u merousness a n d unity, but it also caus ally with one anot her
such as wate r or agric ultur al land n d for �
constrains it to struggle only for those goals that the whole coalition has regio ns, for natu ral reso urces
a caus al
cities , for exam ple, can cast
agreed on pursuing; local regulatory agencies participating in the econ omic inves tmen t. Large
of new town s
ngs, inhib iting the form ation
implementation of a nationwide policy are provided by the central shad ow' over their surro undi
le, resou rce s or
ce by deprivin g them of peop
government with financial resou rces, while at the same time being legally with in their sphe re of in fluen
se, i t is not the cities as p y
.
� . .
lcal entltJ s �
constrained to operate in a subordinate position. It may be objected, trade oppo rtun ities. B ut, of cour
�
a ctlvmes of their
but cities as local es for the
however, that these alliances and subordinations are not the effect of that can interact this way, s
hant s, investors and migr ants, as weB
these larger assemblages, but of the activities of the people that compose i n b abitants, inclu ding merc
�
nizat ions. So h not say that It IS
nt orga
the m : the allia nces a re created by i n divid u a l activists acting as mark et-pl aces and gove rnme .
� :
that caus e one
performers of these actJvllies
representatives of their communities, and the a uthOrity of a government the interactions betw een tbe
replaced the
th of another? Because if we
agency with national j u risdiction over another with local j u risdiction is urban centre to inhibit the grow
by othe r market-
s, the mark et-places,
always exercised by individual officials. But it is possible to accept that merc hant s by othe r merc hant
37
36
 S S E NC E S
A S S E M B L A G E S A G A INST E
A N E W P H I L O S O P H Y OF S O C I ET Y

out the ong oing

keep i t s iden tity with .
atio n wou ld b e able to
places a n d so o n , a very similar inhibiting effect would be achieved. On organi z empIoyee s; no oty
ns amo ng its adm inist rativ e staff and i t s
the other hand, if such a replacement led to a very different ou tcome that . tera ctio
!I1 ItS po\.mea . I,
.

oing exch ang es amo ng

its iden tity with out ong
would be evidence that the phenomenon in question m u st be explained c ould keep tate wou ld surv ive
s; and no nati on-s
and relig iOUS orga niza tion
by mechanisms operating at a smaller scale, and that it would involve not econ omi C city and its othe r urba n
capi tal
t inte ract ions betw een its
only causes but also reasons, and even motives. without con stan ress ed by sayi ng that
this can be exp
tech nica l term inology
Thus social assemblages la rger than individual persons have an centre s . In y t o prod uce the
proc esse s are nee ded not only h istor icall
�
obj ctive existence because they can causally affect the people that are territor ia lizin g
ial scal e but also to mai
ntai n i t i n the
asse mbl ages at each spat
their component parts, limiting them and enabling them, and because i den t ity of
rriro riali zati on.
izin g proc esse s of dete .
they can causally affect other assemblages at their own scale. The fact that pres enc e of dest abil .
IOus
is rela ted to the first . I argu ed 111 the prev
In order to exercise their causal capacities, internally as well a s externally, A seco nd qua lific atio n s that are
uced by proc esse
ages are alw ays prod
these assemblages must use people as a medium of interaction does not chap te r that asse mbl t i n pop ulat ions .
alw ays exis
this imp lies that they
compromise their ontological a u tonomy a n y more than the fact that recurre nt and that er proc esse s can
one scal e. oth
of asse mbl ages at any
people must use some of their bodily parts (their hands or their feet. for Give n a pop ulat ion this pop ulat ion
e larg er-sc ale asse mbl ages usin g mem bers of
then gen erat
example) to interact with the material world compromises their own
ect, but only i f not take n to imp ly a n
state men t is corr
relative autonomy from their anatomical components. And a similar as compon ents . This the
orig inal eme rgen ce of
histo rica l sequ enc e. Alth oug h for the
point applies a t larger scales. When cities go to war, a recurring event in actu al had to be
ion of pers ons
s a pre- exis ting pop ulat
�
the a e of city-states, they interact causally through their military very first orga niza tion link ed into
re, but alre ady
rse, in a stat e of natu
.
orgalllzatlOns. Whether this int eraction should be viewed as one between avai lable (not , of cou staf f
) mos t new ly born orga niza tion s tend to
organizations or between urban centres i s a question to be a n swered in inte rper sona l netw orks tion s. J 9 Wit h
orga niza
from othe r pre- exis ting
them selv es with peo ple
terms of causal redundancy. If a war lasts so long, or i s fought at such a g i n a wor ld alre ady
ptio ns, orga niza tion s com e into bein
very few exce
large scale, that strategic decision-making at the organizational scale
erm ore, whi le som e part s m u s t
niza tion s. F urth
pop ulat ed by othe r orga e
matters les� than t h e exhaustion of urban resources (recruits, weapons, ed by the mai nten anc
othe rs may be gen erat
�ood s �pp!J es) . then it would make sense to view the episode a s one pre- exis t the who le,
exis ting who le: whi le
citie s a rc com pose d of
pro cess es of an alre ady
involVIng an interaction between urban centres, since a substitution of
l netw orks and orga niza tion s, it i s simp ly not
sona
pop ulat ions of inte rper
one set of military organizations for another would leave the outcome r t o the eme rgen ce of a
ions had to be ther e prio
the case that thes e pop ulat
relat ively unchanged. The military organizations could be s('en as the com e into bein g as part s of
. orks and orga niza tion s
� ��
m dl through which warring cities (or territorial states) interact, much city . In fact. mos t netw
alre ady exis ting citie s. t
as IndiVidual officers in different branches of the military are t h e medium of the rele van t scal e a
rela tes to the que stio n
of interaction for t h e organizations themselves. The thir d qua lific atio n abo ve,
lain ed. A s J argu ed
al process i s t o be exp
whi ch a part icul ar soci of
There are three more adjustments that need to be made to the
van ce are settl ed thro ugh the con cept
of rele
specification of a s semblage theory to make it capable of adequately som etim es que stion s s will alw ays
exp lana tion
this doe s not i mpl y that
accountIng for a multiscaled social reality. The first is a qualification of the cau sal redu nda ncy . But fare a
ial scal e. The N apo leon ic revo lutio n i n war
very concept of emergence. I said above that one strategy to avoid invo lve a sing le spat ted thro ugh
one con duc
sfor med war from
. revo lutio n whi ch tran
relfymg general categories was t o focus on the process of production on batt les of ann ihila tion
l batt les of attr ition to one base d
� nstead of the list of properties characterizing the finished product. This is, rela tive ly loca
e mob ilize d - is a goo
d
urce s of a nati on wer
Il� fact. cor:ect, but it runs the risk of placing too much emphasis on the in whi ch the enti re reso : it invo lved
exp lana tion
and ing a mui tisca led
hlston �al lmth of a particular assemblage, that is. on the processes behind exa mple of a pro cess dem ch
e a t the urba n and nati ona l scal e (the Fren
plac
the orl,qmal emer;qence of its identity. at the expense of those processes cau sal cha nge s taki ng ens inst ead
mot ivat ed citiz
uced the first arm ies of
which must maintain this identity between its birth and its death: no Rev olut ion. whi ch prod
39

38
 A N E W P H I L O S O P H Y OF S O C I E T Y A S S E M B L A G E S A G A I N ST E SS E N C E S

:,
o f expensi e mercena rie s ) ; causes a n d reasons a t the
organiza tional scale rela tion i n social
assembla ges? Then there i s t h e matter o f special entities,
:
( the I reakmg- down of monolith ic armies i m o autonom
ous divisions each in both the biologica
l and social realms, that seem t o operate i n a scale-free

These are the specialize d l ines of expressio n I mentione

with its own infan try, cavalry and artillery ) ; a nd reasons d i n the first
a nd motives at waY.
the persona l scale, since Napoleo n's own strategic � and linguistic entities. O n the one hand, genes
genius and charism a ch pter, involving genetic
t h a n the bodies and minds of persons. On the
amplified by his influenti al position in i n terperson
al network s, played � and words, are more micro
crucial catalytic role. otheL they can also affect macro-p rocesses: genes define the h uman
Let me summarize this chapter's a rgument so spec ies as a whole, a nd words c a n define religions comman ding belief b y
far. The ontologi cal
:
s atus of a � �
y a s emblage , inorganic , organic or social, is that of
a u n i que, large portions of t h a t species.
T h e second question is: H o w do these
relation?
smgular. hIStonca lly contingen t, individua l. Although
the term 'indivi­ specia l assembla ges a ffect the part-to-w hole
ges i s the relative
dual' has come to refer t o individu al persons, in
its ontologic al sense i t The first importan t temporal aspect of social assembla
Does it take longer t o effect
cannot be l i mited to t h a t scale o f reality. M uch a s
biologica l species a r e duratio n o f events capable of changing them.
n o t general categorie s o f which animal a n d p l a n t organism nt changes i n organiza tions than i n people, for
s a r e members enduring and significa
tions? Here we must first
b ut larger-sc ale individu al entities of which organism
s are compone n � example , or longer in cities than in organiza
� �
par s, o Ia rger social assembla ges should be given
the ontologic al status distingu ish between changes brought about by causal interacti ons among
. tion b y persons ( i . e .
o f mdlvldu a l emities: individua l network s a n d coalition s;
individua l social ass{�mbl ages without any consciou s interven
ences o f intention al
organiza tions and governm (>nts; individu al cities
and nation-s tates. This changes produce d a s collectiv e unintend ed consequ
te planning . The former
ontologic al manceuv re allows u s t o assert t h a t all these
individua l entities action) from those which are the result o f delibera
have a �
objective existence independ ently of o u r minds ( o
concepti ons o f the m ) without a n y commitm ent
r of our ·1 case i nvolves slow cumulat ive processe
example , during
s of
the
the products of repeated
seventee nth and eighteen th
t o essences o r reified interacti ons. For
generalit ies . On the other hand. for the manceuv re a uthorilY structure of many organiza tions
t o work, the part-to­ centurie s i n E u rope t h e
. cy to one based on
whole relatlon that replaces essences must b e carefully elucidate
d. The changed from a form based on tradition al legitima
affected not only
a u tonomy of wholes relative t o their parts is g u a
ra n teed b y the fact t h a t rationa l-legal b u re a ucratic procedu res. The change
and prisons. When
they c a n causally affect those p a r t s i n b o t h a limiting
a n d an enabling governm ent burea ucracies . b u t also hospitals , schools
� e pla n ca n be discerne d, the
way, and b y th fact that they can interact with each
other i n a way not studied in detail, however , no deliberal
over two centurie s o f
redUCible t o theu parts, that is, in such a way that
a n e xplanatio n o f the change occurrin g through t h e slow replacem ent
mteractto n tha t includes the details of the compone b y another. Althoug h this replacem ent did
nt parts would be one set of d a i l y routines
redunda nt. Finally, the ontologic al status o f assembla s by individu al persons - persons w h o may have simply
ges i s two-side d: as involve decision
� ng in another motivate d
actual e tities a ll the differentl y scaled social assemblag
es are individua l imitated in one organiza tion what was happeni
s are i n most cases
smgula ntles, b u t the possibilit ies open t o them
a t any given time are by a desire for legitima cy - the details o f these decision
outcome better under­
constrain ed b y a distribu tion o f u n iversal singulari ties.
the diagram o f the causally redunda nt to explain the outcome : an
ions among the member s o f an
assembla ge, which i s not actual b ut virtual. stood a s the result o f repeated interact
�
Given the rucial role that the part-to-w hole relation
plays i n a l l this, organiza tional populati on. A similar point applies
t o changes in urban

t o conclude thiS chapter I would like to clarify two further ons among towns, through trade and competi ­
aspects of i t . So settleme nts: the interacti
over extende d periods
far I have considere d only questions of spatial scale,
the whole being tion for immigra nts and investm ent, yield results
spatIally larger t o the extent that i t is compose f in which small initial advantag es accumul ate. or in which self­
d of many parts. B u t o time
differenc es.
blOloglcal speCIes, the example I u s e d as a p o i n t of departu
re, a l s o operate stimulat ing dynamic s have time t o amplify in itial
to strategiC planning ,
a t longer temporal scales, that is, they endu re much
longer than their Thus i n changes not explaina ble b y referenc e
nt changes t o t a k e
composin g organism s and they change at a much slower
rate. The first relativel y long t ime-scal es can be expected for significa
o t h e r c a s e ? Do p l a n n e d changes a t
question i s then: I s there a similar temporal aspect
to the part-tn-w hole place. B u t w h a t a b o u t t h e

40 41
 A N E W P H I L O S O P H Y OF S O C I E T Y
A SSEMBLAGES A G A I N S T E S S E N C E S

organi zation al or urban scales reduce

t o the characteristic durati on of
th e centrally decided plans, and thus, longer time-scales for organiza­
individ ual decisio n-mak ing? Endur ing
and impor tant chang es i n this
tio nal change.
other case alway s involv e mobilization
of internal resources, both mater ial The effect of time-lags produced by the need to negotiate and secure
resources, such as energy or money ,
as well a s expressive ones, such as
com pliance with central decisions becomes more prominent at larger
solidar ity or legitim acy. I believ e it is safe
entity targeted for change, the larger
to say that the larger the social spatial scales, as in the case of changes at urb an levels br ught abou t y
.
� �
thc amount of resources that must the policies of a national government. The ImplementatIon of pohCIes .
be mobili zcd. Given that rcsources are
alway s scarce, this implie s that decided u p o n by legislative, executive or ju dicial organizations typically
spatia l scale does have tempo ral conseq
uences, since the necess ary means involves the p articipation of IIlany other organizations, such as bureau­
may not be available instan taneou sly
and may need to be accum ulated cratic agencies. These agencies can exercise discretion when converting
over time. In additio n, resour ce mobili
zation must be perfor med agains t a policy objectives into actual procedures, programmes and regulations .
v ariety of source s of inertia at any

It
given scale, from traditi on a n d Thus it is necessary to obtain their commitment to a given policy's
preced ent to the entren ched interes ts of
those that may be a ffectcd by a objectives, and this commitment will vary in different agencies from
p articul ar chang e. This implie s that the
larger the spatial scale of the intense concern to complete indifference. This introduces delays in the
chang e, the more extens ive the allianc
es among the people involv ed have • implementation process, as the n ecessary negotiations take place. These
to be, and the more enduring their comm
itment to chang e has to be. Let delays, in turn, mean that agencies not originally involved have time to
me illustrate this with two examp les
at different spatial scales: resource
realize they have jurisdiction over portions of the programme, or to assess
mobili zation perfor med within an organi
1.
zation to chang e the organi za­ that the policy in question will impinge on their interests. If these other
tion itself. and resource mobili zation
s performed in a hierarchy of agencies get involved they complicate the implementation process by
organi zation s to e ffect chang e at the
scale of neighb ourho ods or entire adding to the number of veto-points that must be cleared. Implementa­
towns.
tion then becomes a process of continuous a djustment of the original
The first case, intero rganiz ationa l chang
e, may be illustra ted by the objectives to a changing political reality, with each adjustment involving
need for organ ization s to keep up with
rapid techno logica l developments. delays in the negotiation and securing of agreements. Historically, failures
Given a correct assessm ent by people
in au thority of the opport unities to meet the original objectives of a policy have often reflected 'the
a n d risks of new techno log ies, can an
organi zation chang e fast enoug h to inability of the implementation machinery to move fast enough to
time internal chanHes to external pressures?
Or more Simply, can the resources capture the agreements while they lasted' . 2 1
available to an organi zation be mobili
zed at will? In large, complex A second temporal aspect of social assemblages is their relative
organi zation s this may not be possib
le. Chang es in the way a n endurance: a question fundam ental in sociology, given that one could
organi zation operat es are bound t o affect
some depart ments more than hardly use the term 'institution' to refer to a social phenomenon which
others, or withdraw resources from one
depart ment to endow anoth er, did not last longer than a human life. People are normally born in a world
and this will gener ate intern al resista
nce which must be overcome of previously existing institutions (both institutional n o rms and organiza­
through negoti ation. The possib ilities
of succes s in these negotiations, in
tions) and die leaving behind many of those same institutions. But
turn, will depend on the extent to which
the forma l roles in an autho rity beyond mere longevity, we would want t o know whether the processes
structure overla p with the inform al roles
of the i nterpe rsonal networks that constantly maintain the identity of social assemblages yield a
formed by employees. If a netwo rk proper
ty (such as the centrality or characteristic life-span correlated with different spatial scales. In other
popula rity of a node) fails to coincide
with formal autho rity, the result words, is large spatial extension correlated with long temporal duration?
may be conflic t and stalemate in the
mobilization of resources. 2 0 This The answer is that there is no simple correlation. Interpersonal networks
means that even in the case where
the decisions to change have been
vary in duration: dispersed friendship networks do not endure longer
made by people who can command
obedience from subord inates, the tha n the persons that compose them, but tightly knit networks of
very complexity of joint action implie
s delays in the implem entatio n of neighbours living in proximity do yield communities that survive the
42
43
 A N E W P H I L O S O P H Y OF S O C I E TY
A S S E M BLAG E S AGAINST E S S E N C E S

death of their parts. The durabili ty of instituti

onal organiz ations also
the present. When the sorting device biases this evol ution to ards
varies: on the low side, restaura nts have a n �
average life-span of only a
few years (a fact that gives them a reputati on
adaptation, populations of replicators can act a s a learnlI1
mechamsm, a �
as the 'fruit-fli es' of the .
means to track changes in an environment through their own Internal
organiza tional world ) b u t some religiou s.
governm ental a nd even
econom ic organiz ations can last for several cha n ges. I n the second place, these specialized assemblages are .capa 1e of �
centurie s. Cities, in turn.
while also having a range of d u rations, have instance 01'eratin g at multiple spatial scales simultaneously: genes are active wlthm
s that have e ndured .
cells, govern the functioning of organs, influence the be h avlOur
' 0f entire
for millenn ia, a nd most of them tend to outlive
many of the organiz ations
they house. Finally. althoug h some territor orga n l'SIns
. , and obstacles to their flow define the reproductive isolation of
ial states. such a s large
empires , have demons trated a resilienc e a l lowing
a species; language shapes the most intimate beliefs of persons, t h � pu blIc.

them t o endure at least

content of conversations, the oral traditions of small commumtles, a n d
a s long a s cities, na tion-sta tes are much too
young to know j u st how
th t� written constitutions of large organizations a nd entire governments.22
endurin g they can be. Thus, i n some cases spatial
and tempora l scales do
Thanks to the flow of lingu istic replicators. assemblages operating at
correlat e, b u t not in others. O n the other hand,
most social assembl ages
dilIerent spatial scales may also replicate, a s when an orga nization opens
larger than people do tend to outlive them on
average even today when
a new branch i n a different locality and sends part of its staff to transmit
rates o f infa nt m o rt a l i ty have decrease d and average h u ma n life the daily routines defining its activities to the new employees. But the
expecta ncies increase d.
flow o f linguistic replicators need not always be 'vertical' from one
I n the case of dense interper sonal network s, part
o f the explana tion for
their relative ly longer life-spa ns is that their
generation to another of the same community, or from o e organiz ti()n � �
con t i n u ity i s maintai ned by
to a new branch. As with poorly reproductively isolated mlcro- orgamsms,
the overlap of s uccessive generati ons of neighbo
urs. Similarl y, in the case
this flow may b e ' horizontal', introducing alien routines. procedures or
of hierarch ical organiz ations, changes of personn
el are never lOtal, that is,
rit u al s which a lter. rather than preserve, the i d e nt ity of social
there is always a n overlap betwee n staff familiar
with the daily routine s
assemblages.
and new employ ees. But i n addition to this
tempora l overlap there is
These characteristics make genetic and lingu istic assemblages not
transmis sion of semanti c i n formatio n a cross
generati ons, about the
ordinary assemblages. But however special, they should never be
tradition s and customs of a particul ar commu
nity, or abou t the formal
considered as any more than component parts entering into relations of
a n d i n formal rules d e fi n i n g position s of
a u t hority in a particul ar
exteriority w i t h other component parts. When these relations are
hierarch ical organiza tion. This transmis sion o
f linguisti c materia ls helps
conceived a s interiority relations, constitutive of the very identity of the
maintai n the identity of social assembl ages across
time much a s the flow
o f gen e t i c m a terials
related parts, both genes a n d words degenerate into essences. In the ca e :
helps to preserv e the i de n t i t y of biologic al .
of language this manceuvre is embodied in the thesis of the ImgulStlCallty
assembl ages. As I said in the previou s chapter
, these specializ ed media
of experience. that is, the idea that an otherwise u n d i fferentiated
of expressi on must themsel ves be consider ed assembl
ages, inhabiti ng the
planet not a s single general entities b u t a s
phenomenological field i s cut u p into discrete entities by the meal ll1 S
:
�
populat ions of concrete
of general terms. Since i n many cases the meaning of general categones IS
i n dividual entities in part-to- whole relation
s: populat ions of individu al
highly stereotyped ( particularly when they are categories applying t o
sounds, words a n d sentenc es; populat ions
of i ndividu al n u c!eotide s,
groups of people, as i n gender or race categories) t h e thesis of the
genes a n d chromo somes.
linguisticality of experience implies that perception is socially con­
On the other h a nd. these assembl ages are special .
i n two ways. In the
structed . 2 3 At the start of this chapter I argued that gt'neral categones do
first place, they a re capable of variable replicatio
n, through a physical
not refer to anything in the real world a n d that to believe they do (Le. to
template mech a nism in the case of genetic
material s, and through
reify them) leads directly to essentialism. Social constructivism is
enforce d social obligatio n in the case of linguisti
c materia ls. Populati ons
of replicato rs, when coupled to any filter or sorting
supp osed to be a n antidote to this, i n the sense that by showing t h t �
device, are capable of
general categories are mere stereotypes it blocks the move towards theIr
guiding change over time. allowing the weight
of the past to impinge on
reification. But by coupling the idea that perception is intrinsically
44
45
 A N E W P H I L O S O P H Y OF S O C I E T Y

linguistic with t h e ontological assumption that only t h e contents

of 3
experience really exist, this position leads directly to a form of
social
essentialism. In the following chapters, as I perform a detailed analysis
of
Persons and Networks
social assemblage s at progressively larger spatial scales, these dangers
must be kept in mind, particularly at the outset a s I attempt to explain
how individual persons emerge from the interaction of subpersona
l
component s, only some of which will turn ou t to be linguistic.

I
Although persons are not the smallest analytical unit that social science
can study - actions by persons such as individual economic transactions
can be used a s units of analysis - they are the smallest-scale social
I assemblage considered here. It is true that persons emerge from the
i nteraction o f subperson a l compone nts, and that some of these
components may j ustifiably be called the smallest social entities. Nothing
very important depends on settling this question. All we need is a point of
departure for a bottom-up ontological model. and tpe personal scale will
provide a convenient one. On the other hand, i t must be stated at the
outset that the goal cannot be to settle all the philosophical questions
regarding subjectivity or consciousness: questions that will probably
continue to puzzle phi losophers for a long time to come. All that is
needed is a plausible model of the subject which meets the constraints of
assemblage theory, that is, a model i n which the subject emerges as
relations of exteriority are established among the contents of experience.
A good candidate for such a model, as Deleuze himself argued long ago,
can be found in the philosophical school known as empiricism.
The empiricist tradition i s mostly remembered for its epistemological
claims, in particular, the claim that all knowledge, including verbal
knowledge, can ultimately be reduced to sense impressions. Or what
amounts to the same thing, that sense experience is the foundation of all
knowledge. B u t Deleuze discovered in the work of David Hume
something much more interesting than such a dated foundational
epistemology: a model of the genesis of subjectivity that can serve as an
alternative to the dominant one based on the thesis of the linguisticality
46
47

A N E W P H I L O S O P H Y OF S O C I E T Y
of experience. A n empiricist model conceptualizes subjective experience
first and foremost i n terms of distinct and separable sense impressions. The
ideas we derive from those impressions (ideas which may constitute the
meanings of some words) are not related to them via social conventions
but are diren replicas of those impressions, distinguishable from them
exclusively by their lower intensity. I From the point of view of assemblage
theory, it is crucial that each type of impression - not only visual. a u ral,
o l factory a n d tactile but also the p l u rality of passions, from pride and
humiliation to love a n d hatred - possess its own singular individuality,
that is, that each of these impressions is, a s Hume says, 'an original
existence'.2 This guarantees their heterogeneity and their irreducibility to
one another. In addition, the singular status of impressions is what
distinguishes empiricist from language-based models i n which a particular
impression is recognized as being the impression of something by
mentally classifying it as belonging to a general category.
On the other hand, some process must give these singular impressions
and ideas a certain u n i ty, even if that implies increasing their degree of
uniformity a n d constancy. This process, as is well known, is
association of ideas. Can it be modelled via relations of exteriority? I
argued before that the action of causes on their effects provides a good
instantjation of relations of exteriority. For similar reasons, the action of '
formal operators on their a rguments also constitutes a good example. In the
case of subjectivity certain operators acting on ideas produce associative
links between them and, i n the process, provide subjective e x perience
with its overall coherence. More specifically, the habitual grouping of
ideas through relations of contiguity ( i n space or time), their habitual
comparison through relations of resemblance. a n d the habitual pairing of
causes a n d effects by their perceived constant conj unction, turns a loose
collection of individual ideas into a whole with emergent properties. The
associative relations established between ideas by these three operators
meet the criteria of exteriority because they may change without the
ideas themselves changing, and the properties of the ideas are not used to
explain the operations that are applied to them . 3
These three associative operators must be conceived a s common to a l l
humanity, being, according to Burne, 'original qualities o f human
nature·.4 Speaking of a shared 'human nature'. of course, shou l d not
be taken to imply any commitment to essentialism. since the human
species is as much a contingent historical production a s any human
orga nism. Species-wide properties, being m uch more long-lasting than
48
PERSONS A N D N E TWORKS
t o involve a 'fixed,
th ose o f organisms o r persons, can indeed seem
essary nature' when considering events at the organismic temporal
nec
illusion' produced
scale , but this fixity and necessity are a kind of 'optical
or by its high
by the much slower rate of change of a species' properties,
d egre e of reproductive isolation. On the other hand, a process which
acc ounts for the emergence of a species-wide form of subjectivity leaves
out many features that characterize individual persons belonging to
and
i ndivid u a l cultures. Thus, while the habitual association of causes
effe cts allows any h u ma n subject to match m e a n s t o e n d s (I.e. to solve
practical problems), the choice o f ends depends entirely on the passions:
on the habitual pursuit of those ends associated with pleasurable or
positively valued passions, and the habitual avoidance of those linked
with painful o r negat.ively valued ones.s The subject that emerges from
this double process i s a pragmatic subject whose behaviour must be
explained both by giving reasons, such a s tradition a l values. a s well as by
stating personal motives . We may summarize this model of the
I emergence of subjectivity using Deleuze's own words:
the I
. . . what transforms the mind into a subject and constitutes a subject in
I
. the mind are the principles of human nature. These principles are of
two kinds: principles of association a n d principles of passions, which in
some respects, we could present in the general form of the principle o f
.
.
.� utility. The subject i s t h e entity which, under t h e influ ence of the
principle of utility, pursues a goal or an intention; i t organizes means
in view of an end and, under the influence o f the principles of
association, establishes relations among ideas. Thus, the collection
becomes a system. The collection of perceptions, when organized a n d
bound. becomes a system.6
This systematic entity may be treated a s a n assemblage by distinguish­
ing those components playing a material role from those playing a n
expressive role, a n d those processes t h a t g i v e it stability f r o m those that
destabilize it. The material role is performed by the bodily mechanisms
behind the production o f sense impressions, those u nderlying the body's
dispositions towards the wide range oj human passions and emotions,
and those that realize neu rologically the three associative operators.
Although Hume himself refused t o speculate on the nature of these
mechanisms he d i d believe that the basic impressions emerge 'from the
con stitution of the body, from the animal spirits, or from the application
49
 A N E W P H I L OS O P H Y OF S O C I E T Y
o f objects t o t h e external organs , . 7 To these mechanisms w e must add the
energy or labour that, i n the form of focused attention, is involved in the
continuo u s production of associative links. The expressive role, on the
other hand, is played both by linguistic and nonIinguistic components.
The main example of the latter are the ideas derived from both sensual
and passionate impressions. As I remarked b efore, the link between ideas
and impressions is not representational, that is, not mediated by a
convention or a code. Ideas directly express impressions. As Hume puts it, the
'idea of red, which we form i n the dark, and that impression, which
strikes our eyes i n sunshine, differ only in degree, not in nature'.s
The main territorializing process providing the assemblage with a
stable identity is habitual repetition. Habit, for Hume, is a more powerful
force sustaining the association of ideas than conscious reflection, and
personal identity is stable only to the extent that habitual or routine
associations are constantly maintained.9 It follows that any process which
takes the subject back to the state it had prior to the creation of fixed
associations between ideas ( i . e. the state in which ideas are connected as
in a delirium) can destabilize personal identity. Examples of these
deterritorializing processes are not hard to find. They include madness,
high fever, i ntoxication, sen sory deprivation and even
interventions aimed a t disrupting daily routine, a s performed,
example, on prisoners i n concentra tion camps. These,
processes, can cause a loss, or at least a severe destabilization, of
subjective identity. lo
Personal identity, on the other hand, may be deterritorialized not only
by loss of stability but also by a ugmentation of capacities; here we must
go beyond Hume and add to habit or routine the effects of the acquisition
of new skills. When a young child learns to swim or to ride a b icycle, for
example, a new world suddenly opens up for experience, filled with new
impressions and ideas. The new skill is deterritorializing to the extent that
it allows the child to break with past routine by venturing away from
home in a n e w vehicle, or inhabiting previously forbidden spaces like the
ocean. New skills, i n short, increase one's capacities to affect and be
affected, or to p u t it differently, increase one's capacities to
novel assemblages, the assemblage that the human body forms with a
bicycle, a piece of solid ground and a gravitational field, for example. Of
course, the exercise of a new skill can soon become routine unless one
continues to push the learning process i n new directions. In addition,
while rigid habits may be enough to associate linear causes and their
50
P E R S O N S A N D N E TW O R K S
(orl stant effects, they are n o t enough to deal with nonlinear causes that
dem and more adaptive, flexible skills. .
Finally, there is the question of the role played by those expressive
the
compon ents that are linguistic. These must be introduced respecting
cons traint against relations of interiority, a constraint that, as I saId
before, rules out a n eo-Kantian constitutive role for language. Moreover,
of
it fiust be kept in mind t h a t language came relatively late in the history
the evolution of the human species. As an intelligent species we spent
mill ennia successfully coping with environmental challenges using
accum ulated knowledge about cause-and-effect relations. Hume h i mself
arg ues that the ability to match means to ends ( I . e . the capacity for caus al
.
reasonin g ) is not an exclusively h um a n ability b u t m a y be observed In
'
other animals which use it 'for their own preservation, and the
,
propagation of their species . 1 1 So to be compatible with ass r bla e �� �
theory, any given account of language must be capable of explaInIng ItS
first emergence on the basis of a prior nonlinguistic form of intelligence.
I On the other hand, when language finally emerged i t a ugmented those
prior forms of i n t elligent behaviour through its m uch greater combi�ator­
ial productivity. One difficulty with the associationist approach, a dIffIcu lty
deliberate
often pointed out by its critics, is the move from simple ideas to more
for
complex ones. I n Hume's account, for instance , the complex idea of an
and other
apple would be produced b y combining simple ideas for a certain colour,
shape, aroma, taste, and so on. But this combinatorial capacity pales
when compared to that of language: given a dictionary with a finite
number of words, a set of grammatical rules can produce an infinite
number of well-formed sentences. 1 2 From the point of view of
assemblage theory there is no problem in simply adding this combinator­
ial productivity of language to that of associationism, a s long as the theory
of grammar that accounts for i t (and several existing theories do) can also
p ass the evolutionary test, (i.e. that the formal operators i t postulates be
capable of emerging from a prior n onlinguistic form of subjectivity ) . 1 3
Assuming t h a t w e have a linguistic theory t h a t meets all t h e
requirements, the m a i n effect of language at the personal scale is the
enter into
s haping of beliefs. I n the Humean account, the difference between belief
and disbelief relative to a given idea is simply a question of intensity. 1 4
Given t h a t ideas are low-intensity replicas of impressions, believing in
them simply brings them closer to those impressions, which is why,
according to Hume, ' [an ] idea assented to feels different from a fictitious
idea ' . 1 5 This n otion of belief as feeling contrasts sharply with that of
51
 A NEW PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIETY PER SONS A N D NETW O R K S

modern philosopher s who stress the role of language. As I said in Chapter the way i n which conversations add another layer of identity to persons:
1 , a belief may be considered an attitude towards a proposition , that is, the public image or persona they proj ect in their encounters with others, an
towards the meaning of a sentence stating ( truly or fa lsely) matters
of im ag e that has less to do with who they are than who they want to be.
facL Given that declarative sentences are an important example of the Goffman's a nalysis of conversati ons lends itself to an assemblage
combinator ial productivity o f language, and that within assemblage approach first of a l l for its stress on relations of exteriority. He defines
theory this productivity is accepted as real, we must take seriously the his subject matter as
definition of belief a s a proposition al a ttitude. On the other hand, this
does not rule out the Humean notion since we may adopt such an the class o f events which occurs d u ring co-presence and b y virtue of
attitude with different degrees o f inten sity, and in many cases it is the co-presence. The ultimate behavioral materials are the glances,
.
inte nsity of a given belief, more t ha t the correspondi ng proposition, that gestures, positionings, and verbal statements that people continuously

drives social action. Thus, some people may be willing to die for a came if feed into the situation, whether intended o r n ot. These are the external
they believe that martyrdom will g u a rantee eternal rewards, but this signs of orientation and involvement - states of mind and body not
16
willingness to sacrifice themselves is more closely linked to the intensity ordinarily examined with respect to their social organization.
of their devotion than to the specific semantic content of the belief (say, a ,
certain number o f virgins waiting in heaven), a content which could be In addition, GoHma n ' s approach emphasizes the properties of
altered without a l tering the behaviour. The importance of intensity over conversations that cannot b e reduced t o their component parts, such as
semantk content is clearer in other propositiona l attitudes, such as desires, that of possessing a ritual equilibrium which may be threatened if
which may take as objects purely H umean ideas (a desire for a specific involvement or attention are not properly allocated. A good example of
taste or sound, or a particular visual experience) although they may a lso threats to ritual stability are embarrassing events, such as linguistic errors
b e directed towards proposition s, as in the case o f a desire for eternal (mispronunciation or misuse of words, lack of availability of a word when
salvat i o n . needed) or breaches of etiquette ( m a king fun of a stutterer, calling a
T h i s b r i e f sketch of h o w s ubjectivity m a y be h a ndled within : misstatement a lie), since these i ncidents divert attention from the
assemblage theory can hardly be the last word, b u t it will be enough conversation itself to the norms which the participants mutually enforce.
to
provide us with a point of departure. The subject or person emerging from When such threats occu r it is the situat ion it self t h a t becomes
the assembly of subpersona l component s ( impressions . ideas, proposi­ embarrassing; while the participant who committed the error may feel
tional attitu des, habits. skills) has the right capacities to act pragmatical ly, humil iated, particularly if the others do not allow him o r her to save face,
( i.e. to match means to ends) as well as socially. to select ends for a the other participants may also feel embarrassed about the incident itself.
variety of habitual or customary reasons that need not involve a n y so that the entire situation suffers and must be repaired. The degree to
con scious decision. O n t h e other hand. given that t h e processes that which repair is necessary is directly linked t o the intensity o f the
produce assemblages are always itera tive ( L e . that they alwa ys yield disruption. As Goffman writes, a hu miliating event places all participants
populations ), we must immediately add those aspects of subjectivity that in 'a state of ritual disequilibrium o r disgrace, and an attempt must be
emerge from the interactions between persons. Some o f these interac­ made to reestablish a satisfactory ritual state for them . . . The imagery of
tions may be viewed as taking place within assemblages. albeit ones with equilibrium is apt here because the length and intensity of the corrective
much shorter life-spans. These ephemeral assemblage s may b e referred effort is nicely adapted to the persistence and intensity of the threat.' 17
to
as 'social encounters '. and of the many different types o f social As an assemblage. a conv{�rsation possesses components performing
encounters we may single out a particularly relevant one: conversatio ns both material and expressive roles. The main material component is co­
between two o r more persons. presence: human bodies correctly assembled i n space, dose enough to hear

The most important research in this regard is without doubt each other and physically oriented towards one another. Another

represented by the work of the sociologist Erving Goffman who studied material component is the attention and involvement needed to keep

52 53
 A N E W P H I L OS O P H Y O F S O C I E T Y
the conversation going, a s well as t h e labour spent repamng ritual
disequilibrium. While in routine conversations this labour may consist of
simple habits, other occasions may demand the exercise of skills, such as
tact (the capacity to prevent causing embarrassment to others) and poise
(the capacity to maintain one's composure under potentially embarras­
sing circumstances ) . 18 These are the minimal components playing a
material role. But tedmological inventions (such as telephones or
computer networks) may make strict physical co-presence unnecessary,
leading to the loss of some material components ( spatial proximity), but
adding others, the technol ogical devices themselves as well as the
infrastructure needed to link many such devices.
Although the flow of words making up the content of a conversation
clearly plays an important expressive role, every participant in
conversation is also expressing claims to a certain public persona through
every facial gesture, bodily posture, deployment of (or failure to deploy)
poise and tact, choice of subject matter, and in many other ways. The
expression of these identity claims must be done carefu lly, that is, I
performed in such a way that the image projected cannot be easily
discredited by others. Any given conversation will present its participants
with opportunities to express favourable information about themselves,
as well as with risks to express unfavourable facts. Since this information
becomes part of one's reputation, it will affect the identity claims one can
afford to express in the next encounter. The variety of means through
which claims to a public persona can be expressed constitute the main
nonlinguistic expressive component of these assemblages.
A conversation may be said to be territorialized by behavioural
processes defining its borders in space and in time. The spatial boundaries
of conversations are typically well defined, partly because of the physical
requirement of co-presence, partly because the participants themselves
ratify each other as legitimate interactors and exclude nearby persons
from intruding into the conversation. As Goffman puts it. when 'the
process of reciprocal ratification occurs, the persons so ratified enter into a
state of talk - that is, they have declared themselves officially open to one
another for purposes of spoken communication and guarantee together
to maintain a flow of words'.19 Conversations also have boundaries in
time, defined by conventional ways of initiating and terminating an
encounter, as well as a temporal order specifying the taking of turns
during the encounter.
Any event, or series of events, that destabilizes the conversation or
54
P E RS O N S A N O N E T W O R KS
daries may be considered deterritorializing. Embarrassment
blu rs its boun
or hu miliation are examples of the former: to the e xtent that claims to a
p ublicl y acceptable self circulate in conversations, any damage done to
th ese p u b lic images is a potential threat to the integrity of the situation.
Goffman discusses critical points in the intensity of humiliation, for
exa m ple, after which regaining composure becomes impossible, embar­
ra ssm ent is comm u nicated to all participants, and the conversation
collapses.2o Beyond this, there are events which may transform a casual
conversat ion into a heated discussion and, if the situation is not corrected,
into a fist-fight. These events are also deterritorializing . Finally, a
technological invention that allows a conversation to take place at a
distance affects its identity not by changing it into some other form of
a social encounter but by blurring its spatial boundaries, forcing partici­
pants to compensate for the lack of co-presence in a variety of other ways.
The role performed by language in these assemblages is straightfor­
ward, given that what is communicated in these exchanges are words and
senten ces. But, as I argued in a previous chapter, these linguistic entities
have both signification and significance, and these two dimensions of
meaning, one semantic the other pragmatic, should never be confused.2 1
O n e way i n which the pragmatic dimension o f language can be brought
up is by thinking of the consequences of saying something. As Goffman
argues, with the possible exception of activities deliberately intended to
kill time, all other human activities have pragmatic consequences. In
many cases these consequences are relatively well known in advance,
due to their very high probability of occurrence, and are not therefore
problematic. But other situations are both consequential and problematic.
These he calls eventful or fateful.22 The term applies, of course, to many
types of social encounters, some of which may have a minimal linguistic
component, such as the encounter of enemy armies on a battlefield. But
it may also be u sed to distinguish conversations in which routine and
relatively insignificant words are exchanged from those i n which a
subject matter of great importance to the participants is being discussed,
and in which the outcome of the discussion is not easy to predict i n
advance. F rom the point o f view of the identity claims one can make i n
Social encounters, eventfulness changes the distribution of opportunities
and risks. In particular, only eventful situations allow participants the
exp ressive possibility of displaying character ( courage, integrity, sports­
manship). This is a significant opportunity because eventful encounters
are relatively rare and, if the opportunity is not missed, participants can
55
 A N E W P H I L O S O P H Y OF S O C I E T Y PERSONS AND NETWORKS

enhance their reputations i n a long-lasting manner, since claims to strong i n a network, such as t h e property of being
pro perty o f t h e positions
c h a racter can only be chal lenged by the oc('urrence of a n other n u mber o f i ntermedi ary links) has effects on
n earby (as defined b y the
problematic event not b y the other participants.23 positions , making them more likely to adopt
th e people occupyin g those
When conversations ( a n d other social encounters) are repeated with towards third parties.26 Density and stability, in t u rn,
si mila r attitudes
the same participants, or with overlapping sets of participants, longer.' a commun ity with a high degree of solidarity. This is also a n
ma y endow
lasting social entities tend to emerge: interpersonal networks. Prom the. n t property to t h e extent that o n e a n d t h e same degree o f
e merge
variety o f combinat ions o f personal
assemblage point o f view, i n terpersonal networks are perh aps the social soli da rity m a y b e compatib le with a
may be motivate d b y the feelings o f
entities that are the easiest to handle. given that in network theory the reasons and motives: some members
i n the affairs of the commun ity
empbasis i s always on relations of exteriority. That is, it is the pattern 0
togethernes s w h i c h getting involved
o thers b y strict calculatio ns
recurring links, as well as th e properties of those l i nks, which forms the produ ces i n them, others by altruism, n d yeta
subject of s t u d y, not the attributes o f the persons occupying positions i n a. of reciproci t y .
ges include,
network. These attributes ( such as gender o r race ) are clearly very Compon ents performi ng a material role i n these assembla
important in the study of h uman i nteractions, but some of tbe emergent addition to the physical bodies o f the people involved , the time a n d
in
! hips, t w o resource s
properties of networks tend to remain the same despite cha n ges i n t h ose energy t h e y m u s t spend i n maintain ing relations
the n u mber o f friends
attributes. This implies that the properties of the links cannot be i n ferred which are always i n short s u pply and which limit
ance of relations i n volves
from the properties o f the persons linked . The properties o f links include and contacts a person can have. The mainten
conversa tions. It also includes t h e
their strength, that is. the frequ ency of i n teraction among the persons rnore than j u st having freq uent
l i k e tak i n g care o f other people's children, a n d
occupying given positions, as well as the emotional content of the exchange of physical a i d ,
relation; their presence or absence, the absences i ndicating the existence of s u c h as giving advice i n difficult situation s. A s it
o f emotion al support,
borders separating one network from another, or one cl ique from another there exists in many commun ities a division o f labour in this
happens,
amo u n t o f the
within a given network; and their reciprocity, that is, the symmetry or regard with women tending to perform a dispropo rtionate
ents playing an
asymmetry of the obligations entailed by the link.24 work involved i n the maintena nce o f relations .27 Compon
I n addition, the overall network has properties o f its own, one o f the expressiv e role inclu d e a large variety o f nonlingu istic displays of
d inner together
most important of which is density, a measure of the intensity of solidarity a n d trust. Certain routine acts, such as having
o n special holidays) or going to church (and
connectivity among i ndirect Iinks 2 5 Roughly, if the friends of m y friends (whether on a daily basis or
( th a t is, m y indirect links) know the friends o f your friends, and they ritua l s ) serve both to express solidarity and t o perform
other collective
, as
know the friends of everybody else's friends i n a given commu nity, the maintenance tasks.28 Other acts, snch as the sharing of adversity
the demonstrated
network has a high density. As I argued in the previous chapter. i n a happens d uring a strike in a workers' commun ity, or
and build
high-density network information abou t transgressions of local norms Willingness to make sacrifice s for the commun ity, both express
solidarity ,
becomes known to all members of a community, which implies that the trust. The importan t point is that when i t comes to express
e compone nts also include any
network itself has the capacity to store local reput ations and, via actions speak louder than words. Expressiv
of using the
ostracism a n d other penalties, the capacity t o deter potential cheaters. items capable o f serving a s a badge o f identity. The very a c t
Another important property i s a network's stability, a property that may particu lar dialect o f a language spoken in a given corn m u n ilY, {or
m u n ity, a
be studied either in terms of the attitudes of the persons involved or i n example, expresses the fact that the user belongs to that ('Om
r l i n g u istic
terms of some systematic i nterdependence between attitudes d u e to display of pride of member ship which coexists with whateve
positjons in a network. I n the first case, a network is stable if the attitudes information i s commun kated b y words.29
f centripe tal and
of persons towards mller members o f a network do not produce Interper sonal network s are subject to a variety o
nd
psych ological tension, as wou l d a situation where the friends o f my ce ntrifugal forces that are the main sources of territoria lization a
friends are a ctually my enemies. I n the second case what matters is how a Among t h e former t h e most importan t i s the
deterritorializati on.

S6 57
 A N E W P H I L O S O P H Y O F S O C I E TY PERSONS AND NETWORKS

existence of conflict between different communities. C onflict has the effe representing the facts b u t rigidifying the identities of the conflicting
of exaggerating the d istinction between ' us ' an d 'them', that is, i p a rtie s, the narratives being part of a process of group boundary
� �
sha en the boundaries between i n siders and outsiders. While hig con struction. In the case of ethnic communities, for in stance, the

densIty Itself transform s networks into enforcem ent mechanisms, th enforcement of identity stories and categories occurs chiefly at the

presence of conflict i n creases the activities dedicated to policing boundary. As Tilly writes, 'You can be more or less Muslim, even to the

community's borders, not only the physical boundaries of a neighbour point when other Muslims deny your Muslimness, yet at the boundary

hood or small town, b ut the degree to which a community controls i with Jews you still fall unmistakably into the Muslim category:H In the

members' behaviour and promotes intemal homogeneity, In othe terminology of assemblage theory, stories of conflict (and the categories

words, conflict sharpe ns the identity of a commu nity. This implies tha for insiders and outsiders associated with them) serve to code and

solidarity cannot always be viewed as a desirable property since i n the con solidate the effects of territorialization on interpersonal networks.
presence of conflict i t results in practices of social exclusion and the Speaking of conflict between communities already implies that. like all

placing of constraints on members ' autonomy whi ch greatly reduce thei assemblages, i nterpersonal networks exist in populations. Interactions

scope to b e different. 30 E xamples of centrifugal forces include any process among members of these populations may sometimes lead to the

th a t decreases a n etwork's density, formation of political a l l iances or coalitions among communities,

such as social mobility and
secularization. Socia l mobility weakens links by making people less alliances being the paradigmatic case of relations of exteriority in the

interdependent and by promoting a greater a cceptance of difference social realm.34 In some cases, alliances lead to the emergence of larger­

through less local scale entities such as social justice movements. In Tilly's view a social
and more cosmopolitan attitudes. Secularization
implies, among other things, the elimination of some of the rituals movement is composed of at least two collective actors, each comprising

which, like churchgoing, are important to the maintenance of traditional one or several allied communities with well-defined boundaries

solidarity. Transportation and communication technologies are other sharpened by conflict. One o f the communities (or coalition of

sources of deterritorialization that reduce or eliminate co-presence (i.e. communities) must be attempting t o correct a wrong or to gain a right

they create dispersed i n terpersonal networks) . Geographical dispersion of which it has been unjustly deprived; the other one is there to rival the

demands that comm unity members be more acti ve in the maintenance of claims of the first, that is, to defend advantages which would be

links, given that connections will tend to be wi der and weaker and that threatened by its success. In other words, a movement typically breeds a

readymade rituals for the expression of solidari t y may not be available.3l . countermovement, both of which should be considered component parts

There are a variety of roles that linguistic components play i n these of the overall assemblage. In addition, the assemblage must include at

assemblages, an important example of which are the shared stories and least one governmental organization defined by its control over law­

cate,qories that em erge enforcement and military resources. The aggrieved community's goal is t o
as part of conflict between two or m o re
communities (Le. the narratives of 'u s ' versus 'them'), as well as the achieve recognition as a valid interlocutor on the part of t h e govern­

mostly stereotyped ethnic or racial categori es used in them. As the mental organization, that is, to be treated as a legitimate maker of

historical sociologi st Charles Tilly has argued, these stories concentrate on collective claims, a goal that must be achieved against strong opposition

unified space and time settings and on actors with clear motivations and from the countermovement. As Tilly writes:

fixed attributes, and t herefore do not reall y capture the actual causal
structure of a given conflictive situation, parti cularly one that has lasted a Claim making becomes political when govemments - or more

long time. The se narratives out anything related generally, individuals or organizations that control concentrated
tend to leave to
collective unintended consequences of intent ional action, any process of means of coercion become parties to the claims, as claimants,

accumulation or concentration of resources that is too slow to be detected objects of claims, or stake holders. When leaders of two ethnic factions

by direct experience, as well as any social effe cts mediated by the physical compete for recognition as valid interlocutors for their ethnic category,

environment.32 But the role these stories play in the assemblage is not for example, the government to which interlocutors would speak

58 59
 A N E W P H I L O S O P H Y OF S O C I ETY
P E R SO N S A N O N E T W O R K S

inevitably figure as s t a k e holders. Contention occurs everywhere, but

must include t h e
th e l i s t o f components performi ng a material role
contentious politics i n volves governments, a t least a s third parties.35
w eapons, anti-riot gear a n d the physical control o f demonstrators b y
�
poli ce a n d army forces . T h e variety a n d concentr tion o f means o f
Tilly discusses h o w the means through which political claims are made abIlity
coercio n i s a n important component beca use the wlllmgness and
underwent a dramatic transformation i n Great Britain between l 7 5 0 and
�
of government orga n izations to use them varies with circu nstances, and
1 8 50. Claim -maki n g moved away from machine-breaking, p hysical
this variation affords rival communities different opportul1ltles and nsks:
attacks on tax collectors, and other forms of d i rect action, towards the
to
a w a r may have just broken out and the government might need
very different set of expressive displays characteristic of today's move-
, recruit members of one of the communities. or, on the contrary. a war
ments, i n cluding 'public meetings, demonstrations, marches, petitions,
may have just. ended and the exceptional government controls during
pamphlets. statements i n mass media, posting or wearing o f identifying
6
;
wa time may have been relaxed. promoting a wave o f deferred d a i ms;
signs. and deliberate adoption of distinctive slogans ' . 1 Th e new
the war m a y have been won or lost. increasing or decreasing the
'repertoires of contention', as he calls them, play the main expressive
hargaining power of the governmental organizations and hence the
role i n these assemblages. During the Industrial Revolution and after-
chances of the collective actor's claims to be successl u t ly heard, and so
wards, an aggrieved community (or coalition of communities) had to..
.
express t h a t i t was respectable, unified, numerous and committed. in short, I
I on. 39
Questions of territorialization are directly linked to the changes in
that it was a legitimate collective maker of claims in the eyes of both its l repertoires of contention. When direct expression o f discontent was
rivals and the government. 37 Of course, the possession of these properties
dominant the goals o f a particular movement were more local and short­
may be expressed linguistically. Numerousness. for example. may be
term. The switch to the new repertoire implied a move towards more
expressed by publishing a statement about the quantity of supporting
strategic, long-term goals and this, in turn, involved the creation of
members, but it will be displayed more convincingly by assembling a very
enduring organizations 1.0 solidify gains a n d concentrate resources. I n
large crowd in a particular place in town. Respect.ability may also be
other words, accompanying the switch t o the n e w expressive repertoire
expressed in linguistic form, but it will be displayed more dramatically if a
there was a simultaneous change in the type o f collective entity that
large crowd manages to stage a peaceful and ordered dem onstration.
promoted those claims. from authorized communities to the specialized
Linguistic statements about the degree o f u nity in a coalition are easy to
association. of which unions a n d other worker organ izations are only one
make, but for the same reason unity w i l l be expressed more forcefully by
example.40 These organizations played a key role in stabilizing t he
concerted action and mutual support.
identity of a movement. B u t there are other processes that may change or
The change in contention repertoires during the eighteenth a n d
destabilize this identity, forcing participants to invent new strategies a n d
nineteenth centuries implies that some component parts switched from a
even to redefine their struggles. Among t h e m are what Tilly refers t o a s
material to an expressive role. B u t there are other material components. (positive
protest cycles. These involve mutually stimulating dynamics
Given that expressing respectability, numerousness, commitment a nd
feedback) in which
unity simultaneously is not an easy task - having numerous members
makes presenting a unified front more problemat ic. for example - a l a rge
[one collective actors's] successful claim making tends to stimulate
investment of e nergy on the part of organizers to hold the movement
new demands on the part of other actors. Tha t happens because some
together i s .required. As Tilly writes. the 'actual work o f organizers
actors recognize previously invisible opportunities, others emulate
consists recurrently o f patching together provisional coalitions, negotiat­
newly devised means of action, and stilt others find themselves
ing which of the mulriple agendas participants bring with them will find
threatened b y the newcomers. Expansion of claim making occurs . . .
public voice i n their collective action, suppressing risky tactics. and above
u p to the point where rivals either establish themselves, rigidify their
all hiding backstage struggle from public view'. IS I n addition, given the
positions. exhaust their energies, destToy each otller, or succumb to
fact that a government organization is always part of these a s semblages,
state repression called forth by those whose interests claim making
60
61
 A N E W P H I LO S O P H Y O F S O C I E T Y PERSONS AND NETWORKS

distributio ns of networks, however, i s not t o

threatens . . . Over such a cycle. early phases multiply innovations i risk s. T o speak of ranked
collective action, create relatively open spaces for new colleetiv the ranking i s simple a s i n a 'society' neatly divided into upper,
i m ply that
a s Tilly argues, misreprese nts t h e
experiments, and thus give the impression o f a total break with the mid dle and lower cla sses. This,
o f inequality between groupS.43 While the
past. During later phases, more moderate claimants withdraw from th com plexit y o f t h e relations
public arena, leaving more radical and marginal activists increasingl i n a given hiera rchical d i stribution of resources does
location of a network
isolated a n d vulnerable. Each large cycle o f this kind leaves its traces in a set o f shared interests for the persons composin g the network.
crea te
the political system: formation of new groups, alteration o f relations anizatio ns are needed i n many cases to focus collective attention on
org
give them a more ('oherent expression , as
between citizens and public authorities, r('newal of publie discourse. th ose common interests and
action when pursuing those
and creation of new forms of collective action.41 well as to serve as instrume nts of collective

There is. finally, the question of the effect of linguistic components on

: � � � �
the e as embla es. Tilly disc sses the cr cial role played by general terms
l i nterests in order to extract new rights

assem blage.
from

organizati ons, when they exist, must also be considered

the governme nt. These
part of the

.
deslgnatmg SOCial categorIes. GIven that prIor to a conflict a particular SOcial j The contempo rary sociologist who has done the most empirical
these resource distributio ns is Pierre
work
Bourdieu . In
group may have already been classified by government organizations in the study o f
over
under a religious. ethnic, radal or other category, one of the of. Bourdieu' s view, the asymmetr ical degree of access and command
persons sorting
social movements is to chan ge that classification. B u t the reason such a J resources acts as a forre that differenti ates a populatio n of
of social classes. Bourdieu
change is important for the memb(�rs of a given movement is not because them into ranked groups. Unlike older theories
does not
categories directly shape perception (as social constructivists would have does not limit his analysis to e(:onomic resources, a n d hence
o f income distributio ns or in terms of control
it) but because o f the unequal legal rights and obligations which are attached view classes solely in terms
resources he
by government organizations to a given classification, as well as the over the mean s of productio n. To financial and industrial
or spedalized
practices of exclusion, segregation and hoarding o f opportunities wh ich adds cultural ones, such as possessing a general education
licences and
SOrt people out into ranked groups:12 Thus, activists trying to change a technical knowledge, as well as owning the diplomas,
knowledg e. This
given category are not negotiating over meanings, as if changing the credentials needed to profit legitimate ly from such
roughly, to the one between material and
semantic content of a word automatically meant a real change in the distinctio n correspon ds,
opportunities and risks faced by a given social group, but over access to resource s in assembla ge theory. In addition, B o u rd ie u
expressiv e
s these distribu­
reSOUfn's (income, education, health services) and relief from constraints. emphasiz es the relations t h a t arise between position i n
In short struggles over categories are more about their and of slJ("h relations are being above, below. or between, that is,
tions. Examples
economic significance than their linguistic signification. the relations that exist between ranked groups. The y also include
This condudes the assemblage analysis of social justice movements. proximity, not spatial proximit y but the relation that exists between two
resources
But there a re other large sodal entities that a re also composed o f groups with similar command over economic and cultural
wherever they happen to be located geograph ically. These and other
coalitions o f networked communities, and whose identity i s also shaped
by conflict with other such groups as well as by their relations to rclations he views as relations of exteriorit y.44
to
government organizations: social classes. To of classes is to say that The main e mpirkal finding that must be explained , according
the statistical correlatio n between. on the one hand, positiOns
the population o f networks inhabiting a particular country have Bourdieu. is
differential a('cess to a variety of resou rces a n d are unevenly exposed to in resource distributio ns and. on the other, a more o r less coherent life­
nts: the
a variety of constraints. In other words, the existence o f social classes style. a term which includes both material and expressive compone
or purchase ; the set of
presupposes that there are processes taking place i n populations of goods and services a given group tends to own
and cultural
networks that sort them out into ranks in such a way that the persons manners and bodily postures it tends to exhibit; the political
Stances it tends to take; and the activities it tends to engage i n within a
composing those networks are born with different life opportunities and

63
62
 A NEW PHILOSOPHY O F SOCIETY
whole variety o f historically differentiated fields ( su<.:h a s economics
politics, religion, an) . In other words, what needs to be a<.:counted for is th
specific mapping between a space defined b y differential control ove
resources and the various fields of activity, position-taking s and styles
Bourdieu's explanation o'f the observed statistical correlations is tha
d ifferent sets of objective opportunities and risks condition the day-to-da
practices of groups leading to the development of a durable set 0
dispositions. tendencies to behave in certain ways and to display certain
aspirations. ConSidering that both habits and skills. two of the components
of subjectivity in assemblage theory. are dispositions. most of Bourdieu's
ideas would seem to be ontologicaHy compatible with the assemblage
approach. B ut there is a major incompatibility that a rises due to hiS
particular conceptualizatio n of that set of dispositions, a set that he refers to.
as a habitus. Bourdieu endows this habitus with a high degree ofl
I a defining set of habits and skill s without assuming an
aut< matis
: n:
, to the extent that all differences between the motivations
.
behmd sOClal behaVIour (such as the d ifference between ca u ses. reasonst
and motives) disappear. As he writes:
If a very close correlation is regularly
observed between the
scientifically constructed objective probabilities (for example. the
<.:hances of access to a particular good) and agent's subjective
aspirations ('motivations' and ·needs · ) . this is not because agents
consciously a dj ust their aspirations to an exact. evaluation of their
chances of success, like a gambler organizing his stakes on the basis of
perfect information about his chances of winning. In reality, the
dispositions durably inculcated by the possibilities a n d impossibilities,
freedoms and necessities. opportunities and prohibitions inscribed in
the objective conditions (which science apprehends through statistical
regularities such as the proba bilities objectively attached to a group or
class) generate dispositions objeC"tively compatible with these condi­
tions and in a sense pre-adapted lO their demands. The more
improbable practices are therefore excluded. as unthinkable. by a
kind of immediate submission to order that inclines agents to make a
virtue out of necessity. that is. to refuse what is anyway denied and to
will the inevitablc.45
Bourdieu does not deny that, on occa sion. people do make deliberate
choices, or t hat sometimes they may engage in consdously matching
means to ends. But far from constituting exceptions to the automatism of
64
P E RS O N S A N D NETWORKS
th e habitus. i t i s the latter that determines when a n d where such
ex cepti ons are allowed. The habitus then becomes a master process that
'm akes possible the free production of alI the thoughts. perceptions. and
acti ons inherent in the particular conditions of its production - and only
tho se· 46 It is not necessary to follow Bourdieu in this regard. His
empirical observation that members of a particular class tend to display
the same habitus may be accommodated without introducing a master
process. We may agree, for example. that the class inlO which we are born
possesses its own habits. which are regularly transmitted to new
generations, and that it has access to special training to develop unique
skill s. a privilege that can also be handed down and preserved in a
straightforward way. This would account for the relative homogeneity of
submission to order'. Indeed, in the assemblage approach submission or
'i mmediate
I obedience cannot be laken for granted and must always be accounted for
in terms of specific e nforce ment mechanisms. The density of the
I networks structuring certain communities can be such a mechanism. as
can be the more analytical enforcement pract.ices of modern organiza­
tions to be d i scussed in the next chapter.
The main theoretical function of the habitus. that of mapping positions
in a space of resou rce distributions to a space of possible l i fe-styles, must
also be modified. Bourdieu conceives of this space of positions as an
abstract soci a l space defined by two dimensions, which he calls 'economic
capital' and 'cultural capital'. However. resource distributions never exist
in an abstract space but are always intimately related to concrete social
entities such as interpersonal networks and organizations. Not only are
Illany resources (such as solidarity or legitimacy) emergent properties of
these entities. but resources that have a different origin ( natural resources
like oil or coal; technological resources like machines a n d processed
Illaterials; cultural resources like diplomas or licences) are either
controlled by organizations or produced by them. Indeed. some of the
ranking or sorting processes that maintain the differential access to
economic and cultural capital are resource dependence relations that exist
not between people but between institutional organizations.
One may wonder why a theorist of the stature of Pierre Bourdieu can
commit himself to the existence of such an unlikely master process like
the habitus. In what worldview, we may ask. can such a move make
sense? The answer is not hard to fin d . Bourdieu believes in the
linguisticality of experience. and therefore. he believes that all that
65
 A N E W P H I L OSO P H Y OF S O C I E T Y
needs to be accou nted for is t h e construction o f subjective experience
through linguistic categories.47 This is something that the notion of the
habitus, as a set of classificatory schemes for both perception and action,
can do quite well. That such an important author can be led astray by the
neo-Kantian approach emphasizes the need not only for a different
th eory of experience (such as the Humean model I used to start this
chapter) but also for a different conception of the role of linguistic
categories in social processes such as that developed by Charles Tilly.
As I said before, stories and categories play a boundary-defining role in
Tilly's view, but these are real group boundaries not phenomenologically .
experienced borders. Tilly urges us to focus not on the linguistic label for a
category but on the outcome of sorting practices in a given population,
that is, on the practices of inclusion and exclusion that
concretely bounded groups. In other words, struggles over categories ,
are about real boundaries separating groups with differential rights and
obligations, boundaries that. must be enforced through a variety of t
nonlinguistic physical interventions, from imposed segregation on certain
neighbourhoods to forced migrations or reallocations of entire commU-
nities. Enforcement of categorical boundaries may also involve a variety
of subtler but nevertheless effective means of selectively including or
forcibly excluding members of certain categories from formal positions in .
organizations. An important example of this is the
traditionally defined categories with those created internally by economic
organizations. Thus, a set of stereotyped beliefs about an ethnic group,
widely dispersed in a popUlation, may be matched to job categories as
defined by a specific commercial or industrial organization, excluding
members of that group from some positions and forcing them into
others.48 This matching of external and internal categories is important
beca use, as Tilly argues, the durability of the inequality between groups
may be less a matter of racist, sexist or xenophobic categories than about
the way in which these categories affect the very
organizatjon's formal structure o f roles a n d positions.49
In conclusion, we may conceptualize social classes as assemblages of
interpersonal networks and institutional organizations. Both the net­
worked communities and the organizations in which their common
interests crystallize must be thought as having differential access to
resources, some playing a material some an expressive role, as well as
possessing a distinctive life-style composed of both
expressive elements. A variety of practices of exclusion and inclusion
66
-
P E R S O N S A N D N E TW O R K S
perform t h e main territorializing work, while linguistic categories code
the result of such a territorialization, consolidating the identity of a class.
These identifying boun daries, h owever, must be seen as contingent and
precari ous. Social mobility, for example, can act as a deterritorializing
process blurring the borders between classes, and technological innova­
tion, by introducing novel resources, may further differentiate each class
into several conflicting groups. Thus, we may accept that a population of
networked comm unities is sorted out into social classes without having to
agree that these classes form a simple hierarchy except in territorial states
in which classes are relatively small and undifferentiated.
I Finally, as in the case of social justice movements, not only the
I conflicting communities must be taken i n to account but also the
produce i government organizations to which they must address their claims and
lobbying efforts, since it is by extracting rights from such organizations
I that a given position in a resource distribution may be improved. This
implies not only that we have a good assemblage account of political
I organizations, entities possessing an authority structure irreducible to
1 network linkages, but also an account of the larger assemblages, l ike a
federal government, that political organizations may form. Thus our
ontological analysis must continue upwards to reach these larger scales
without introducing any illegitimate entities. This is the task to be
matching of undertaken in the following chapter.
!
i
design of a n
material and
67
 ORGANIZAT IONS A N D GO VER NMENTS

4 extr eme forms ( or three 'ideal types ' ) and their mixtures. One extreme
form is exemplified by a perfectly efficient bureaucracy, in which a
Organizations and Governments com plete separa tion of position or office from the person occupying it has
b een achieved . l In addition, the sphere of competence of the incumbent
m us t be clearly defined b y written regu lations a nd may demand
sp ecial ized technical training tested by offici a l examinations. Finally,
th e positions or offices must form a hierarchical structure in which
rel ations of subordination between positions ( not persons) are clearly
spe cified in some form of legal constitution. Weber refers to this extreme
fonn as 'rational-legal' to cap t u re both the constitutional and technical
aspects of its order, and to indicate that obedience is owed t o the

im personal order itself, that is, that legitimacy rests on both the legality
and technical competence of claims to authority.2
A second extreme form is exemplified by religious organizations or

Historically, institutional organizations have adopted many different l monarchical governments in which positions of authority arc j ustified
. exclusively in terms of traditional rules a nd ceremonies inherited from
forms. Even If we narrow our temporal frame of reference and focus only .
on the last two or three
centuries there is still a great variety of the past a n d assumed to be sacred. Even in the rare case where the role of
'
organizational forms, ra�ging from relatively decentralized bazaars and l past precedent is breached to allow for the introduction of a novel piece of

market-places to centralIzed rmhtary and governmental b ureaucracies. legislation (or other orga nizational change) the l atter is justified by

For the purpose of analysing the ontological status of these social entities, reinterpreting the sacred history, not by pointing out its future functional

however, it is not necessary to confront this h istorical variety at the consequences. Unlike the previous type, a full separation o f pOSition from

outset. Our task will be greatly simplified if we concentrate our a nalysis oc('u pant does not exist. the leader or chief enjoying a sphere of personal

on those organizations involved in the imperative coordination of social prerogative within which the content o f legitimate commands is left open

action. But even focusing on the subset of organizations that use and which may become quite arbitrary. Weber refers to this extreme form
as 'traditional' given that volu ntary submission is not to an impersonal
commands ( a s opposed to prices) to coordinate collective activity still
order but to a sacred tradition as personified by a leader. 3 Finally, Weber
leaves a very large variety of forms. We ca n further simplify an
'
assemblage a n a lysis if we concentrate on what a l l these organizations singles out another extreme form of imperative coordination i n which

share in common: an authority structure. We can then separate those neither abstract legality nor sacred precedent exist as sou rces of

elements that p l a y an expressive role, that is. those components that legitimacy. Routine control of collective action on either basis is

express the legitimacy of the authority, from those playing a m aterial role, specifically repudiated by an individual who is treated by followers as a

those involved in the enforcement of obedience, without worrying about lea der by virtue of perso n a l charisma. Historica l ly, the k i nds of
individ u a ls that have played this role have ranged from 'prophets. to
the components that vary from one h ierarch ical organization to another,
'
from factory equipment and weapons to corporate logos and m ilitary people with a reputation for therapeutic or legal wisdom, to leaders in the
hu nt. a nd heroes of war'.4 This organizational type displays the least
uniforms. These may be added later when making an assemblage analysis
degree of separation of office from incu mbent, and is referred to as
of concrete organizational forms.
'ch aris matic' .
Max Weber, who may be considered the founder of organ ization
Weber's classification is useful for a variety of reasons. First of a lL any
theory, distinguished three types of a u thority structures according to the
given population of organizations, even today, will tend to display a
source of their legitimacy. Imperative coordination of social activity can
heterogeneous composition of authority structures approximating the
occur, according to his classification, i n a continuum defined by three

68 69
 A N E W P H I L O S O P H Y O F S O C I ETY
extreme lorms. T h u s . a monarchical traditional government ma y c oexi s
i n one a n d the same territorial state with modern bureaucratic agencie
and with a variety of sectarian groups led b y charismatic leaders
Secondly. and more importantly. many organizations lend to be mix ture '
of different authority fonns. that is. they will lie somewhere in the middl
of the conti n u u m rather than close to its extremes. Weber h imsel
discusses such mixt ures in contemporary organizational arrangements
like a bu reaucracy commanded by an elected official who. unlike caree
bureaucrats appointed on the basis of their technical knowledge. rna
have been elected on the basis of personal charisma or traditional custom.
Moreover. bu reaucratic agencies whose legitimacy derives from success­
fully matching means to ends also have a tendency to transform mean
into ends: that is. they tend to display a formalistic and ceremonial
adherence to rules and procedures v iewed as ends in themselves. 5
Despite the coexistence of the three authority structu res in some
contemporary territorial states. on the other hand. the last 200 years have
witnessed the propagation of the rational-legal form throughout the
organizational populations inhabiting most modern territorial states.
not i n its extreme form then at least i n mixtures dominated by this form
This makes this assemblage - in which the relations of exteriority
between components are exemplified by a contractual relation
which some persons transfer rights of control over a subset of their
actions to other persons - particu larly important. Moreover. it is only i n
t h i s type of authority structure that organizational resources
associated with a position not with the person occupying it. This striet
separation results in an assemblage with clear-cut emergent properties i n
which an explanation of the behaviour of t h e organization does not need
to include a description of the personal characteristics of the leaders, or i n
which s u ch a description would b e causally red undant. With a full
separation of office from incumbent the organization itself may be
considered a goal-oriented corporate actor. As the sociologist James
Coleman p u ts it. ·these entities. viewed from the outside.
regarded as actors. DO less than individuals are. Nevertheless, from the
inside. they may be characterized as au thority structures:6
As assemblages. hierarchical orga nizations possess a variety
components playing an expressive role. Some of these are linguistic.
such as beliefs in the legitimacy of authority. but many are not. I n the
traditional type. for example. there are man y elements of rituals. like
their choreography i n space and time, that express legitimacy simply by
70
ORGANIZATIONS AND G O V E R N MENTS
conforming t o past usage. I n t h e charismatic type. it is t h e behaviour o f
th e leader that expresses legitimacy. in the sense that h e or she i s obliged
to express a strong character in one eventful situation after another. I n
th e rational-legal type i t is t h e very [act that procedures work in a
technical sense: that is. that they regularly produce the desired outcome
that expresses their legitimacy. On the other hand, given that sometimes
it is not easy to evaluate whether a procedure really works. even i n the
most technical orga nizations the concept of 'rationality' may be used i n a
purely ceremonial way. It will all depend on the extent to which the
q uality of the outcomes ( goods or services) of a techn ical process can be
easil y evaluated. The more complex the o u tputs and production
processes. the more u n certain the evalu ation. and the less clear the
technical expression of legitimacy. In these circumstances i t makes sense
for organizations. when documenting and j u stifying their efficiency to
other organizations. to stick to ceremonial ' rituals of rationality' to buffer
l themselves from criticism.7 In the manufacture of mass-produced goods.
for example. the technical aspect is strong and the ceremonial relatively
ift weak. but i n mental health clini cs. legal agencies and schools, the
] eva luation of outputs may become largely ceremonial. particularly when
these organ i zations express their legitimacy to government agencies
through issuing licences or permits.8
On the other hand. and regardless of the mixture of technical and
ceremonial components. the dai�v following ofcommands by members of an
are organization is itself a direct expression of legitimacy. In other words.
displays of obedience. when observed by other members. directly assert
the legitimacy of authority, while acts of disobedience d irectly challenge
it. Observed disobedience, particularly when it goes unpunished. i s
detrimental t o the morale o f a group o f subordinates. I n the rational-legal
form. where subordinates surrender rights of control expecting collective
benefi ts which then translate into personal reward. disobedience
endangers this beneficial technical outcome. In the traditional form.
may be where subordinates give up control on the basis of sacred precedent.
disobedience challenges the validity of that precedent. Thus. p u nishing
disob edience i n order to make an example of the transgressor i s necessary
of in all authority structures. and to this extent punishment may be said to
play an expressive role. Punishment. however. is a component that plays
multiple roles. If the organization in question spends time deliberating
qu estions such as how to fit a type of punishment to a type of infraction.
this meshing of categories will involve linguistic components. And then,
71
 A N E W P H I LOSO P H Y OF SOC I E TY
of course, there is torture and physical confinement two fonns
punishment with a clear material aspect.
Like all social assemblages the material role in organizations is first and
foremost played by h u man bodies. It is these bodies who are ultimately
the target of punishment. But punitive causal interventjons on
human body are only the most obviolls form of enforcement of authority,
Other enforcement techniques exist particularly in the rational-legal
form: a set of distinctive practices involved in monitoring and disciplining
the subordinate members oL and the human bodies processed by,
organizations. Speaking of the rational-legal form of a u thority, Michel
.
Foucault discusses how the legitimacy of this form evolved as lawyers and .
legal scholars elaborated j ustifications for the contractu al relations at the
basis of voluntary submission, but also how these legitimating discourses
had to be complemented by a non discursive, disciplinary component,
which had quite different origins, not in j u dicial or legislative organiza­
tions but in military ones. Both components converged in the Napoleonic
state, the foundations of which, as Foucault writes,
were laid out not only by j u rists, b u t also by soldiers, not only
counsel ors of state, but also j u nior officers, not only the men of the
courts, but also the men of the camps. The Roman reference that
accompanied this fonnation certainly bears with it this double index:
citizens and legionnaires, law and manocuvres. While j urists or
philosophers were seeking in the pact a primal model for the
construction or reconstruction of the social body, the soldiers and
with them the technicians of discipline were elaborating procedures
for the individual and collective coercion of bodies.9
These coercive procedures involve, first of all, a specific use of
physical space a n d time. H u m a n bodies m u st be distributed in space t o
avoid u nr u l y concentra tions and to facilitate monitoring. Every
subordinate must b e assigned a definite place, whether a fixed location
at an office or a position in a production line, so that observation of
compliance can be routinized. The model for this analytical use o f space
was the military camp where 'the geometry of the paths, the n u mber
and distribution of the tents, the orientation o f their entrances, the
disposition of files and ranks, were exactly defined'. J O A similarly strict
partition ing of ti m e was performed, in which working rates were
established, occupations imposed, cycles and repetitions regulated.
72
O R G A N I Z A T I ONS AND GOV E RNME NTS
While the u se of timetables to forbid the wasting of time may be of
m onastic origin, t h e definition of training procedures in well-defi ned
time sequences, p unctuated by tests and examinations, owes much to
milit ary efforts to increase the efficien(y of armies t h ro u g h t h e
i mposition o f obligatory rhythms o r 'manocuvres' . l 1
To this strict spatial and temporal partitioning we must add ceaseless
inspection and per manent registration to the list of components of the
assemblage playing a material role . 1 2 'Permanent registration' i s the term
used b y Foucault to refer to the creation and storage of records of the
behaviour and performance of soldiers, students, medical patients,
workers and prisoners, as a means t o enforce regulations. These
permanent records are a relatively recent historical phenomenon, a few
centuries old at most, so an important task for the historian is to locate the
• turning point at which the threshold of description (the minimum of
significance which a piece of information must have to be worthy of
archiving) was lowered so as t o include common people and not j u st the
sacred or secular figures of the great legitimizing narratives. As Foucault
argues, from the eighH�enth century on, the 'turning of real lives into
writing i s no longer a procedure of heroization; it functions as a procedure
of objectification and subjection'.13 The information suitable for these
permanent records was, in t u rn, the output of a variety o f new fonns of
examination: from the visual inspections of patients by doctors to assess
I heir state o f health, to the tests admini stered to students to measure the
degree of their learning, to the questionnaires given to soldiers to be
recruited or workers to be hired. While previously a physician's visual
inspection was irregular and relatively fast, now its duration was extended
and its frequency made more uniform. While b e fore a school's tests were
nothing more than contests between students, they now slowly became a
systematic way of determining, assessing and comparing individual
capacities. In conjunction with permanent registration, the output of
examinations allowed 'the accumulation of documents, their seriation,
the organization of comparative fields making it possible to classify, to
form categories, to determine averages, to fix nonns' 14
What processes stabilize and maintain the identity of these assem­
blages? The spatial boundaries defining the limits o f an au thority
structure are d irectly linked to its jurisdiction. In some cases, this
jurisdiction ends at the walls of t h e physical building housing an
orga nization, but in other cases they will extend well beyond them and
coincide with the geographical boundaries of an entire city, a province o r
73
 A N E W P H I L O S O P H Y OF S O C I ETY
even a nation. The stability of these j u risdictional boundaries will depend
on their legitimacy as well on their continuous enforcement. Any process
that calls into question the extent of legitimate authority, such as a clash
between organizations with overlapping j u risdictions, can destabilize
their boundaries, and if the conflict i s not resolved, compromise their
identity. Similarly, a lack of economic, military or legal resources to
enforce j urisdictional claims may blur organizational identity. Another
source of deterritorialization in authority structures is crises of succession.
Weber discusses a good e x ample of these destabilizing events when he
deals with the processes tha t transform a small sect ruled by a charismatic
leader into one of the other two organizational forms. Such sects are
particularly vu lnerable to succession crises after a leader's dea th, given
�
the rel tive scarcity of charismatic qualities. The solution is to routinize the I.
successIOn process, either by making charisma hereditary (causing the J
organization to become traditional) or by writing technical qualifica tions
which a leader must meet (thus, becoming rational-lega l ) . As Weber
writes: 'Charisma is a phenomenon typical of prophetic religious
movements and of expansive political movements in their early stages.
But a s soon a s the position of authority is well established, and above all,
a s soon as control over large masses of people exists, it gives way to the
forces of everyday routine.' 15 Routinization, therefore, is a crucial
territorializing process in authority structures.
Finally, there is the question of the role of language in these
assemblages . The records and written examinations that enter into '
e n forcement practices are a good example of a linguistic component, but
it must be kept in mind that the kind of writing involved here is of the
logistic type, a very material form of writing documenting relatively simple
facts about visits and dosages in hospitals, attendance and cleanliness in
schools - not the type of writing that lends itself to endless rounds of
hermeneutic interpretation. It must be contrasted with other components
of authority structures that play a straightforward linguistic role, such as
the sacred texts or oral histories about origins which, in the traditional
type, must be constantly interpreted and reinte rpreted by the incumbents
of certain roles, such a s priests, or the written constitutions of bureau­
cracies which, in case of conflict of interest, must also be interpreted by
specialized functionaries such a s judges.
Additionally, and regardless of the form o f a uthority, there is the role
played by group beliefs, an emergent property of which is convergence into
some kind of consensus. The coherence of group beliefs may be increased
74
ORG A NI Z A T I O N S A ND G O V ERN M E N T S
( d octors, teachers,
fu rthe r i f some specialized members of an organization
yers) routinely engage in a rguments and discussions, and produce
l aw
set of beliefs
a n alyses and classifications, that tra nsform a relatively loose
nto a more systematic entity, sometimes referred to a s a 'discourse'. The
i
of
s yste maticity of these sets of beliefs may influence not only practices
l egiti mization but also practices of enforcement. Thus, according to
Fou cault, the analytical use of space and time, the intensification of
inspection, and the increased permanence a n d scope of records, all
contributed to the development o f more or less adequate technical
knowledge in the case of some discourses such a s clinical medicine,
pedag ogy a n d criminal law; knowledge that, in turn, increased the
I·
capaci ties of enforcement of those who deployed i1. 1 6
This completes the characterization o f institutional organizations a s
assemblages. But, as I s a i d above, besides a n a uthority structure
.111 organizations also possess an external identity a s enduring, goal-directed
entities. As such organi7.ations exist as part of populations of other
I organizations with which they interact, and in these interactions they
I will exercise capacities that belong to them as social a ctors, capacities that
cannot be reduced to those of persons or interpersonal networks. The
question now is, when organizations exercise their own capacities within
a population of other corporate actors do larger wholes emerge? Or to put
this differently, are there hierarchies and networks of organizations with
properties and capacities of their own? The best example of a hierarchy of
organizations is the government of a large nation-state, in which
organizations may exist at the national, provincial a n d local levels,
interacting with each other and operating within a complex set of
overlapping j urisdicti ons. A good example of a network of organizations is
a set of suppliers and distributors providing inputs and handling the
output of a large industrial organization, and linked to each other
through their rclations to that dominant organization .
Assemblage theory should apply to these larger entities i n a
straightforward way, given that both hierarchies a n d networks tend to
display similar properties at different scales. There will be, on the other
hand, differences with their smaller counterpa rts because the implemen­
tation of strategic plans becomes more problematic, and the collective
unintended consequences of intentional a ction becomes more promi­
nent, at larger scales. The first question that needs to be a n swered when
considering these larger assemblages is the kind of relations of exteriority
that form between their component parts when their interactions are
75
 A N E W P H I LO S O P H Y OF S O C I E T Y ORGANIZATIONS AND GOVERNMENTS

repeate d over time. As I a rg u e d above. a n

organiz ation becom es a n actor · substitu tivity o f t h e resource. Control refers t o t h e capacity o f one
t h e extent that i t s resourc es (physic al, techno
organization to determine the allocation of a resou rce for another, a
TO
. logical, legal, financi al)
a re lmked to formal positio ns o r offices,
not to their incumb ents. Most capacity derived from ownership rights, easier physical access to the
amhors recogni ze the key role played b y these
resourc es but they tend to resource, o r government regulations. Substitutivity, on the contrary,
take for granted the actual process of their refers t o the extent to which a dependent organization is capable of
acquisition, even though this
.
proces s IS hardly a u tomatic and it i s often
problem atic for any giv en re placing a given supplier of t h e resource by another. The less alternative
.
orgamz anon . . In particu lar, orga ni za t i o n s m u s t engage sources there are for a given resource the more concentrated it i s . 1 8
in specific
�
trans ctions wi th one another in order t o solve
the acquisit ion problem , Re sou rce exchanges may, o f course, b e symmetrical o r reciprocal, i n
.
and m so domg they may develop relations which case the organizations m a y become interdependent. B u t i f t h e
of dependence a s Ihe se
exchan ges becom e more o r less regular . symmetry of the exchanges i s broken along both t h e importance and
The sociolog ists J effrey Pfeffer and Gerald Salanci
I concentration dimensions then the controlling organizations acquire the

J.
k have develop ed a
u seful approa ch to resourc e depend encies capacity to influence the behaviou r of the dependent ones. A s Pfeffer and
and to the capacit y that one
orgamz atton may have to affect the behavi Salancik write, 'A resou rce that is not important the organization
our of anothe r when such 10
.
depend encies are asymm etricaL To define cannot create a situation oI dependence, regardless of how concentrated
these relation s of exterio rity, .1>
�
P effer and Salanci k begin by focusin g on
a given organiz ation and a I the resou rce is. Also, regardless of how important the resou rce is, unless it
glVen resou rce and determ ine the relative is controlled b y relatively few organizations, the focal organization will
importa nce of t h e resourc e . .•
Relativ e importa nce is measured both by the
bemg exchang ed as well as by its criticality
magnitude of the resource I not b e particularly dependent on any o f them . d 9
Resou rce dependencies exist in both organizational networks and
. As they write;
hierarchies. While in t h e latter case there are, in addition, authority
The relative magnit ude of an exchan ge relations allowing an organization with nationwide jurisdiction to give
a s a determ inant of t h e
importa nce o f a resource i s measur able b y asseSSin orders to another operating at a more local scale, the capacity to command
g t h e proport ion o f
total inputs o r t h e proport ion of total outputs on a regular and predictable basis will typically depend not only on the
accoun ted f o r by t h e
exchan ge. A n organiz ation t h a t creates o n legitimacy of authority but a lso on the actual control of financial
l y o n e produc t o r service i s
more depend ent o n its custom ers than an resources. However, for the purpose of giving a n assemblage analysis of
organiz ation that h a s a
variety of output s that a re dispose d of these larger entities it will be simpler begin with lhe case i n which
in a variety of market s. 10
Similar ly, organiz ations which require one legitimate a u thority is absent so that the only relations of exteriority we
primary input for their
� )peratio ns will be more depend ent on the
sources of s upply for that m u s t deal with are resou rce dependencies. As mentioned above, networks
m p u t than organiz ations that use m u l tiple of industrial organizations provide a good example oI t h i s case, but it is
inputs, each i n relative ly
small propo rtions . . . [The l second dimens important t o distinguish here two extreme forms defin ing a continuum of
ion o f import ance concern s
the critical ity of the input o r output to the possibilities. The two extremes may be characterized b y different strategies
organiz ation . . . Critical ity
measur es the ability of t h e organiz ation t for coping with resource dependencies.
o continu e fu nctioni ng i n the
absenc e of t h e resource o r i n t h e absenc e The first coping strategy involves the elimina tion of dependencies by
o f the market for the output .
A resourc e may b e critical to the orga the d i rect absorption of organizations through vertical i n tegration, that
n ization even though i t
compn ses a small proport ion o f t h e total is, by the acquisition of organizations that eilher supply inputs t o , o r
input. Few offices could
functio n withou t electric power, even though handle o u t p u t s f r o m , the a b s o r b i n g firm. This strategy yields large
the utility may be a
reJauve ly small compo nent of the organiz organizations that a re relatively self-s ufficient and that can use
ation'S expendi t u res. 17
econ omies of scale to become dominant nodes i n t h e i r n e tworks.2o
In additio n to the relative impo rtance Their domina n t pos i t i o n a llows them to control in a variety of ways
of a resource there is the
q u e s ti on of its concen tration ,
detined b y the degree of control and those s u p p l i e rs and distribu tors that have not been i n t egra t e d .

76 77
 A NEW P HI L O S O P H Y OF SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS A N D G OV E R N M E N T S

a s the well-studied case of E milia

A merican automakers in the 1 970s, for example, were capable of industri al regions i n Italy, such
perfect example of the second one. In the early 1 980s the
their subcontractors in a completely subordinate position, their R omagna, are a
facilities rigorously inspected, their quality control procedures mon­ ng centre of this region consiste d of about 22,000 firms, of
man ufacturi
than 500 employees, with a
itored, and even the quality and depth of their management dictated to · which only a small fraction employed more
g in the design of ceramics, textiles
them . 2 1 In a particular industry a few of these may large percentage of the firms engagin
products.25
coexist as separate entities forming what is called an oligopoly. This and machine and metalworking
ways of coping with
separation may be strengthened by the existence of impediments The two extreme forms to which different
s rise are rarely actualize d, and when they are
to the sharing of information among oIigopolistic rivals, at least in those resource dependencie
countries where cartels are illegal. Nevertheless, a group of such rival rhey are only for a certain amount of time. Nevertheless it

organizations may become linked to one another through indirect I is still possible to compar e mixture s domina ted by one or the other

these compar isons it is importa nt to include not only

I;
means. Very large firms tend to have the formal authority structure extrem e form. In
variety of other
referred to as a 'joint stock corporation', in which control and the industrial firms themselves but also a
since it is the entire
ownership are separated, the former in the hands of professional such as universities, trade associations and unions,
� : �
managers, the l tter dispersed among many s o kholders represented I assem blage that displays certain recurren t charact eristics. Annalee
n industri al regions involved in the
by a board of dIrectors. IndlTect lInks among J OInt stock corporations t Saxenian's study of two America
Californ ia and
may form through the process of interlocking directorates: the board of I manufacture of comput ers, Silicon Valley in
properti
northern
es of these assemblages.
directors of a given corporation (belonging, for example, to the i Route 1 28 in Boston, contrast s the

automobile industry) may include members of such as i Saxenian writes:

banks or insurance companies who may also to other boards. I
The overlap in board membership indirectly links these organizations I Silicon Valley has a regional network-based
industrial system that

and protects them against the possibility of events such as I promotes collective learning and flexible adjustm ent among specialist
ogies. The dense
unilaterally triggered price wars.22 I producers of a complex of related technol
open labour markets encoura ge experim entation
The second coping strategy involves not avoiding but benefiting from > social networks and
resource interdependencies. This strategy yields networks of relatively and Companies compete intensely while at the

small firms in which no organization is clearly dominant and in which the same time learning from one another about changing markets and
ative
lack of economies of scale is compensated for b y economies of agglomeration: through informal communication and collabor
encourage horizontal
many small firms agglomerated in the same geographical region tend to practices; and loosely linked team structures
s and with outside and
attract talented people who can find a variety of job opportunities there, communication among firm division
bounda ries within firms are porous in a
producing over time an accumulation of skilled l abour that, in tum, tends customers. The functional
the bounda ries betwee n firms themsel ves and
to expand the number of firms in the region. Thus, even though these network system, as are
trade associations and
industrial firms compete against each other they also benefit from their between firms and local institutions such as
t, is dominated by a
and the common human resources this makes available to universities . . . The Route 1 28 region, in contras
tions. Its industrial
the entire region .23 In addition, the absence of complete domination of small number of relatively integrated corpora
interna lize a wide range of
subcontrattors means that the relations between firms and their suppliers system is based on independent firms that
of secrecy and corpora te loyalty govern
can involve more cooperation, in some cases forming a relation of prodllctive activities. Practices
and their custom ers, supplie rs, and competi­
'consultative coordination' in which firms do not command their relations between firms
a regiona l culture that encoura ges stability and self­
suppliers to deliver components that meet specifications but consult tors,
authority remains cen­
with them in the very design of a component .24 If the American reliance. Corporate hierarchies ensure that
houndaries between and
automobile industry in the 1 970s illustrates the first strategy, some tralized and information flows vertically. The
79
78
 A NEW PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIETY O R G A N IZ A T I O N S A N D G O V E R N M E N T S

within firms and between fi rms and local institutions thus remain far the two extreme forms that
with in them. The distinctio n between
more distinct in this independent-firm system 26 take is, indeed, a distinctio n between modes
organizational networks may
less centralized in the case of large f s,
of decision-making, more or
m�
When treated as assemblages of organizations the components of both case of interactin g small ones. But m
more or less decentralized in the
the extreme forms as well as their mixtures play a variety of expressive reached on the basis of beliefs about a
either case, decisions will be
and material roles. The former relate, in the first place, to the expressivity
n u mber of different question s, s uch as beliefs about possible responses of
of organizational behaviour, in the sense that this behavio u r may send
other member s of an oligopol y to a strategic move, beliefs about �he
signals about an organization's intentions to other members of the
degr ee to which depende nt firms will comply with de�ands, or ehcfs �
assemblage: intentions that may not be explicitly stated in the phrasing of . All these behefs are attJtudes
abou t the degree of solidarity in a network
a decision or in any policy-document derived from it. Although we may a linguistic component. On
towards propositions and therefore involve
speak of 'interpretation of intentions' in this case, this will typically be not beyond strategic decision-makmg to
[he other hand, when we move
a matter of semantics (that is, of signification) but of assessments of I questions of the implemen tation of strategie s, particula rly when s�ch
strategic significance or importan ce. In the first extreme form, for
example, an organization with a dominant pOSition in the flow of
II implementation involves causal interven
l compon
tions
ents
in
of
reality,
the
these behefs
assembl age, that
must now be related to the materia
resources can make claims on those that depend on it, demanding, for '* more or Jess adequat e causal understanding of the
I is, j udged by the
example, favo urable terms of trade. But it can choose 10 express those embody, such as
relations between material resource s that these beliefs
demands loudly or quietly during negotiations, or to display its I relative to the properti es of
the causal adequac y of a particular technolo gy
dominance in subtle or obvious ways. Conversely, an organization in a I the raw materials serving as its inputs. Many of the resources that
position of dependence expresses weakness by the very fact that it material role in these assembl ages, f rom
generate dependencies play a
complies with demands. Acts of compliance imply an admission of limited industria l machine ry, to everyth ing rel�ted t
energy sources and
�
�
a utonomy, and this expression of weakness, in turn, may invite further storage to transpor tation. Labour, skilled or uns Jlled, IS
logistics, from
demands from dominant organizations, since the latter can use the past be consIder ed to
another important material component. Money too may
actions of the subordinate organization as an indication of the probability on causes other
play a material role to the extent that its circulati
of success that new claims on resources may have. In the second extreme puts it: 'The flow of
resources to flow. As systems ecologist Howard Odum
form it is expressions of solidarity and trust that are important, since the manipulation of
energy makes possible the circulati on of money and
competition m u st be balanced with cooperation. Here what matters is the , 28
money can control the f low 0 f energy.
avoidance of the so-called 'tragedy of t h e commons', that is, the lization and
The two extreme forms exhibit different types of territoria
destruction of common resources due to the opportunistiC actions of Network s of small firms are married to the geogra­
de territorialization.
one organizational actor. Any action that si gnals a selfish disregard for region where the organiz ations and the skilled workfor ce
phical
communal welfare may trigger a series of such actions by others leading to move e1sewhe e
agglomerate. A single firm can make the decision
�
to the collapse of cooperation. To prevent this outcome there must be has formed m
but only by giving u p access to the reservoir of talent that
ways of making expressions of lack of solidarity part of an organization's of interdependent
that region over many years. In this sense, networks
reputation, and ways of making bad reputations have adverse economic alized. Large, a u tonomo us hrms, on
firms can be said to be highly territori
consequences. This may i nvolve either creating special organizations or internal ized a large number of economic
the other hand, having
taking advantage of the enforcement properties of dense interpersonal have for that reason acquire d a certain freedom from
functions,
networks in a given region.27
geographical location. This mobility makes these firms
highly ete ri�or­ � :
The nonlinguistic expressivity of organizational behaviour is not of a deterntonahza­
ialized even when they exist as national corporations,
course completely unrelated to language since the actions of organiza­ s them from the
tion that is greatly intensif ied when globalization liberate
tions are closely linked to processes of decision-making taking place the fact that the bounda ries of large
constraints of a national territory. But
80 81
 A N E W P H I L OS O P H Y O F S O C I E T Y
self-sufficient firms a r e sharper t h a n those of small interdependent
points to a different form of territorializatio n, a s does the fact that
economies of scale the use of human resources tends to be
routinized and decision-makin g highly centralized. In economies of
agglomeration. on the other hand, not only is skilled labour a crucia
l co ntin uous.32 To the extent that the capacity to track conti nuous shocks
component. implying that the separation of planning from doing is not
nearly as sharp, but it also tends to be much more mobile: the turnover
rate. or the average time that a technical expert spends in a given job,
tends to be two or three years in the case of networks of interdependent
firms as contrasted with an entire lifetime in the case of many experts
working for large corporations.2 9 In this other sense. networks dominated
by large independent firms are more territorialized than those linking
small in terdependent ones.
While the assemblages of orga n izations populating Silicon Valley a nd
Route 1 28 realize points ncar different extremes of the continuum of
forms they a lso
?rgani�a tions
interact with
� �
one
�
another since m a n y
belong to the s m i�d stry. Thi.s implies that th ere are,
of these
. I
III addItIon, processes of terntonalizatIon a n d de territorialization com- I
mon to both extreme forms, those involved in the stabilization of the
identity of an e n tire ind ustry. The integrating and regulating activities of
orga nizations such as trade and industry associations are a key component of
these processes. Industry associations are instrumental in leading their
members towards consensus on many normative q uestions which a ffect
them collectively, particularly the setting of industry-wide technological
standards. Trade associations can serve a s clearing-house s for informat i on
about an industry's sales, prices and costs. allowing their members t o
coordinate some of their activities. They also redu('e interorganization al
variation by sponsoring resear(h ( the results of which are shared among
members) and promoting product-definiti on and product-quality guide­
lines. 30 The degree of orga nizational u n i formity is also increased by the
creation of behavioural norms by professional a n d worker associations:
norms that may be informal and nonenforcea ble but which nevertheless
help t o standardize occupational behaviour, expectations and wages. 31
A n importa nt deterritorializing factor affe(ting both forms i s a
turbulent environment, such as that created by a high rate of innovation
in products or p rocesses. What matters here is the relation between the
rate of change inside organizations, a rate a ffected by a variety of sources
of organizational inertia, and the rates of change of technologies outside
of them, in the same industry in other countries, or in different ind ustries
82
ORGANIZATIONS A N D G O V E R N M E NTS
in t h e same country. When considering entire indu stries w e are less
conc erned with the ability of their member orga nizations to adapt (given
enough time all orga nizations can adapt) than their ability to lime internal
cha nges to external shocks, particularly when the external shocks become
demands a collective response from an entire organizational network. the
location of the network in the continuum of fomls may determine the
conditions of su ccess or failure. The sharp separation of planning from
doing characteristic of economies of scale limits the number of people in
an organ ization that are involved in adapting to change. while the flatter
hierarchies of smaller organizations a nd their use of skilled labour allows
cnrire firms to learn from experience. I n addition, the consultative
coordination between firms and suppliers characteristic of economies of
agglomeration may extend the benefits of learning by doing t o the entire
network . The faster the rate of innovation, the more a given network will
i benefit from the collective learning process of the small-firm extreme,
a nd the more inadequate the self-sufficient approach of an oligopoly of
large firms will become.
I I have a lready m e n t i on e d one linguistic comp o n e n t of t hese
assemblages. but a n equally importa n t one is the written contracts (and
other agreements) which organizations usc as a means to mitigate the
effects of interdependencies. As with the making of decisions, the content
of contracts w i l l vary depending on the predictability of the consequences
of organizational action: the more eventful the silllation in which a
contract is produced, the more labour will be involved in the a n ticipation
of consequences. In fact, contracts differ in the extent to which their
wording needs to specify all continge ncies and eventualities in advance.
In neo- institutional economics, for example, a distinction is made
hetween employment contracts and sales contracts, with the latter
presenting more problems of contingency anticipation than the former.
I ndeed, when these problems are too great (due to dependencies created
by specialized machinery. for example) this branch of economics predicts
that an organization will switch from sales t o employment (ontracts by.
for e xample, p u rchasing a firm with which it previously dealt with in the
market. 3 3 In addition to the difficulty presented by incomplete
mntracts (given limited rationality a nd honesty) a decision to use one or
another type of contractua l form may depend on the choice of the locus
of «mtractual interpretation and enforcemen t . Whereas an employment
C ontract can be en forced i n ternally, and conflicts over its interpretation
83
 A N EW PHilOSOPHY OF SOCI E T Y
O RG A N IZ A TION S A N D GOV E R N M E N T S

h a ndled v i a arbitration, sales contracts must b e enforced by COu rts a nd

' w i l l p i c k m o s t of my e x a m pl e s from a single case of kderalist
interpretat i o n conflicts handled via litigation. 3 4
government: the USA.
The fact that judicial interpretation of contractual obligations may be
In addition to warning the reader about these Simplifications, I must
some times needed implies t h a t t h e population of organizations Com pris_
m ake four preliminary remarks, Avoiding t h e use of concepts like 'the
ing a given m ust include, i n addition to firms, trade organiza _
state' is important not only because such reified generalitks are not
tions and u nions, an entire set of governmental si n ce the
legitima t e ontological entities b u t a lso because such notions are too
very legal definition a n d enforcement of property rights by govern ments
mon olithic, t h a t is, they fail to capture the relations of extniority that
creates the environment in which industrial and commercia l firms
exist among the heterogeneous organizations forming a government
depend to carry out their transactions 3 5 Unlike industrial net works
hierarchy . Without an notion o f t h i s h e terogeneity, for
dominated by a few large firms, governmental orga nizations a true
example, we could make the mistake of thinking that there i s no gap
hierarchy with a well -defined a uthority structure. In some cases'
indu strial networks may give rise. to fom� al authority relations with t h e
l between the formulation of public policy and its actual implementation, or that
a govern ment's capacities t o i n tervene in reality are related in a
emergence
. of cartels, b u t these tYP I cally fall to have t h e capaclUes of a real
way to t h e decisions made by some elected representatives to perform
hkrarchy. In the 1 870s, for example, before cartels were outlawed in the
" such interventions. B u t studies of t h e process of implem(�ntation have
USA, some railroad companies atte �pted to give thei � network li�kage s a
shown j u st how difficult it is to go from a document su mmarizing a
more hierarchical form, usmg theIr annual conventions as a legI slatIVe .
to be achieved, to t h e process of chOOSing t h e right agencies to ca rry out
body rules a n d procedures) and � central office a s . an . e:ecutive l the policy, to maintain the com mitment and flow of funds req u i red at
organ implementing resolutions, but fatkd to create a JUdiCIa ] body'
different stages and, in general, to ensure compliance i n a long chain of
capable of punishing violations of the cartel's rules.36 In th e end,
nationaL state and local governmental organizations with overlapping
what mattered in those cartels were questions of solidarity among equally ,
jurisdictions, In many cases, central policy decisions end up either not
dominant firms not of t h e legitimacy of their a uthority. When it com es to
implemented or changed beyond recognition. Joint a ction by many
governmental hierarchies, on the other hand, legitimacy is not on ly the
governmental organizations is thus obj ectively complex and problematic,
main expressive component of t h e assemblage, it is a resource which
not something that can be taken for granted.37 Of course, t h e complex
governments can u se to create dependencies, by or denying
relation between policy form u lation a nd implementatio n may be
licences or certificates to organizations or professions.
interprete d as t h a t the two activities form a s(�amk>ss web: an
Before discussing how hierarchies of orga nizations can be handled in
interpretation t h a t would bring u s back t o a monolithic concept. B u t it
an assemblage approach I must make several disclaimers. First u f a ll, i t is
ca n a lso be modelled as a nonlinear process involving feedback, a process
impossible to discuss in the available space the large variety of fom1 s t h at
of formu l a tion-im plementation-reformu la tion t h a t does not
.
central governments have t a ke n historically r will t herefore li m it m y
the ' ability to assess t h e extent of goal attainment and t h e distribution of
discussion to those in which processes of differentiation h ave yielded the ,
a uthority between elected and appointed officials'.38
most complex forms, that is, those in which there is a clear diV iSion of
The second preliminary remark expands on this last point. The
labour among executive, legislative and j udicial orga �izations, a nd i n '1. relations between govern m e n t organizations sta ffed by elected officials
which these differentiated functions are performed sIm u ltaneou sly a t '
( that is, democratic or representative orga nizations) and those run b y
different geographical scales: t h e national scale, the scale of prOVin ces or
, non - elected, career bu reaucrats are problematic in a deeper sense. In
states and t h e local scale of city governm(>nt . If these cases can be
tackled, then Simpler forms should present no prob l em,
'�I order for bureaucracies to be ru n efficiently, a sharp separation between
politics a nd administration is necessary: that is, t h e expertise of a

1
Second, of all the different forms that comple x central government s take I
p rofessional body of b u reaucrats must be isolated from the contingencies
.

will focus on the federalist form, since it this ge Ugra Phic al

of t he electoral process. But the more this separation i s achieved, the
hiera rchical structure most clearly. Finally, to simplify t h e presenta tion, I
. greater the sense that bureaucracies are not responsive t o public concerns

84
85
 A NEW P H I LOSOPHY OF SOCIETY O R GANIZATIONS AND GOVERNMENTS

as expressed in electoral outcomes. In other words, the same factors In ternet ) complex organizational hierarchies can hardly be conceptua­
promote efficiency t e n d to undermine legiti macy, a t least in d
l ize d outside the territory they control or the resources (natural and
regimes. One element of this conflict is common to many social de mographic) associated with that territory. Nevertheless, in what
that involve delegation of authority. In one model (the 'principal-agent' followS I will emphasize the characteristics of the assemblage of
model) the problem is framed like this : how can employers (the organizations itseH leaving the analysis o f the territorial aspects [or the
principals) make sure that no cheating and shirking will occur if they next chapter.
have less expertise than the agents they h i re and to whom they delegate In addition to distinguishing the hierarchical assemblage of organiza­
authority? In this model the basic conflict emerges from tio ns from the kingdom, empire or nation-state that it controls, it is
asymmetries. and may be applied a t larger scales because neither presidents important to separate for the purposes of analysis the enduring assemblage
nor legislators (nor their respective staffs) have the specialized knowledge itself from its interactions with other organizations, with coalitions of
needed to assess the performance of bureaucracies.39 But this model net works, or with populations of individual persons. Some of these
leaves out other problems that d o not have counterparts a t smaller scales. interactions may also yield assemblages, constituting complex political
In particular, the very expertise asymmetries that favour bureau cracies situations: assemblages that are large-scale counterparts of conversations
may be turned against them, since in many cases (atomic power, among persons. In the previous chapter I discussed C harles Tilly's ideas
pharmaceutical products, financial processes) the industries that govem­ about social justice movements a s assemblages of coalitions of networks
ment agencies are supposed to regulate supply t h e m with the very a n d government organizations acting as interlocutors. Tilly sees public
technical information they need t o enforce regulations. In other words, demonstrations as large-scale conversations between a movement, a
regulatory agencies may become captive of special i nterests, that is, countermovement and the police. More generally, he writes that, whether
dependent on their technical resources, further eroding their already 'in the ritual executions, processions, celebrations, and militia marches of
qu estionable legitimacy.4o the early French Revolution or the public meetings, petition drives,
The third and fourth preliminary remarks concern distinctions that are lobbying, demonstrations, and association-forming of contemporary
crucial within assemblage theory but that are not necessarily drawn in Western social movements, we witness the conversational combination
other approaches. First of all, we must distinguish between the hierarchy of incessant i mprovisation, innovation, and constraint'.41
of organizations forming a federal (or other form of) government from Like personal conversations, i n which claims to a public persona are
the territorial entity such a s hierarchy controls. The territorial entity made by its participants, conversations between organiza tions ( or
includes. beside government organizations, an entire population o f other between organizations and network coalitions) also involve claim­
organizations; populations of persons and interpersonal networks; cities, making and collective production of identities: the identities of an ethnic
regions and provinces; and geopolitical relations of exteriority with other community or of an industrial sector, for example. But like personal
territorial entities. When a political revolution changes one government conversations, these interactions are highly episodic and do not
regime by another, an autocratic regime by a democratic one, for necessarily change the identity of the government itself, except in the
example, it typically leaves untouched the previous unequal relations case of political revolutions. Also, conversations are only one example of
between cities, regions and provinces, not to mention the geostrategic a social encounter, a term that encompasses a wide variety of episodic
position of the country relative to other countries. On the other hand, asse mblages a point that applies at larger scales as well. Thus, in what
this distinction should be made carefully since most hierarch ies of fol lows, I will give an assemblage analysis o f the hierarchical assemblage
organizations are not really separable from the territory they govern, and of organizations first, and then add a single example of the large variety of
part of what defines their identity is exercising actual control over the episodic assemblages it forms through its i nteractions.
borders of that territory. Unlike interpersonal networks or institutional As in all assemblages possessing a command structure, the expressive
o rganizatio n s which, thanks to communications technologies, may exist role is played by those components involved in the legitimization of
without well-defined spatial boundaries (or even i n virtual form on the authority, while the material role is played by components involved in its

86 87
 O R G A N I Z A T I O N S A N D G O V E R N M E N TS
A N E W P H I L O S O P H Y OF S O C I E T Y

France and England, where bureaucracies emerged prior to democratic

enlorcement. I n t h e USA, for instance, there are two main sources
regimes and were staffed with members of an elite public service,
legitimacy at this scale, the constitution and the electoral process.
constitution is, of course, a linguistic component. a binding tech nical efficiency often played this legitimizing role. But in the U SA the

document specifying, among other t h ings, the relations op posite historical sequence occurred, so that it was only in the context of

executive, legislative and j udicial organizations, as well as those !lPtw.'..... t he Great Depression of tbe I 930s that disinterested expertise was used as

organizati ons operating within national. state and local j urisdictions. a prag matic j u stification for the existence of b u reaucracies.44 Even then,

electoral process is a nonlinguistic component endowing elected off" h owever, distrust of specialist knowledge (as opposed to the more
gen eralist knowledge possessed by elected official s ) made this a
with legitimacy to the extent tbat its outcomes express the will of
population. But t he mere ceremonial conduct of elections does not, preca rious expression . So another e xpression of legi timacy soon

lact, ensure that there will be proportional representation of tbe di a ppeared: the fairness of the procedures used in burea ucracies, as well as
the degree to which these procedur{> s were standardized across all
groups in the electora te. There are technical features of
commissions and agencies. Tbese questions were codified in 1 946 in the
procedures, such as how are votes aggregated or how winners
Administrative Procedure Act. As with the fairness of voting procedures
selected, that impinge directly on the question of how well
there a re technical issues involved, so the problem is not one of
preferences of a popUlat ion are expressed in electoral outcomes,
negotiating the meaning of the word 'fair'. In the hearings conducted by
hence, how representative and legitimate a re the results.
regula tory for example, the roles of j udge and prosecutor
There are, for e xample, voting systems in which voters only have
cannot be played by the same staff member witbout introducing bias. Tbe
vote, and in which the candidate with more votes wins ( plurality
Act had to, therefore, create a special group of hearing examiners isolated
systems in which voters get many votes that they can allocate in di
from such conflicts of interest, in order to increase the legitimacy of
forms ( approval voting ) ; and systems in wbich votes determine not a
administrative i ustice.45
or-no choice but a ranking of the candidates ( preference voting ) .
M uch as physical punishment and confinement can be used to enforce
capacities o f these voting systems to express actu al distributions
autbority on individual persons, military and police organizations can be
collective preferences are quite different, a s are their vulnerabilities
used by central governments to secure compliance from bureaucracies and
strategic (or tactica l ) voting, that is, voting not for one's real preferen
local officials. Systematic reliance on physical force, however, signals an
but to prevent someone else from winning.42 Although mathematicians
unstable form of au tbority, so other material components must be added
disagree on wbich system is best - and given that voting may be
to these to align enforcem ent and legitimacy. Presidents a n d legislators
performed for many different p u rposes, there may not be a best choice -
h a ve tbe capacity to control bureaucrats in a variety of ways: presidents
all agree that plurality voting is technically the worst, so i ts su rvival
have tbe power of appointment and removal of key personnel. as well as
in modern nations such as the USA may be explained by its ceremonial
control of financial resources; legislators can exercise control by designing
value.
b u rea u cracies, that is, they can build incentives against and
II these were the only two sources of legitimacy, then the problem
shirking into the very legal mandates that establish the goals and legal
burea ucracies would be insoluble and lea d to continuous crises: bureau­
form of a new agency. Careful quantita tive studies based on tbe principal­
crats are not elected officials so tbey cannot draw legitimacy from
a gent model have shown that executive and organizations not
electoral outcomes, and the constitution is mostly silent about the status
only have these capacities but that they actually exercise them.46 Congress
of b u rea Llcra cies and abo u t tbe legitimacy of delegating to them
also has oversight committees that monitor bu reaucratic efficiency, and
investigative, prosecutorial and adj u d icating authority: a delegation
the courts can perform j u dicial reviews to make sure that due process is
which would seem to violate tbe doctrine of separation of powers.43 i
' respected in tbe conduct of administrative justice.
B u t there are otber sources of W h en discussing Weber's
When considering processes of territorialization It IS important to
theory of authority I mentioned that in the rationa l-legal form the
between the i d entity of individual policies and the identity of
technical effiCiency of procedu re s itself is an expression of legitimacy. In
89
88
 A NEW P H ILOSOPHY O F S O C I ETY
the assemblage of organizations itself. The relative political autonomy
bureaucracies is clearly not a stabilizing factor in the former case, but it .
so in the latter. Before a merit system and a <:areer civil service we
instituted in the USA in 1 883, for example, b u reaucratic offices we
considered spoils to be given to the winners of a n election. In that 'spoi
era', the identity of the entire assemblage could be affected by episodi
shifts in public opinion. B u t once a certain degree of insulation fro
politics was achieved, bureaucracies became sources of continuity an
long-term coherence. In a sense, since the legal mandate that brings
bureaucratic agency into e xistence may reflect policies different fro
those of currently elected officials, political insulation may provide
mechanism for policy integration across different administrations.4
Given that the relative autonomy of bureaucracies is partly based
expertise asymmetries, a main territorializing process is the professionat
lization of civil service personnel, a professionalization that has takex4
different forms in different countries. In France, for example, it wa 4
closely linked to the training of civil servants in elite universities an<J
polytechnics, a common edu cational basis that instilled an esprit de co
on potential candidates. I n England, it was through on·the-job trainin
that expertise was passed to new recruits: a learning process that fostere
loyalty to the office itself as opposed to its current incumbents.48
Among the deterritorializing processes that affect the identity of thes
assemblages from within (as opposed to from without, as in politica
revolutions) two stand out: coups d'etat and constitutional crises. Th
former involves a change of regime forced on central organizations
.
other government organizations, typically military ones, or by orga
lions that have wrestled control of the amlY from the executive branch.
coup d'etat is not only destabilizing as an event. Even when it is over the .
new incumbents will typically possess very little legitimacy (in the eyes of
t
other government organizations as well as the rest of the population) and .
,
will have to resort to physical coercion as the main instrument on
authority enforcement.49 Constitutional crises can have a wide variety of
causes, such as a succession crisis due to ambiguous electoral results. BUt ',
a crisis may involve a more complex situation in which different
government organizations are pitted against each other. Executive '
organizations, for example, may refuse to recognize the legitimacy of
legislative ones, calling for their dissolution, while at the same time a
legislative body may question the legitimacy of a president's actions and
(:all [or his impeachment. (Something like this happened in Russia in
90
O R G A N I Z A T I O N S AND G O V E R N ME N T S
1 99 3 . ) O n the other hand, the confljct may involve not two branches of
go vern ment hut organizations operating at different geographical scales,
as when local or state governments refuse to obey central commands. I n
th e nineteenth century, for example, the conflict over slavery in the USA
prove d insoluble via existing mechanisms ( such as Supreme Court
deci sions), provoked the secession of eleven southern states, and had to
be resolved by civil war, and by the constitutional amendment that
eventually outlawed the practice.
There is, finally, the question of the role that linguistic components
play in these assemblages. I mentioned above the variety of means that
executive, legislative and j udicial organizations have to control bureau­
cracies. Those means, however, are mostly of strategic value, being useful
0 in securing overall compliance but powerless to determine specific
outcomes, given that administrative agencies may use their relative
insulation from politics to shape the implementation of centrally decided
policies. Tactical means, such as the unambiguous wording of the origin a l
policy document ( o r statu te), must also be u s e d t o maintain the integrity
of policy decisions. 50 I also mentioned the most crucial binding document
in many countries: the basis for more or less codified forms of constitutional
or basic law. These laws not only consolidate the identity of the
assemblage ( I.e. they perform a coding operation to complement the
effects of territorialization), they also limit the kinds of other laws
legislative organizations may create. These other laws vary in their degree
of codification and in the extent to which custom and precedent may
affect their interpretation, as in the difference between the common law
prevalent in England and its ex-colonies, and the more systematic less
precedent-bound, civil law prevalent in the countries of Continental
Europe and their ex-colonies. These and other written laws form the
institutional environment for the economic organizations that I discussed
before, as well as for all the other social assemblages we have considered
so far . 5 !
.
; This brings m e t o the question of the more or less episodic interactions
between hierarchical assemblages of organizations and other social
entities. Of all the different interactions I will pick a single one,
interactions with a population of persons, and of all the different political
Situ ations in wh ich these interactions may take place I will select the
situ ation created by the existence of armed conflict. whether external or
in ternal. On the material side, this situation calls for both recruitment of
people sometimes volu ntary, sometimes coerced - as well as the
91
 A NEW P H I L O S O P H Y O F S O C I E T Y
necessary taxation to pay for war. The central policies i n which
goals are stated (a draft resolution, a change in fiscal policy) must
into consideration resistance from the target groups, so they i n"nl.,..
concessions a n d political dialogue, The situation may be framed
resource-dependence terms: taxes and military recruits are such
important resource for a government that it comes to depend on
population to obtain them, thereby becoming subject to its demands.
fact, according to Charles Tilly, this is exactly how modern rights
citizenship came into being i n Europe in the seventeenth a nd
centuries, as governments engaged in the expansion of their armies
of the taxes needed to pay for th em) had to bargai n with the ta
groups and yield to their demands for political participation. 52
On the expressive side, these situations call for a variety of means
some symbolic, some directly expressive - to strengthen the unity of a deprivation when those expectations are frustrated; a struggle between
government and the population. The classical example is the effect that
the French Revolution had on the composition of armies, that is, the
,
change from mercenary to loyal citizen a rmies. The means used to effect'
this change in different countries, however, varied with the existing
sources of legitimacy. Two of the forms of legitimacy discussed by Weber,
traditional and rational-legal, have counterparts at larger scales. I n some.
countries the bonds uniting a popu lation a re inherited or come Irom a
long tradition, so that the 'nation' precedes the 'state'. In others, these
bonds emerge from the sharing of the same laws, that is, the 'state'·
,
precedes the 'nation .53 Countries that followed the state-to-nation path
(such as France or England) tended to favour newly invented expressions:
of patriotism: flags, oaths, anthems, national holidays, military parades, .
official celebrations. Those that followed t h e nation-to-state path
(Germany) tended towards more populist expressions, using more or
less coherent syntheses of popular elements created by intellectual elites.
However, just as Weber's ideal types rarely exist in pure form, blood a nd
law as sources of national unity were never mutually exclusive. Most
countries used a mix of these two sources of legitimacy when rallying
their populations for war. And ultimately, regardless of what combination
of expressive means a given government used, the ultimate display of
patriotism h a s always been the willingness of citizens to die for their
country, as expressed behaviourally on the battlefield.
The reality or threat of armed conflict is itself a powerful territorializ­
ing force, making people rally behind their governments and close ranks
with each other. Much as the solidarity binding a community may be
92
O R G A NIZATI O N S A N D G O V E R N M ENTS
tra n sformed into social exclusion when conflict with other communities
a
sharpens their sense of 'us' versus 'them', external war can transform
sim ple emotional attachment to a country's traditions and institutions
int o a sense of superiority relative to enemy countries and their allies.
Lo y alty, which need not involve comparisons with others, is transformed
into hostility and xenophobia. Internal war, on the other hand, can act as
a d eterritorializing force, either by destabilizing a government
through
con stant riots and turmoil or by drastically changing its very identity,
from one regime to another, as i n succt'ssful political revolutions. Unlike
cou ps d'etat, revolutions go beyond interactions between government
org anizations. The minimum assemblage, a recurrent one i n past
revo lutions, includes: a population that has undergone a period of
rela tive prosperity and rising expectations, followed by a period of
i dominant coalitions and those who challenge them; and displays of
vulm'rability uy government organizations, such as a decrease i n their
l enforcement capacities d u e to a fiscal crisis, a bad economy or a military
defeat abroad. 54
While for the citizens of a given country e x ternal warfare may not
have a definite spatial dimension, i n the sense that they may form
xenophobic beliefs without a dear sense of the t(>rritorial situation of 'us'
versus 'them', for government organizations this is not typically the case,
unless the threat comes from t e rrorist organizations lacking a ny territorial
uase . For most o f t h e i r modern hi story, however. governmental
hierarchies have operated within concrete geopolitical entities, such as
nation-states, kingdoms or empires. Moreover, international law, a s it
developed in the West after t h e peace treaty that ended the Thirty Years
War in the seventeenth centu ry, was intimately related to spatial
questions, such as legal definitions of sovereignty within bounded spatial
territories, and geostrategic questions defining the military opportunities
and risks that different organizational hierarchies h a d to face. Thus, we
have reached the limits of wha t can be analysed without reference to the
spatial aspects of assemblages, In t he following chapter I will return to the
analysis of government organizations a nd of the processes that produced
moder n nation-states, once I have dealt with the spatial aspects o f
a ssemblages a t smaller scales, from buildings a n d neighbourhoods t o
cities and the hierarchies a nd networks that u rban centres form.
93
 CITIES A N D NATIONS

5 reasons for using the term 'locale' rather than place is that the
properties of settings are employed i n a chronic way by agents in the
Cities and Nations
constitution of encounters across space and lime, ILocales can be]
'stopping places' in which t h e physical mobility of agents' trajectories
is arrested or curtailed for the duration of encounters or social
occasions . " 'Regionalization' should be understood not merely as
localization in space but as referring to the zoning of time-space in
relation to routinized social practices. Thus a private house is a locale
which is a 'station' for a large cluster of interactions in the course of a
typical day, Houses in contemporary societies are regionalized into
floors, halls and rooms, But the various zones of the house are zoned
differently in time as well as space, The rooms downstairs are
characteristically lIsed mostly in daylight hours, while bedrooms are
where individuals ' retire to' at night 2
Interpersonal networks a n d institutional organizations m a y b e studied .;

,
� �
without r derence to t heir o a ti(Jn in space because communication i Giddens' description of regionalized locales, as physical territories
,
techno!ogles allow t helr defmmg linkages and formal positions to bel structured in time by social rhythms, lends itself nicely to an assemblage
created and maintained at a distance, b u t as we move to larger scales i approach, providing his definition is augmented with the expressive
spatial relations �ecome cr�cial. Social entities like cities, for example, 1 elements with which locales and regions distinguish themselves from
composed of entlTe populanons of persons, networks and organizations, 1 each other. The stress on rhythmic or periodic routines, however, would

I
can h ardly be conceptualized without a physical infrastructure of seem to present a problem. I have argued in previous chapters that
:� � �
buildings, s reet a n d various ondu ts for the circulation of matter and • .
.
except in the most uneventful situations, routine behaviour must be
energy, defmed m part by thel f spatiaL relations to one another. In fact, . complemented with deliberate decision-making in the explanation of
sociologists discovered the social relations generated
. by territoriality in social action, But when studying the effect of human behaviour on the
the 1 9205 when the famous Cbicago school began its studies of urban i� form of urban components the emphasis on routine activity is j ustified
1\:
contexts, viewed both as spatial localities as well as sites structured in '� beca use, as the historian Fernand Braudel reminds us, urban forms tend
time b y habitual or customary practices, l More recently SOCiologists such l to change extremely slowly. A house, as he says, 'wherever it may be, is
as Anthony G i d d e ns, influe nced in part by work of urban 11
the an enduring thing, and it bears witness to the slow pace of civilizations, of
.
geographers, have returned to this t h e me, reconceptualizin g social cultures bem on preserving, maintaining, repeating ' . 3 Given this
territories through the notion of a 'regionalized locale', As Giddens slowness it seems correct to emphasize those h u m a n activities t h a t a r e
writes: so regular they have a chance t o impinge o n urban form i n t h e long run,
such as the journeys to work or journeys to shop that give cities their
Locales refer to the use of space to provide the settings of interaction, daily rhythms. On the other hand, in those cases where we witness
the settings of interaction in turn being essential to specifying historical accelerations of this slow pace we will have to add choice to
contextuality , . , Locales may range from a room in a house, a street rou tines since acceleration in the change of urban form typically implies
corneL the shop floor of a factory, towns and cities, to the territorially breaks with trad ition and hence, deliberate design.
dem arcated areas occupied by nation -states, But locales are typically Let us now give an assemblage analysis of these regionalized locales,
internally regionalized, and the regions within them are of critical starting with individual buildings. The material role in buil d ings is played,
importance in constituting contexts of interaction . . . One of the first of aLL by those components that allow them to be successful load,

94 95
 A N E W P H I L O S O P H Y OF S OC I E T Y
bearing structures . For buildings that are a few storeys high, the
themselves perform this task, in conj unction with columns
independent beams, but large governmentaL religious and
buildings must make use of more sophisticated techniques as
become taller. As skyscraper designers know well, radical changes in
may be needed once a critical height has been reached, such as the use
an interconnected iron or steel frame which, beginning in the 1
liberated walls from their load-bearing duties transforming them
mere curtains. Other components playing a material role are
determining the connectivity of the regions of a bUilding. If locales
stations where the daily paths of individual persons converge, the
that subdivide them must be connected to each other to allow for
circulation of human bodies and a variety of other material entities.4 In
simple dwelling, this connectivity is effected via doors, hallways
staircases shaping the flow of people, and by windows for the circu
of air and light. In taller buildings, on the other hand,
transportation technology may be needed. Thus, the same decade
saw the introduction of the internal metallic frame also witnessed
transformation of old mechanical lifting devices into the earlie
elevators, and a corresponding transformation in the vertical connectivity'
of buildings.
Changes in cOIlnectivity, in turn, impinge in a variety of ways on the
social activities performed in a given locale. Fernand BraudeL for
example, argues that the connectivity of some residential buildings in
the eighteenth century changed dramatically at the same time that the il'
function of the rooms became more specialized, with the bedroom in
particular becoming a fully detached region. As he writes, the new
connectivity contrasted sharply with that which characterized previous
buildings:
In a Parisian town house of the seventeenth century, on the first floor,
which was the noble storey, reserved for the owners of the house, all
the rooms - antechambers, salons, galleries and bedrooms - opened off
each other and were sometimes hard to tel! apart. Everyone, including
servants on domestic errands, had to go through all of them to reach
the stairs.5
A hundred years later, some rooms had become public while others were
strictly private, partly as a result of the fact that the routine circulation
96
C I T I ES A N D N A T I O NS
through a house was now constrained by a different distribution of doors
and hallways. Privacy, in a sense, was created by the new regionalization
of these locales. In nonresidential buildings the changes in connectivity
brought about by elevators altered the fom1 of the circulation of
employees, from a horizontal to a vertical form, whenever firms were
not able to secure nearby buildings to accommodate a larger number of
work ers. As the urban geographer James Vance writes:
For the financial district [the) mechanical lift was of critical
importance, because much of the movement tended to be internal
to a rather clearly defined group of employees in a single organization
or in a modest number of commonly related organizations. In that
situation the walking zone limits could be reached within a few
adjacent buildings, as in the structures built to house a legal
community, a medical one, or even a very large single insurance
company . . . It seems to me not at all a matter of chance that the
ear/iest skyscrapers to be built, those in New York and Chicago, were
constructed predominantly for insurance companies and were among
the earliest buildings to be equipped with elevators. targe metropo­
litan newspapers were other early entrants into the construction of
skyscrapers, again finding a great advantage in piling large numbers of
workers on top of each other and thus, b y elevator, being able to
secure rapid personal communication. 6
The introduction of internal transportation also had expressive effects.
* Thus, the apartment buildings that were constructed prior to the elevator,
! in Paris for example, displayed a clear vertical stratification in which the
! social status of the inhabitants decreased with height. After the elevator
� was introduced, this stratification of regions was reversed, with
apartments higher up expressing increased status.7 Other expressive
components vary with the activities housed by the building. In the case of
residential b uildings, the distinctive furniture of their internal regions and
the decorative treatment of walls, floors and ceilings, have often played a
role in the m arking of social-class territories. Ostentatiolls displays in the
aristocratic homes of Renaissance Italy, as Braudel reminds us, were i n
fact a w a y of using l uxury a s a means of domination. B u t as he goes on to
argue, this luxury was purely expressive, since until many centuries later
it was not associated with any kind of material comfoTt.8 In the case of
p u b li c bUildings, particularly important examples are cathedrals,
97
 A N E W P H I L O S O P H Y OF S O C I ET Y
churches, mosques a n d synagogues: locales u s e d f o r worsh .v,"",,_
services, processions and religious ceremonies, These buildings
demarcate a sacred territory from a profane one through the expressive
use of geometry a n d proportion. 111 medieval Europe, for example, the
overall cruciform shape, arcaded cloisters and rhythmic patterns in
stained-glass windows were all sacred territorial markers. No doubt, these'• .•
spatial expressions often coexisted with religious representations. The ·
fan-vaults of some English Gothic churches, for instance, with their series
of ribs radiating upwa rds, express an expansive, ascending motion weU
suited to mark a sacred territory. This physical expression, of course, must
work in conj unction with linguistic ones (the belief that, for example,
heaven is above the earth ) , but it is not reducible to them.
What are the processes that stabilize or deslabilize the identity of these
assemblages? In the Chinese, Indian and Islamic civilizations, as well as
among the Eu ropean poor, the weight of tradition seems to have been
almost overwhelmingly stabilizing when it comes to building techniques
and materials, as well a s the evolution of furniture and other el emt·nts of
interior decoration. This evolution, when it took place, occurred at a
glacial pace. The birth of fashion, on the other hand, had de territorializing
e!fects, although these were at first confined to the European rich.
Fashion greatly accelerated the pace at which the interior and exterior
decoration of buildings evolved, although it was not until the 1 700s that
the rate of change approximated the speed to which we have become
accustomed today.9 The impetus behind fashion was not j u st the desire to
mark social-class territories through the way bodies and homes were
dressed but also derived from the fact that, in E u rope, aristocracies saw
their distinguishing expressive markers constantly under threat by the
increased social mobility of rich merchants and artisans. This resulted in a
spiralling 'arms race' that drove change. As Bra udel writes:
I have always thought that fashion resulted to a large extent from the
desire of the privileged to distinguish themselves, whatever the cost,
from the masses that followed; to set up a barrier . . . Pressure from
followers and imitators obviously made the pace quicken. And if this
was the case, it was because prosperity granted privileges to a certain
number of nouveaux riches and pushed them to the fore . l o
Another process deterritorializing t h e identity o f buildings i s drastic
changes in the routines which give them a temporal rhythm. In the case of
98
C I T I E S AND NAT I O NS
either practices
organi zations possessing an auth ority structure, changes in
timization or enforcement may affect the identity of locales. As new
of legi
l
.. .
en forcement routines replaced old ones in the seventeenth
and eighteenth
and
ce nturies, for example, they generated a distinct regionalization
I
As
con nectivity in the buildings of factories. prisons, hospitals and schools.
Mich el Foucault writes, these b u ildings have
� an architecture that is n o longer built simply to be seen (as with
f ostentatious palaces ) , or to observe the external space (ct. the
• geometry of fortresses) , but to permit an internaL articulated a n d
detailed control - to render visible those w h o a r e inside it . . . T h e old
simple schema of confinement and enclosure - thick walls, a heavy
gate tha t prevents entering o r leaving - began to b e replaced b y the
calculation of openings, of filled and empty spaces, passages and
II
transparen cies.
We can extend these remarks to other types of locales, such as office
bu ildings. The bodies of b ur e a u crats, for example. m u st also be
analytically distributed in space, pinned down to their offices, a n d
sepa rated from a n y activity not directly related to their jobs. 'The physical
separation of offices', Giddens writes, 'insulates each from the other a n d
gives a measure of autonomy to those within t h e m , and a l s o serves a s a
' 12
powerful m arh'r of hierarchy.
The changes brought about by fashion, or by t he disciplinary use of
space, already point to the fact that buildings exist in collectivities of
simila r assemblages, since in both cases we are concerned with how new
forms propagate over time through an entire popul a t i o n . These
populations of bu ildings, in turn, form larger assemblag('s such as
residential neighbourho ods, commercial, industrial or government
districts. or even moral (or immoral) zones, such a s red-light districts.
What components play a material or expressive role in these larger
assemblages? O n the material side, we must list all the physical locales
defining stations for the periodic intersection of the life paths of
n eighbours (the local square, churches, pubs, shops) as well a s the
street s providing the necessary connectivity among them . A whole
underground infrastructure , starting with water and sewage pipes a nd
conduits for the gas that powered early street lighting, was added in the
nineteenth century, and the twentieth contributed with ekctricity cables
and telephone wires.
99
 CITIES AND NATIONS
A N E W P H I LO SO P H Y O F S O C I E TY

extensiv e pattern.
On the expressive side, it was the exterior of buildings, that is, increased to the point that they present a n areally
ation is t o be seen , In contrast to a
decoration (or lack of it) of their facades, that defined the personality of th en a geograph ical congreg
. .

ostensibl y similar
neighbou rhood. In residential neighbourhoods where streets congrega tion is a similarly extensiv e grouping of
narrow and their layout formed a complex maze, the frontage of als induced by external forces. Instead of being drawn
individu
IS
remained rather plain. Hence, expressive exteriors appear first in pu togethe r, they are forced togethe r b y segregat ion.
bUildings. These were typically located on a central square in which
been subject to
surrounding space opened up vistas, t h a t is, opportunities for unu Commer cial and industria l neighbo urhoods have often
and similar crafts and trades
visual experiences, and effect enhanced by a straight street leading to th e processe s of congreg ation
congreg ate, while certain noxious activitie s
church, administrative building or monument. Aristocratic have tradition ally tended to
often been the target of institutio nal segregat ion.
bUildings joined public ones by the fifteenth century, as the E u ropean like slaughte ring have
ial neighbo urhoods toO acquire relativel y well-def ined
rich deliberately to pick observable sites for the location of private But resident
through these processe s.
houses. Only when enough space was left open around these borders, and a uniform internal composi tion,
the clearest example ,
could expressive ostentation, and the interclass competition that fuel The case of instituti onalized segregat ion is perhaps
compos ition of a neighbo ur­
it. begin to touch the external surfaces. 13 Besides opening up vistas, the since in this case both the bounda ries and
governm ent organiz ations. B u t
central squa re of a town played another expressive role: a s a centre hood are codified by law and enforce d by
nous composi tion (by
determining the location of residential neighbourh oods, with proximity congreg ation m a y a l s o result in a relativel y homoge
e) even when one assumes a desire by
to it expressing greater social prestige. This concentric arrangement was race, ethnic group, class, languag
relative ly integrat ed neighbo urhood. If people who
characteristic of many European medieval towns, but was more resident s to Jive in a
south of the Alps. In the north, where merchants or craftsmen dominated discrimi nate also prefer not to b e in the minorit y, whethe r
do not actively
relative t o their overall
their settlements, a market-place occupied the centre of the city, and relative to their immedi ate neighbo urs or
be critical thresho lds in
accessibili ty to it determined the desirability of a location. This functional proport ion in the neighbo urhood, there will
which a chain rea('lion takes
ra ther than soci a l separation led to a more e g a l i ta rian form of the compos ition of a neighbo urhood beyond
locale by one of the groupS. 1 6
expressivity, particularly in those planned towns named 'bastides ' which place causing a flight away from the
es o f deterrito rializati on are increase d
were used in the late Middle as a means to colonize economically Importa nt exampl es of process
the effect of on the allocatio n of uses for
backward a reas within E u rope. 1 4 geographical mobility and land rents

ar neighbo urhood or district. As the sociolog ists who pioneer ed

Next we must list the processes that sharpen the boundaries and a particul
sharpen s the bounda ries
increase the internal homogeneity of a given neighbourhood. The urban studies pointed out long ago, segrega tion
blur them . 1 7 A good
processes of congregation and segregation a re among those that perform of resident ial a reas, whereas transpo rtation tends to
d mobility a fforded by
this territorializing function. As James Vance writes: example of the destabil izing effects of the increase
workin g-class neighbo ur­
mechan ical transpo rtation a re the change s that
the end of the ninetee nth century . These
The activities that grow up in cities show a strong tendency to corne hoods underw ent towards
sharply defined borders when the j ourney to work
together in limited areas of speCialization drawn into a congregation neighbo urhood s had
b ut as the electric trolley became availabl e the need to live
by the internalizing linkages among them. Whether it be the use of was on foot,
with more
shared sources of materials, the selling to a common body o f n ear the factory was remove d and new working -class suburbs
the situatio n thus:
customers, t h e practice of a given religion. o r t h e speaking of a porous bounda ries emerge d. Vance summa rizes
particular the institutional practice shapes the process of
uses in t h e English
congregation, which is internally induced and highly responsive to The fundam ental assemb lage of buildin gs and
workin g class district compos ed of row housing
matters of scale. A few persons doing a particular thing normally industrial dty was the
one or several factorie s and served by quite local shops
congrega te, but not in a n obvious congregation . When numbers are ra n ged around
101
100
 A N E W P H I L O S O P H Y OF S O C I E T Y CITIES AND NATIONS

and pubs . T h e locating factor was the factory, because t h e hours

Th i s m a y explained b y the older age o f European cities a n d the fact that,
labour were long and the virtually universal way of going to work was
a s I mentioned before, proximity to the centre was very prestigious earlier
on foot. The result was the creation of a city, or even a metropolis, of in their history. At the (ore, the displacement of residenti a l by
small, very definite neighbourhoods. which contained the life of m ost commerCial uses in the nineteenth century was a kind of territorial
people save for weekly or less frequ ent visits to the market square, the invasion which produced the central shopping district. While a whole­
m a rket hall. o r the street market for the buying of items of clothing, saler's location was determined by proximity to the port or the railroad
house furnishings, or perishable food. This parochial existence was station, the location of retail shops became increasingly determined by
enforced by conditions of work and housing and the economic the intensity of pedestrian traffic a n d the convergence of transportation
unavailability of access to mechanical transportation. Only later in the lin es . 2 1 Having conquered its territory near the centre, retail itself
ni neteenth century, when the bicycle, the trolley. and finally the differentia ted into specialty shops (with more locational freedo m ) and
cheap excursion to the seaside by train began t o come into the life of commodity-combining sh ops, such a s the centrally located depa rtment
the working class, did any appreciable breaking out of this n arrow store, the first example of which emerged in Paris in the 1 8 505.22 In
geographical frame of life occur . 1 8 addition, retailing had to compete with activities involving the exchange
of information - as it occurs among brokers, bankers, couriers and other
Increased geographical mobility, i n turn, interacted with the way in traffickers of kn owledge and its shops with the office space sought out
which l a n d - assignment and land-use were determined to produce more by these service providers. Eventually, taller buildings decreased the
drastic changes in the identity of neighbourhoods. Central authorities intensity of the competition by giving the territory a vertical differentia­
have always h a d a say in these aJlocative decisions, and they still do, their tion, with shops occupying the first floor a nd offices those higher up.
zoning regu lations having a territorializing effect. Land-rents, on the Explaining the process of land-succession a l ready involves going
other hand, when they became sufficiently fluid t o give rise to economic beyond individual neighbourhoods to a consideration of popula tions or
speculation, were a powerful deterritorializing force, divorcing the collectivities of neighbourhoods interacting with one a nother. Moreover,
reasons for l a n d - ownership from any consideration of the activities since these interactions depend on the relative location of members of
taking place i n it and promoting the relatively rapid displacement of one these popUlations with respect to a central locale, land-s uccession implies
land-use by another. Early urban sociologists referred to this phenom­ the existence of l a rger a ssemblages of which neighbourhoods and districts
enon a s land-succession, after the ecological process in which a given are component parts: towns and cities. The identity of these l a rger
assemblage of plants gives way to another a ssemblage as a n ecosystem assemblages, i n turn, may b e affected by the succession processes taking
grows towards its climax mix of vegetation. Instead of plants these place within them. As I argued above, the centre of a city, particularly
sociologists were concerned with land-uses and modelled this succession when there i s a single one, is a privileged locale which plays a l a rge role in
as a concentric e xpansion away from a city's centre. The core was taken defining its identity. A central square m a y owe its location to the b uilding
over by a central business di strict, encircled by a zone in transition. with which served as a n ucleus for the urban settlement. a church or a castle,
light manufacture and deteriorating residential neighbourhoods. Next tor example, and to this extent may serve as an expression of the
came a ring of working-class neighbourhoods, followed by middle- and historical origins of the town. Likewise, when the centre is occupied by a
upper-class neighbourhoods, and finally the suburbs or the commuters' market-place. the commercial character of the town is expressed by th at
zone . 1 9 very fact. Thus, when a city loses its mono centricity its historical identity
Those early studies, however. focused on a single city ( C h icago) a n d may be affected. This multiplication of centres occurred in many
did not give a full explanation o f the mechanisms involved in succession. Cou ntries after 1 945 a s subu rba nization a n d the increased use of
The concentric-ring model seems to be valid for many cities in the USA automobiles made the city's core a less promising place for retail
where incomes do tend to rise with distance from a city's centre, but not a ctivities, and as sh opping centres in o u tlying locations became
for many parts of Continental Europe, where the reverse is the case.20 in creasingly common.

102 103
 A N E W P H I LO S OP H Y O F S O C I E T Y CITIES A N D NATIO N S

B u t even before the proliferation o f suburbs a n d i n dustrial
lands, the identity of urban settlements depended on their
with their surro u n dings. Until relatively recently this m eant
countryside and its rural villages. A town may emerge within a
existing rural area, a process referred to as ;ynoensm, or on the contrary,
may be planted in an area lacking previous rural i n h abitants with
life projected outwards on su rrounding areas, a process called uw
' <Ll�m.··".
But whether it is through a rural implosion or a n urban explosion
the di fference between town and countryside is established, it is
difference that constitutes them both, a difference in their mix of �"'.+; •• ..:.
activities and in their density of population. The distinction of r'-" "".4"
activities i s based on the oldest form of division of labour: that hr-twe,pn:!
agricultural activities on the one hand, a n d those of commerce, 11111U'UYilil
and formal government on the other. U ntil the last two centuries.
separation of activities was not abruptly discontinuous: towns kePt . IIl
vegetable gardens and raised farm animals within their walls, while rural
� .
d ynamics can make towns grow much faster than their countryside,
in cre asing their influence a n d breaking the symmetry of the resource
depen dencies.
In fact. a n assemblage a na l ysis of urban centres must take into acco unt
not o nly town and countryside. but also the geographical region they
both occupy. This region is an importa nt source of components playing a
material role in the assemblage. The geographical site and situation of a
given urban settlement provides it with a range of objective opportunities
an d risks. the exploitation a n d avoidance of which depends on
interactions between social entities (persons, networks, organizations)
and physical and chemical ones (rivers, oceans, topsoil, mineral deposits ) .
I n addition t o ecological compon ents there are those making u p the
infrastructure of a city, that is, its physical form a n d its connectivity.

.
While the physical form of some towns may result from a
aggregation of its neighbourhoods. some aspects of its connectivity (those
related to citywide mechanical transportation ) tend to have properties of
mere

villages engaged in small-scale industry.24 The distinction in terms
demographic density also varied in sharpn ess. but it was always there;
however blurred. Some b i g villages may have been larger than some,
small towns. but the latter always packed more people into the same
amount of space.
The relations between town and countryside may be characterized in
terms of the resources with which they supply o n e a nother. A m edieval
town of 3,000 in habitants. for example. needed the land of about ten
villages (or 8.5 kilometres) to generate enough food for its inhabitants.25
But those Villages, in tum. needed services from the town, from the
commercial services provided by its market-place to the legal, m edicaL
financial and educational services supplied by its organizations, as well as
the military protection afforded by its walls and armies. Yet, despite the
mutuality of resource dependencies. cities have always tended to dominate
the countryside beca use of the cumulative. self-stimulating dynamics that
characterize them. There are many models of these dynamics, some
stressing the mutual stimulation between the accumulation of workers in
a place and the availability of economic investment, private or public. in
that place; others focusing on the mutual stjmulation b etween different
economic activities that supply each other with materials a nd services and
0 their own. and are capable of affecting the form of the neighbourhoods
1 themselves. The best example is perhaps that of locomotives. Their large
mass made them hard to stop as well as to accelerate again. and this
dema nded the construction o f elevated or und erground tracks whenever
they had to intermesh with ped estrian traffic. The same physical
constrai n ts determined a n interval of two or three miles between train
stops. directly influencing the spatial distribution of the suburbs which
grew around railroad stations. giving this distribution its characteristic
beadlike shape.27
The components playing a n expressive role i n a n urban assemblage
may also be a mere aggregation of those of its neighbourhoods. or go
beyond these. Let's take for example the silhouette which the mass of a
town's residential houses a n d bUildings. as well as the decorated tops of
its churches and public buildings, cut against the sky. I n some cases. this
skyline i s a mere aggregate effect. but the rhythmic repetition of
architectural motifs belfries and steeples, minarets. domes and spires.
even smokestacks. water-towers and furnace cones and the way these
motifs play in counterpoint with the surrounding features of the
landscape. may result in a whole that is more than a simple sum,28
Eith er way. skylines, however humble. greeted for centuries the eyes of

provide demand for each other's products. In all models, however. 'spatial incoming people at the different approaches to a city, constituting a kind
concentration itself creates the favourable economic environment that of visual signature of its territorial identity. This was particularly true
supports further or continued concentration , 26 These self-stimulating before the blurring of city boundaries by suburbs a n d industrial

104 105
 A N E W P H I L O S O P H Y OF S O C I E T Y
hinterlands, b u t cities endowed with large skyscrapers continue t o po!>se!.
this p h ysical expressivity even in these new conditions. In some
however, as the a rchitectural historian Spiro Kostoff reminds us,
process through which old and new skylines become territorial
involve a variety of visual representations, such as those found in
paintings and prints aimed at tourists.29
The processes t h a t stabilize a city's identity concern both the
of its physical borders a s well as the routine human practices taking
within those borders, in particular, the form taken by residential nr£u:tirHc.ll'
In ancient Greek towns, for example, a substantial part of t h e l'UjJ UldllU[1'j;
returned to their rural homes in summer months or in times of eo)n�JrnliE
trouble. This custom, in turn, affected the process of congregation
formed neighbourhoods within towns: residents tended to congregate
their rural place of origin and maintained their geographic loyalties.30
addition, military threats made the inhabitants of a Greek town disperse
rather than hide behind its walls. This combination of factors resultedmI
towns that, in a sense, blended with their countrysides and therefore die«
not have a sharply defined identity. Th e opposite case is exemplified b ,
medieval European towns, where fortified walls provided not onlY:
protection for the rural population during a siege b u t also a sense
security against undefined outsiders: a sense which, even in the absen
of overt conflict, helped to make citizens into dearly defined insiders. I
addition, the stone walls marked the point beyond which the exclusivi
of citizenship and its privileges ended, unlike the Greek case in whic
citizenship could be held by those who practised a duality of residencei
Overall, medieval towns had a much sharper identity as locales. These
cities, as Braudel writes, 'were the West's first focus of patriotism - and �
the patriotism t hey inspired was long to be more coherent and mu(:h ,
more conscious than the territorial k ind, which emerged only slowly in :
the first states'. 3 1
T h e native town i n ancient Greece a n d t h e walled medieval town
represent two extreme forms which city boundaries may ta ke.
interesting intermediate case was created by the rise of the suburb in the ,
nineteenth century, and its proliferation in the twentieth. Whereas at '
first subu rb s and indu strial hinterlands simply b l u rred the o u ter
boundaries of cities which otherwise retained their centre, and hence
their old identity, after the Second World War not only the area which ·
suburbs occupied but the variety of their land-uses ( retail. wholesale.
manufacturing and office space) multiplied, recreating the complex
106
CITIES A N D NATI ONS
combinations that used to characterize t h e o l d central business district. As
[ noted before, this process created brand new centres in the suburban
ba nd. rn some cases, the urban realms around these centres were so self­
su fficient that the daily paths of their residents could be contained within
their Iimits.32 Thus, by creating a true multi-centred urban space,
sub urban growth - and the changes in connectivity brought about by the
auto mobile and the freeway - acted as a powerful deterritorializing force.
As usual, an assemblage analysis of singular, individual entities must
be complemented b y a study of the populations formed b y those entities.
An i m portant property of populations of towns and cities is the b i rth-rate
of new u rban settlements, a s well as the rate at which old settlements
disappear. These determine the overall rate of urbanization of a particular
geographical region. In the case of Europe, urbanization intensified in the
ItiI eleventh and twelfth centuries, accelerated again in the sixteenth, and
; picked up speed once more in the centuries following the rndustrial
Revolution. Between 1 3 5 0 and 1 4 50, and between 1 6 50 and 1 7 50, both
the h uman population and the overall rate of urbanization dedined . 3 3
The first wave of city-building t o o k place against the background o f
feu dalism, creating densely occupied areas in which a certain autonomy
from feudal relations could b e achieved - the city's land still belonged to a
bishop or a prince, b u t the city as a whole paid the rem - as weI! as areas
with lower urban density in which cities could n o t shed their shackles.
Higher density affected not only the relations of cities with feudal
organizations, making them more contractual and less directly tributary,
� but also the intensity of the economic interactions between cities. In the
! period between the years 1 000 and 1 3 00, cities in the low-density feudal
areas ( Spain, France, England) did not develop systematic relations
i among themselves, remaining within relatively dosed politico-economic
domains in which trade relationships were mostly local. In the high­
density areas (northern Italy, Flanders, the Netherlands, some parts of
Germany), on the other hand, the regularity of trade was greater, its
An · volume higher, and it covered m u ch larger areas. This led t o the
generation of more systematic and enduring relations among urban
centres crea ting the conditions for the emergence of larger assemblages:
hierarchies and network s of cities. M u ch as the differentiation between a
city and its surrounding countryside involved breaking the symmetry of
it s resource dependencies through self-stimulating accumu lations, other
cumu lative processes - related to differential degrees of autonomy from
fe u d a l organizations, the relative speed of different forms of transporta-
107
 A N EW P H I L O S O P H Y O F S O C I ETY
tion, differences i n volume a n d intensity o f
possibility of a uniformly sized population of towns with
resource dependencies.
In formal models of urban dynamics, assemblages of cities of d i ffp¥p_,�,!!
sizes emerge from a sequence of symmetry-breaking events, as each
confronts centripetal processes, like the capture of population, invest_
ment and other resources, as well as centrifugal ones, like
pollution, tra ffic. At the tipping-point, when one set of forces begins
dominate the other, a town may grow explosively or shrink to a small
in the shadow of a larger one. 34 In computer simulations the actual "
pattern that emerges is not unique - as if there existed a single optiJ:Ilati;'
pattern to which the urban dynamics always tended - but is, on the'i
contrary, highly sensitive to the actual historical sequence of events. FOf
this reason, the emergent pattern of urban ceIl1res is like a memory of this
symmetry-breaking sequence 'fossilized in the spatial structure of
system '.'s
A recurrent emergent pattern in these formal models is one familiar
geographers: a hi erarchy of central places. In its original
central-place theory was an attempt to describe the hierarchical relations
among regularly spaced urban centres, with larger ones displaying
greater degree of service differentiation t h a n smaller ones. In the
hierarchies that emerged in medieval Europe, for example, the smallest
towns offered a small market-place and a church as services to their rural
surroundings; medium -sized towns added to this marketing function
more elaborate religious services, as well as some simple administrative
and educational ones, such as county jails and schools, which they
offered to their countrysides as well as to lower-ran ked towns. Larger
towns, in turn, multiplied the variety of marketing, administrative and
religious services a n d added new ones, such as the sophisticated '
educational services provided by universities.36 In short, in a central­
place hierarchy each rank offers all the services of the immediately lower
rank and a few more, and these added services create resource
dependencies across ranks. To these it must be added the economic
dependencies which trade may create, since larger towns typically offered
a larger variety of products than smaller ones, as well as political
dependencies derived from the fact that the largest towns at the top of the
hierarchy were usually regional or provincial capitals. In addition to
landlocked central-place hierarchies, trade among the E uropean popula­
tion of towns in the Middle Ages generated extensive networks of maritime
108
C ITIES A N D NATIONS
ports in which cities were n o t geographically fixed centres but changing
re lays, j u nctions or outposts. As the urban historians Hohenberg and Lees
write:
Instead of a hierarchical nesting of similar centres, distinguished
mainly by the n u mber and ra rity of services offered, la maritime
network] presents an ordering of functionally complementary cities
and urban settlements. The key systemic property of a city is nodality
rather than centrality, whereas hierarchical differences derive only
partly from size and more from the nature of the dominant urban
function . Control and innovation confer the most power and status,
followed by transmission of goods and messages, and finally by
;� execution of routine production tasks. Since network cities easily
exercise control at a distance, the influence of a town has lillIe to do
with propinquity and even less with fonnal control over territory .37
Each node in these networks specialized on a subset of economic
aC1ivities not shared with the rest, with the dominant nodes typically
monopolizing those that yielded the most profits. Since rates of profit vary
historically, as sources of supply change or as fashion switches demand
[rom one lUXury product to another, the mix of activities in each node of
the network also changed, and this, in turn, a ffected the dominance
relations between nodes. For this reason, the position of dominant node,
or 'core', as it is sometimes referred to, changed over time, although it
was always occupied by a powerful maritime port. The sequence of cities
occupying the core was roughly this: Venice was dominant in the
fourteenth century, followed by Antwerp in the fifteenth, Genoa in the
sixteenth, Amsterdam in the seventeenth, London i n the next two
centuries, and New York in the twentieth.38 Besides economic specializa­
tion, Hohenberg and Lees mention control at a distance as a characteristic
of city networks, a relative i n dependence from spatial proximity made
possible by the much higher speed of transportation by sea relative to that
over land. Faster transportation implied that nodes in the network were
in a sense closer to each other than to the landlocked cities in their own
backyard: news, goods, money, people, even contagious deceases, all
travelled more rapidly from node to node than they did from one central
place to another.
As assemblages, central-place hierarchies and maritime networks have
different components playing material and expressive roles. Materially,
109
 A NEW P HILOSOPHY O F SOCIETY
they vary i n both geographical situation and connectivity. On the
hand. the geographical siting of central places always gave them r"'TlnH__
over land resources. farmland in particu lar. B y contrast. the cities
maritime networks. particularly the dominant nodes, were relatively
in these terms: Venice was so ecologically deprived it was condemned
trade from the start, and Amsterdam had to be constantly reclaiming
from the sea. In temlS of connet1ivity, roads linked central
following the ranks of the hierarchy: there were seldom direct l ;m,(1-1r(w.......
connecting the smaller towns to the regi onal capital. Also, the rpl"un_
slowness of terrestrial transportation forced towns to cluster
since the services offered b y la rger centres could only be enjoyed if
smaller ones were located at relatively short distances: the distance
inhabitants would be willing to walk to get the needed service.
ports were not subject to these constraints. Not only were long UD'QIJl\.t:1l111'
less of a problem. given the faster speed of their ships, but they could a
directly connected to one another regardless of rank. The key to
connectivity was the sea. During the first wave of urbanization.
instance. 'the two inland seas. the Mediterra nean-Adriatic and t
C h annel-North Sea-Baltic, served to unite trading centres rather t
to separate them'.w After that, first the Atlantic Ocean, and later o n
Pacific. became the connecting waters of a network t h a t by t h
seventeenth century h a d acquired global proportions.
While the cxpressive components of these assemblages may be a mer
aggregate of those of the towns that are their component parts, t h
aggregate may have a pattern o f its own. In t h e case of central places, if we
imagine travelling from the smallest and simplest towns up the ranks until
"
we reach the regional capital, this experience would reveal a pattern oN
increased complexity in the expressive elements giving towns their
personality: taller and more decorated churches a n d central plazas, more
lavish religious and secular ceremonies, a greater variety of street and ::§
workshop activities. as well as more diversified and colourful market­
places. In the case of maritime networks. it was not the increased
differentiation of one and the same regiona l culture that expressed
dominant position but the gathering of expressions from all over the world.
The core cities, in particular. always had the highest cost of living and the
highest rate of inflation, so every commodity from around the world, .
however exotic. tended to flow towards their high prices. 'These world- .
cities put all their delights on display', writes B raudet becoming universal
warehouses, inventories of the possible. veritable Noah's A rks.4o
110
CITIES AND NATIONS
Territorialil.3tion i n these a ssemblages i s p e rformed b y the processes
th at give an entire region a certain homogeneity. The largest central
pla ces, often playing the role of political capitals, attracted talented people
fro m the lower-ranked towns: people who brought with them linguistic
and nonlinguistic elements of their own local culture. Over time. these
capit als gathered, elaborated and synthesized these elements into a more
or less homogenous product which was then re-exported back to the
smaller centres.41 The higher prestige of the more differentiated culture at
the top acted a s a magnet for the short-distance migratory patterns of
cult u ra l producers, and gave the synthesized cultural product the means
to propagate throughout the region. Long-distance trade, on the other
h and, had deterritorializing effects. The nodes of a maritime network
often played the role of gateways to the ou tside, opening up to foreign
civilizations. so they housed a more colourful and varied population.
Having a larger proportion of foreign merchants than did the central
places, maritime ports offered their inhabitants the opportunity to be in
more regular contact with outsiders and their alien manners, dress and
idea s. The e x i stence of dom i n a n t nodes implies that the more
cosmopolitan culture of urban networks was not egalitarian, but its
heterogeneity was preserved since it was 'superimposed on a traditional
,
periphery with no attempt at integration or gradual synthesis .42
Moving from the scale of city assemblages to that of territorial states
may be done in an abstract way, simply n oting that the landlocked
regions organized by central-place hierarchies and the coastal regions
structured b y maritime networks are today component parts of nation­
states. But this would leave out the historical process behind the
absorption of cities into larger entities, as well a s the resistance offered by
� urban centres to such a n integra tion. I n Europe, the outcome of this
{ process varied, depending on the segment of the population of cities that
wa s involved. In the densely urbanized regions cities managed to slow
down the crystallization of territorial states until the nineteenth century.
While in the areas of low density they were quickly absorbed. I n
a particular, unlike t h e central-place hierarchies j u st examined, those that
emerged in the areas where feudalism remained dominant tended to
adopt distorted forms with excessively large cities at the top. These
disproportionately populous and powerful centres formed the n ucleus
aroun d which empires, kingdoms and nation-states grew by a slow
accretion of territory, and, in time, they became the national capitals of
these larger assemblages.
111
 A NEW PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIETY
CITIES AND NATIO N S

Although the incorporati on of cities in the sixteel1lh and seven

centuries was performed through a variety of means. direct parti cipants. a unified. geopolitically stabilizing Germany h d been �
.
interventio ns were often involved. In some cases the rulers of cre ate d at the centre of Europe, a n d the frontIers that defmed the
ide ntity of territori a l states, as well a s the balance of power between
or empires made claims to the territory on which cities were
the m, were consolida t e d . Although the crucial legal concept of
cla ims legitimated by inheritance or marriage b u t often enforced t /n''''', nlollE
the use of organized violence. But warfare also influenced t h e outcome 'so v ereignty' had been formalized prior to the war (by Jean Bodin in

the contest between cities and territorial states indirectly through 1 576) it was during the peace conference that i t was first used in practice
to define the identity of territorial states as legal entities.44 Thus.
enormous expense that armies and fortified frontiers implied. Only
inte rnational law may be said to have been the offspring of that war.
centralized governmen ts. commandin g the entire resources of a land
As I argued in the previous chapter, it is important not to confuse
its inhabitants . could afford to stay in the arms races that rlP1U "!."..-..."",
territorial states as ,qeopolitical entities with the organizatio nal hierarchies
between new weapons (such as mobile artillery) a n d defensive
that govern them. Geopolitical factors are properties of the former but not
tions. As the historian Paul Kennedy writes:
of the latter. As Paul Kennedy argues, given the fact that after 1648
warfare typically involved many national actors, geography affected the
Military factors - or better, geostrateg ical factors helped to shape the·�·
! fate of a nation not merely through
territorial boundaries of these new nation-stat es, while t h e frequen
tl
.
wars induced national consciousn ess, in a negative fashion at least,
i d such elements as a country's dimate, raw materials, fertility of
that Englishman learned to hate Spaniards. Swedes to hate Dane
s) agriculture, and access to trade routes important though they all
Dutch rebels to hate their former Habsburg overlords. Above all. it was
war - a nd especially the new techniques which favoured t h e growth
l were to its overall prosperity - but rather [vial the critical issue of
l. strategical location during these multilateral wars. Was a particular
of infantry armies and expensive fortification s and fleets - which
t nation able to concentrate its energies upon one front, or did it have to
impelled belligerent states to spend more money than ever before, an<l i. fight on several? Did it share common borders with weak states or
to seek a correspond ing amount in revenues . . . In the last few years of :
: � powerful ones? Was it chiefly a land power, a sea power. or a hybrid
Elizabeth's England, or in Phillip U's Spain, as much as three-quarters
f and what advantages a nd disadvantages did that bring? Could it easily
of a l l governmen t expenditure s was devoted to war or to deb d pull out of a great war in Central Europe if it wished to? Could it
repayments for previous wars. Military and n aval endeavors may not
i
secure additional resources from overseas?45
always have bee n the raison d 'itre of the new nation-stat es, but
it
certain l y was their most expensive and pressing activity.43
But if territorial states cannot be reduced to their civilian and military
orga nizations, the latter do form the main actors whose routine activities
The hist orical period that sealed the fate of autonomous cities can be
give these largest of regionalized locales their temporal structure. A good
framed by two critical da tes. 1 494 and 1 648, a period that witnessed
example of the new organizational activities that were required alter
warfare increasing enormously i n both intensity and geographical scope.
1648 were the fiscal and monetary policies, as well as the overall system
The first date marks the year when the Italian city-states were first
of public finance, needed 10 conduct large-scale warfare. On the
invaded and brought to their knees by armies from beyond the Alps: the
economic side t h ere were activities guided by a heterogeneous body 01
French armies under Charles Vlll whose goal was to enforce territorial
pragmatiC beliefs referred to as 'mercantilism'. The central belief of this
claims on the kingdom of Naples. The second date celebrates th e signing
doctrine was that the wealth of a nation was based on the amount of
of the peace treaty of Westphalia, ending the Thirty Years War between
precious metals (gold and silver) that accumulated within its borders. This
the largest territorial entity at the time, the Catholic Habsburg empire,
monetary policy. it is clear today, is based on mistaken beliefs about the
and a n alliance between France, Sweden a nd a host of Protestant-aligned
ca usal relatiolls between economic factors. On the other hand, since one
states. When the peace treaty was finally signed b y the exhausted
means of preventing the outward flow of precious metals was to
112
113

--
 A NEW P H I L O S O P H Y O F SOC I ETY
discourage imports, a n d this, i n turn, involved the promotion of
m a n ufacture and of internal economic growth, mercantilism
collective uninten ded consequenc es that did benefit territorial states
the long run 46 For this reason, h owever, i t is hard to consider the ,,��_'I;JR
making mercantilist policy decisions the relevant social a ctors in this
Another reason to consider the activities of organization s the main c ..... . .,....
of temporal structure for territorial states is tha t many of the Ca1pa(:itil�
necessary to conduct a sound fiscal policy were the product o f
oTganizationa l leaming, a feat first achieved i n England between t h e
of 1 688 and 1 7 .5 6 . As Braudel writes:
This financial revolution which culminated in a transformat ion
public credit was only made possible by a previous thoroughgo i
ng <'
remodeling of t h e kingdom's finances along clearly defined
Generally speaking, in 1 640 and still i n 1 6 60, E nglish
structures were very similar to those of France. On neither side of
Channel did centralized public finance, under the exclusive control
the state, exist. Too much had been abandoned to the private
of tax-collecto rs, who were at the same time official money lenders, to
financiers who had their own affairs in mind, and to officeholde rs
did not depen d on the state since they had purchased their posts,
to mention the constant appeals that were made to the City of London,
just a s the king of France was always calling on the goodwill of Paris,
The English reform, which consisted in getting rid of pa rasitiC
intermediar ies, was accomplishe d steadily a nd with discretion, though
without any discernible plan of action.47
An assemblage analysis of organization al hierarchies has already been
sketched in the previous chapter, so what remains to be analysed is the
territorial states them�elves. Among the component s playing a material
role we must list all the resources contained within a country's frontiers,
not only its natural resources (agricultura l land and mineral deposits of
coal, oiL precious metals) but also its demographic ones, that i s, its
human populations viewed a s reservoirs of army a n d navy recruits a s
well a s o f potential taxpayers. As with all locales, the material aspect also
involves questions of connectivity between regions: questions that in this
case involve the geographica l regions previously organized by cities. -;
Territorial states d i d not create these regions, nor the provinces that
several such regions formed, but they did affect their i ntercon n ection
114
CI TIES A N D NATIONS
throu g h t h e building o f new roads and canals. This i s how, for example,
B rita in stitched together several provincial markets to create the first
n atio nal market i n the eighteenth century, a process in which its national
capi tal played a key centralizing role. And, as Braudel argues, without the
n ation a l market 'the modern state would be a pure fiction'.48
Other countries ( France, Germany, the USA) accomplished this feat in
th(> following century through the usc of locomotives a n d telegraphs, Th e
advent of steam endowed land transportation with the speed it had
lacked for so long, changing t h e balance of power between land locked
and coastal regions a n d th eir cities, and giving national capitals a
dominant position. With the rise of railroads, as Hohenberg and Lees
write. although
many traditional nodes and gateways continued to flourish, the pull of
territorial capitals on trade, finance, a n d enterprise could grow
unchecked. With their concentration of power and wealth, these
cities comma nded the design of rail networks and later of the
motorways, and so secured the links on which future nodality
depended. W here once the t r a d e routes and wa terways had
determined urban locations and roles in t h e urban network, rail
transportation now accommodated the expansion needs of the great
cities for both local traffic and distant connections.49
On the expressive side, the most i mportant example was the use of
national capitals as a means to display central control. This was achieved
through the so-called 'Grand Manner' of urban design pioneered i n
Europe by t h e absolutist governments of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centu ries, Italia n cities created the basic elements of the Grand Manner,
but i t was in France after 1 6 5 0 that these elements became codified into a
stylc: residential blocks with uniform facades acting as frames for
sweeping vistas which culminated with an obelisk, triumphal arch, or
sta tue, acting as a visual ma rker; long a n d wide tree-lined avenues; a use
of the existing or modified topography for dramatic effect; and the
coordination of all these elements into grand geometric configu rations. 50
Al though the use of symbols and visual representations was also part of
Ihis global approach to urban design, it can be argued that the overall
th eatricality of the Grand Manner, and its carefully planned manipulation
of a city's visual experience, physically expressed the concentration of
power. To quote Spiro Kostoff:
115
r
I
A N E W P H I L O S O P H Y OF S O C I ET Y
If the Grand Manner i s routinely associated with centralized Powe.
we can readlly see why. The very expansiveness it calls for, and
abstraction of its patterns, presuppose an untangled decision
process and the wherewithal to accomplish what h a s been laid
When such dearcut a u thority cannot be had the Grand
remains on paper . . . It was not an accident that Washington was
only American city to celebrate the Grand Manner unequivocally .
This was the only city in the United S tates t h a t had a
administration. however deputized, being under direct a u th ority
Congress. Elsewhere one could only resort to persuasion, and try
advance whatever fragments of the overall plan one could through
tangles of the democratic process ' " The presumption of a
power explains the appeal of the Grand Manner for the totalita
regimes of the Thirties - for the likes of M u ssolini, Hitler and Stalin.
The stability of the identity of territorial states depends in pan on th
degre� of uniformity ( �thnic, religious, linguistic, monetary, lega l ) that it4
. .
orgamzatlOns and CLUes manage to create within its borders. A go odl
. built double rows of fortresses in the n o rthern and southeastern frontiers.
example of homogenization at this scale is the creation of standar
languages. In the areas which had been latinized during the Roma .
Empire. for example, each central place hierarchy had its own dominan
dialect, the product of the divergent evolution t h a t spoken or vulgar Lali .
underwent after the imperial fall. Before the rise of national capitals th
entire range of romance dialects that resulted from this divergent
differentiation coexisted. even as some cities accumulated more prestig
for their own versions. B u t as territorial states began to consolidate theitll:
grip. the balance of power changed. In some cases, special organization$
(official language academies) were created to codify the dialects of the
dominant capitals and to publish official dictionaries. grammars and
books of correct pronunciation. This codification. however, did not
manage to propagate the new artificial languages throughout the entire �
territory. That process had to wait until the nineteenth century for the :
creation of a nationwide system of compulsory elementary education in
the standard. Even then, many regions a n d their cities resisted thiS
imposition a n d managed to preserve their own linguistic identity,
resistance that was a sou rce of centripetal forces. Although in some
countries. such as Switzerland, political stability coexists with multi­
lingualism. in others ( Canada. Belgi u m ) even bilingualism has proved to
be a destabilizing force. 52
116
C I T I E S A N D N AT I O N S
In addition t o internal uniformity, territorialization a t this scale h a s a
more direct spatial meaning: the stability of the defining frontiers of a
flows
co un t ry . This stability h a s two aspects. the control of the different
mo ving across the border. and the endurance of the frontiers themselves.
Th e latter refers to t he fact that the a nnexation ( or secession ) of a l a rge
pie ce of land changes the geographical identity of a territorial state.
Although these events need not involve warfare aimed at territorial
expansion (or civil war aimed at secession ) they often do. and this shows
th e importance of deploying annies near the border or constructing
special fortifications for the consolidation of frontiers. A few decades after
the treaty of Westphalia was signed. for example. France redirected
en ormous resources to the creation of coherent. defensible boundaries,
through the syslematic construction of fortress towns, perimeter walls
and citadels - separate star-shaped strongholds sited next to a town's
''9
perimeter. In the hands of Sebastien Ie Prestre de Vauban, the brilliant
J military engineer, France's defining borders became nearly impregnable,
maintaining their defensive value until the French Revolution. Vauban
so systematically related to each other that one 'would b e within earshot
of French fortress guns all the way from the Swiss border to the
Channel' . 53
Migration and trade across national borders tend to complicate the
effort to LTeate a single national identity, and to this extent they may be
considered deterritorializing. The ability to reduce the permeability of
frontiers depends t o a large degn'e on the conditions u nder which a
territorial entity comes into being. Those kingdoms and empires that
l crystallized in the feudal areas of Europe had a n easier task creating
� internal homogeneity than those in the densely urbanized areas that had
. to cope with the split sovereignty derived from the coexistence of many
� autonomous city-states.54 Similarly, territorial states born from the
collapse of a previous empire or from the break-up of former colonial
possessions can find themselves with unstable frontiers cutling across
areas heterogeneous in language, ethnicity or religion: a situation which
militates against a stable i dentity and complicates border control. A more
a systematic challenge to border control and territorial stability has existed
since at least the seveIlleenth century. As the ident i t y of the modern
internation al system was crystallizing during the Thirty Years War. the
city of Amsterdam had become the dominant centre of a transnational
trade and credit network that was almost as global a s anything that exists
117
 A N E W P H I L O S O P H Y OF S O C I E T Y CITIES AND NATIONS

today. I f the rise of kin gdoms, empires and nation-states se amless totality. Each level of scale retains a relative autonomy and can
territorializing pressures on cities by reducing their autonomy, maritime.� therefore be a legitimate unit of analysis. Preserving the ontological
networks not only resisted these pressures but were capable then, and,'� i ndependence of each scale not only blocks attempts at micro-reductionism
still are today, of deterritorializing the constitutive boundaries ofl .�
(as in neoclassical economics) and macro-reductionism ( as in worl d­
territorial states. The pressure on these boundaries has intensified iU l systems analysis) but also a llows the integration of the valuable insights
recent decades as the ease with which financial resources can flow across � that di fferent socia l scientists have developed while working at a specific
state boundaries, the degree o f differentiation of the international� spatiotemporal scale, from the extremely short duration of the small
division of labour, and the mobility of legal and illegal workers, have �
�
entities studied by Erving Goffman to the extremely long duration of the
all increased. large entities studied by Fernand Braudel. Assemblage theory suppJies the
That networks of cities, and the transnational organizations based on� framework where the voices of these two authors, and of the many others
those cities, can operate over, and give coherence to, large geographical �: whose work h a s influenced this book, can come together to form a chorus
areas cuning across state boundaries, has been recognized since the ;: that does not harmonize its different components b u t interlocks them
'
pioneering work of Fernand Braudel, who refers to these areas as 'world. while respecting their heterogeneity.
'
economies'. 55 It is too early, however, to tell whether these world-
economies arc as real as the other regionalized locales that have been )
analysed in this chapter. Some of the processes that are supposed to it
endow these economic locales with coherence, such as the synchronized �
movement of prices across large geographical areas following long I
temporal rhythms (the so-called 'Kondratieff waves'), remain controver. �
siaL But what is clear even at this stage of our understanding is that ?:
approaches based on reductionist social ontologies do not do justice to the �
h i storical data . This is particularly true of macro-reductionist approaches, j
such as the so-called 'world-systems analysis' pioneered by Immanuel 1
Wallerstein, in which Braudel's original idea is combined with theories of \
uneven exchange developed by Latin American theorists.56 In Waller- "
stein's view, for example, only one valid unit of social analysis h a s existed
since the end of the Thirty Years War, the entire 'world-system'.
Explanations at the level of nation-states are viewed as illegitimate since
the position of countries in the world-system determines their very
nature. 5 7 An assemblage approach, on the other hand, is more
compatible with Braudel's original idea. Although he does not usc the .,
concept of 'assemblage', he views social wholes as 'sets of sets', giving
each differently scaled entity its own relative autonomy without fusing it
with the others into a seamless whole.58
It has been the purpose of this book to argue the merits of such a

nonreductionist approach, an approach in which every social entity is

shown to emerge from the interactions among entities operating at a
smaller scale. The fact that the emergent wholes react back on their
components to constrain them and enable them does not result in a

118 119
 N OTES

instantiated in social practices, i t is in a certain sense more " internal" than

exterior to their activities in a D u rkheimian sense' (Anthony Giddens, The
Notes Constitution of Society [Berkeley, CA: University of Ca lifornia Press, 1 986]. p.
25).
4. Ibid., page 3 .
5. Anthony Giddens, Central Problems i n Social Theory ( Berkeley, C A : University
of C a lifornia Press, 1 979), p. 5 3 .
6. Mario B u nge, Causality and Modern Science ( New York: Dover, 1 97 9 ) , p . 1 56 .
�'T
7. Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialo,ques I I ( New York: C o l umbia
University Press, 2002), p. 5 5 .

8 . Gilles Deleuze, Empiricism and Subjectivity (New York: Columbia University

Introduction
I . Ian Hacking, The Sodal Construction of What? (Cambridge, MA: H arvard
University Press, 1 999), p. 1 0 3 .
2 . Ibid., p . 49.
3. For passages on assemblage t heory, see Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A
Thousand Plateaus (Minneapolis, M N : University of Minnesota Press, 1 987),
pp. 7 1. 88-9 1 , 3 2 3-37, 503- 5 .
4. Manuel DeLanda, Intensive Science a n d Virtual Philosophy (London: Con­
tinuum, 2002) .
S . Margaret Archer, Realist Social Theory. The Morphogenetic Approach ( Cam­
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1 995 ) . Archer does a similar critique of
sociological theories but speaks of 'conflation' rather than 'reduction'. My
micro- reductionism, macro-reductionism and meso-reductionism are la­
belled 'downward conflat ion', 'upward conflation' and 'central conflation'
by her.
6. Manuel DeLanda, War in the Age of Intell(qent Machines (New York: Zone
Books, 1 99 1 ); M a n uel DeLanda, A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History (New
York: Zone Books, 1 997 ) .
Chapter 1
I. Howard Becker and Harry Hlmer Barnes, Social Thought from Lore to Science
(New York: Dover, 1 96 1 ), pp. 677-8.
2 . G.W.F. Hegel, The Science of Logic ( Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 1 999),
Volume 2, Book 2, p. 7 1 L (Emphasis in the original ) .
3 . 'Structure i s n o t "external" to individuals: a s memory traces, and as
Press, 1 99 1 ), p. 98. Deleuze is here discussing a specific type of component,
Humean ideas (and this is what the original quote refers to), but the point
applies to any other type o f component.
9 . Thus Deleuze writes:
What is an assemblage? I t is a mUltiplicity which is made up o f
heterogeneous terms and which establishes liaisons, relations between
t hem, across ages, sexes and reigns different natures. Thus the
assemblage's only unity is that o f a co-functioning: it is a symbiosis, a
'sympathy'. It is never filiations which are imponant, but alliances,
alloys; these are not successions, lines of descent, but contagions,
epidemics, the wind. (Deleuze and Pamet, Dialogues II. p. 6 9 )
The exclusion of lines of desceI1l, such a s they exist among organisms and
even species, shows that h e means to exclude the latter from the definition of
an assemblage. In his work with Felix Guatt ari, Deleuze distinguishes between
'assemblages' on the one hand, and 'strat a ' on the other. Biological organisms
and instit utional organizations would be classi fied by them as strata. 1 will not
retain this distinction here for reasons explained below in note 2 1 .
1 0. Deleuze and Guatlari use slightly different terminology. I n particular,
instead of 'material' and 'expressive' roles [or components t h e y talk of
segments o f 'content' and 'expression':
We may draw some conclusions of the nature o f Assemblages from this.
On a first. horizontal axis, an assemblage comprises two segments, one o f
content, t h e other o f expression. O n t h e one hand it is a machinic
assemblage of bodies, of actions and passions, and intermingling of bodies
reacting to one another; on the other hand, it is a col/caive assemblaBe of
enunciation, of acts and statements, of incorporeal tran sformations
attributed to bodies. Then, on a vertical axis, the assemblage has both
territorial sides, or reterritorialized sides, which stabilize it and cutting
ed<qes of deterritorialization, which carry it away. (Gilles Deleuze and Felix
GuattarL A Thousand Plateaus [Min neapolis, M N : University o f M i nnesota
Press, 1 987], p. 8 8 )

120 121
 A NEW PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIETY NOT E S

With the exception of the term ·territorialization· I will avoid using any processes: infinitive verbs, proper nouns, indefinite articles. Sec ibid . . p p .
this complex terminology in this book. Also, instead of two dimensions I 2 6 3-4.
three, a manc:euvre which allows me to get rid of the distinction Oeltwl''''''.r,' 1 5 . Deleuze and Guattari refer t o this synthesis of wholes out of (omponents a s
strata and assemblages, a s explained in note 2 1 . a process o f double articulation (ibid" p p . 40-4 1 ) . (This process is said t o
I I , This distinction between linguistic and nonlinguistic expression i s somewhat synthesize strata not assemblages, b u t s e e below, note 2 1 . )
obscured in the previous note by the referen(e to expressive components as': 1 6 . Ibid., p. 3 ] 6.
'
'collective assemblages of enunciation', unless one interprets it as referling 1 7 . Historically, t h e ancient Greek cities, located far from t h e i r main
not 10 the semantic content of statements, but to their illocutionary force. contemporary empires, but not so far t h a t they could not benefit from their
that is, to what they express as 'speech acts'. See Deleuze and Guattali, A advan(ed civilizations, m a y have supplied the conditions i n which
Thousand Plateaus, p. 80. conversations between frie nds broke free from the rigidity of similar
At any rate, even if we interpret 'statement' this way, the definition of encounters elsewhere. See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, What is
assemblage i s still inconvenient in that it seems t o apply only to social cases Philosophy? (New York : Columbia University Press, 1 994). p. 87. The Greek
(unless one takes inorgank and biologkal entities as capable of produciug case is in fact a wmbination of deterritorialization and decoding. Here
statements) which goes directly against the idea that assemblage theory Deleuze and Guattari stress the former, but I would argue that demding is
applies equally well to physics, biology and sociology, See also note 1 3 . also involved.
1 2 . Edwin C. Kemble, Physica l Science. Its Structure and Development ( C a mbridge, 1 8. Fernand Braude!, The Perspective of the World (New York: Harper & Row,
MA: MIT Press, 1 966), pp. ] 26-7. 1 979), pp. 280-82.
1 3 . Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 62. Deleuze and Guattari 1 9. Ibid., pp. 282-4.
distinguish the substance and the form of the materiality and expressivity of 20. Ibid., p. 287.
assemblages. Materiality involves not merely substance but formed substance, 2 1 . This departs from Deleuze and Gual1ari's own version of assemblage theory
and expressivity is not purely formal but it involves its own substance. The since they define assemblages along two, nor three dimensions, but they are
specialization of genes and words is then conceptualized as the separation then forced to introduce two categories of actual entities, strata a n d
between the substa nce and form of expression. In what follows I will not stick assemblages. To u s e this opposition would unnecessarily complkate t h e
to this terminology. I will speak of physical or direct expressivity to refer to, presentation. particularly w hen t h e s a m e obj ective may b e a(hieved b y
for example, facial expressions or the expressivity of behaviour, and refer to adding a third dimension t o the concept o f assemblage. That they thought
language as a specialized medium of expression. But the reader should keep in the opposition between strata and assemblages was relative (i.e. that
mind that facial expressions a re referred to by Deleuze and Guattari as assemblages are a kind of strata, or vice versa) i s clear from the following:
'substance of expression' and language as 'fonn of expression'. As they write: From this standpoint, we may oppose the consistency of assemblages to
'On the other hand. language becomes the new form of expression . . . The the stratification of milieus. B u t once again, this opposition is only
substance involved i s fundamentally vocal substance, whkh brings into play relative, entirely relative. Just as milieus swing between a stratum stale
various organic elements: not only the larynx. but the mouth and lips, and and a movement of destratification, assemblages swing between a
the overall motricity of the face' (ibid., p. 6 1 ) . territorial closure that tends to rest ratify them and a deterritorializing
1 4 . In addition, the professes which territorialize or deterritorialize genes and movement that (onnects them t o the Cosmos. Thus i t is not surprising
words should be included. The materiality of language, for exa mple, that the distinction we were seeking i s not between assemblage and
becomes territorialized with the emergence of writing. Bm t h i s spatial something else, but between two limits of any possible assemblage.
identity may become deterritorialized when carvings in stone or inked ( Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. p . 3 3 7 )
inscriptions on paper become modulations in electromagnetic fields, as in In addition, Deleuze distinguishes between two forms o f deterritorializa­
radio transmissions of spoken language, or television broadcasts of wrillen tion. The first form, relative deterritorialization, refers to processes which
language. Deterritorializations of the expressive part of la nguage, that is, its destabilize the identity of an assemblage, opening it up to transformations
semantic (ontent, are t rickier to con(eptualize. Deleuze gives some which may yield another identity (in a process called 'reterritorialization ' ) .
indications of how this conceptualization may be pursued. In particular, The second form is quite different. and i t i s referred to a s absolute
he singles out certain semantic entities as playing a key role in these deterritorialization. In this second form it involves a much more radical

J
122 123
 A N E W P H I LOSO PHY O F SOCIETY
identity change: indeed, a loss o f identity altogether, b u t without falling into
a n undifferentiated chaos. Assemblages exist as anual entities, but the
structure of the processes of asse mbly ( what gives these processes their
recurrent nature, or what explains that they fa n be repeated in the first
place ) is not actual but virtual. When deterritorializalion is absolute it means
that the process has departed from aflllal reality to reach the virtual
dimension. In t h is sense, the term is synonymous with 'founter-actualiz.a­
tion' a s t h e limit process whkh creates the plane of immanent multiplicities
which define the virtual strucllIre of assemblages. The two limits referred to
in the quote above are, on the one hand, a highly territorialized and coded
assemblage and, o n the other, the plane of immanence containing the
virtual stru cture of all assemblages linked by relations of exteriority. In
Chapter 2 I discuss the question of the virtual structure of assemblages using
the concept of the 'diagram' of an assemblage.
2 2 . B u nge, Causality and Modern Science, p. 47.
23. Ibid., p. 1 7 8. B u nge credits both Spinoza and Leibniz with the introduction
o f efficient inner causation. Gilles Dele uze continues this tradition when he
gives equal importance to capacities to affect and capaci ties t o be affected.
24. Ibid., 49.
2 5 . Wesley C. Salmon, Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World
( Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1 984), pp. 30-34.
26. Bunge, Causality and Modern Science, pp. 1 0 0- 1 .
2 7 . R.S. Peters, The Concept of Motivation ( London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1 96 0 ) , p. 29.
2 8 . Max Weber, The Theory of Social a n d Economic Organization (New York: Free
Press of Glencoe, 1 96 4 ) . p. 9 9 .
29. The concept o f culture I espouse . . . is essentially a semiotic one.
Believing, with Max Weber, that man is a n animal suspended i n webs of
s(qniJkance he himself has spun, I take culwre t o be those webs, and the
analysis of it to be therefore n o t a n experimental science in search of law
but an interpretive one in search of meaning (Clifford Geertz, 'Thick
description: toward an interpretive theory of culture'. in The Interpretation
of Culture [New York: Basic Books, 1 9 7 3 ] , p . .5 [my emphasis] )
Geertz goes on to speak of 'structures of Signification', as if this expression
meant the same thing as 'webs of significance', a manceuvre which
illustrates the error I am discussing here. On the other hand, it must be
admitted that Geertz's ' thick descriptions' of cultural practices are indeed
invaluable as a starling point i n any social explanation, and this regardless of
his rejection of explanatory strategies in lavou r of descriptive ones.
30. Weber, Theory of Social and Ecollomic Organization, p. 9 1 .
3 1 . Ibid., p . l l 6.
3 2 . Ibid., p. l l 5 . Weber d i scusses four ideal types of social action: ( 1 ) action
124
NOTES
oriented towards t h e matching o f means t o individually chosen ends; ( 2 )
action oriented emotionally; ( 3 ) action oriented b y habituation t o a
tradition; and ( 4 ) action oriented towa rds an absolute value, that is, action
'involving a conscious belief in t he absolute value of some ethicaL aesthetic,
religious, or other form of behaviour, entirely for its own sake and
independently 01 any prospects of external success'.
3 3 . 1bid .. p . l 1 7 .
34. 'Thus causal explanation depends on being able to determine that there is a
probability, which in the ideal case can be n umerically stated, but is always
in some sense calculable, that a given event ( overt or s u bjective) will be
followed or accompanied b y another event' (ibid., p . 9 9 ) .
Chapter 2
I. Aristotle, The Metaphysics ( B u ffalo, NY:, Prometheus B ooks, 1 9 9 1 ), p. 1 5 5.
2. One i s called that which subsists a s such according to accident i n one
way, and in another, that which subsists essentially. A thing i s called one
according t o accident, for instance Coriscus and what i s m usical, and the
musical Coriscus; for i t is one and the same thing to say, CorisClIs and
what is musical, as to say, Coriscus the musician; also, to say the m usical
and the j u s t is o n e with saying the j ust m usician COriSCllS. For all these
are called one according t o accident. ( Ibid., p. 9 7 )
3 . 'The very nature of a thing will not. accordingly, be found i n any o f those
things that are not the species o f a genus, but in these only, for these seem to
be predicated not according to participation or passion, nor as a n accident'
(ibid., p. 1 3 6 ) .
4. Michael T . Ghiselin, Metaphysics and the Or(qin of Species (Albany, NY: State
University of New York, 1 99 7 ) , p . 78.
5. For a full discussion o f the ontological and epistemological aspects of phase
space, see Manuel DeLanda, Intensive Science and Virtua l Philosophy (London:
Continu um, 2002), Ch. 1 .
6. For Deleuze's most extended discussion of diagrams, see Gilles Deleuze,
Foucault (Minneapolis, MN: University o f Minnesota Press, 1 988), pp. "34-4 1
and 7 1 -2 .
The structure of a space of possibilities is someti mes referred to as a
'multiplicity', a term tha t in French is equivalent to 'manifold', the
differential geometry spaces u sed in t b e construction of phase space.
Deleuze sometimes uses the terms 'mUltiplicity' and 'diagram' as synonyms.
Thus, he says that 'every diagram is a spatio-temporal multiplicity' (ibid.,
p. 3 4 ) . But he also uses alternative formulations that do not involve the
mathematics of phase space. Thus he defines a diagram as a display of
relations of lorce, or of a distribution o f capacities 1.0 affect and be affected
125
 A N E W PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIETY
(ibid., pp. 7 1 -2 ) . Since capacities may exist without being exercised (Le.
since they may exist as possibilities) they form a possibility space, a n d a
diagram would display whatever structure this space has. E lsewhere, his
definition departs from this spatial form. He argues that unlike
assemblage where the material a n d expressive roles (or the content and
the expression) are clearly distinguished, the diagram of an assemblage
involves unformalized functions and unformed matter. This means that diagrams
have an abstTact structure in which the expressive and the material are not
differentiated, a differentiation that emerges o n ly when t he diagram is
divergently actualized in concrete assemblages. One way of thinking about
the status of diagrams is. therefore, as the product of a full deterritorializa­
tion of a concrete assemblage, since it is the opposite process ( terrilOriali1.a ­
tion or actualization) that differentiates the material from the expressive.
See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Gualtari, A Thousand Plateaus (Minneapolis,
MN: Uni versity of Minnesota Press, 1 98 7 ) , p. 1 42 .
Finally, while 'multiplicity' and 'diagram' are sometimes used inter­
changeably, at other times they refer to separate entities: the structure of a
possibility space, on the one hand, and the agency responsible for the
absolute deterrilOrialization, the abstract machine or qu asi-causal operator,
on the other. For a detailed explanation of these notions and their relations,
see DeLanda, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, Chs 2 and 3.
7. Because Deleuze does not subscribe to the multiscale sodal ontology that I
am elaborating here, he never says that each of these entities (interpersonal
networks, institutional organizations, cities, etc.) have their own diagram.
On the contrary, he asserts that the diagram 'is coextensive with the sodal
field' (Deleuze, Foucault p. 34). Deleuze gives as examples of 'social fields'
contemporary 'disciplinary societies', the 'sovereign societies' that came
before them, 'primitive societies', 'feudal societies', etc. (ibid" pp. 34-5 ) . In
the social ontology I am presenting there is no such thing as 'society as a
whole' or an overall 'social field', so I am breaking in a rather drastic way
with Deleuze here.
This implies that the terms 'micro' and 'macro' as used in this book do not
correspond to Deleuze's 'molecular' and 'molar'. But some correspondence
may still be achieved: at every level of scale we may have, 011 the one hand,
populations of micro-entities, populations characterized by intensive
properties such as rates of growth, or the rate at which some components
propagate within them; and, on the other hand, some of the members of
these populations may be caught into larger macro-entities, regularized and
routinized. The entities belonging to the populations could be seen as
'molecular', while the entities caught in the larger aggregates would be
'molar', particularly if the macro-entity is highly territorialized. These
remarks soften the differences but do not completely eliminate them, For
126
NOTES
the molecular a n d the molar see Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus,
p . 2 1 7.
8. Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York: Free
an Press of Glencoe, 1 964), pp, 3 2 8-60.
9 . William Bechtel and Robert C . Richardson, Discovering Gomplexity. Decom­
position and Localization Strategies in Scient!!ic Thought (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1 9 9 3 ) , pp. 52-9.
1 0. Gilles Deleuze, Logic of Sense (New York: Columbia University Press, 1 990). p.
1 69. On the other hand Deleuze sometimes writes about diagrams as if they
themselves were causes of which assemblages are the effects. Thus he writes
that 'the diagram acts as a non-unifying immanent cause . . the cause of the
concrete assemblages that execute its relations' ( D eleuze, Foucault, p . 3 7 ) .
II. In the last decade the discipline of sociology resuscitated a n old dilemma
in a new form - a form, unfortunately, that has done little to resolve the
dilemma itself. The perennial conflict between individualistic a n d
collectivistic theories h a s been reworked as a conflict between micro
sociology and macro sociology . . . I would like to begin by suggesting that
this equation of micro with individual is extremely misleading, as,
indeed, is the attempt to find any specific size correlation with the micro­
macro difference. There can be no empirical referents for micro or macro
as such. They a re analytical contrasts, suggesting emergent levels within
empirical units, not antagonistic empirical units t hemselves. (Jeffrey C.
Alexander, 'Action a n d its environments', in Jeffrey C. Alexander,
Bernhard Giesen, Richard Mu nch, Neil J . Smelser reds], The Micro-Macro
Link, [Berkeley, CA: U niversity of California Press, 1 98 7 ] , pp . 290-9 1 )
In the same volume, another sociologist writes:
A fundamental distinction such as that between micro and macro must
be general a n d analytical, not tied to a fixed case. By this standard, the
individual person, household, or firm cannot be treated as intrinsically
micro, and the society, nation, or economy as unalterably macro. Rather,
designations of micro and macro are relative to each other a nd, in
particular, to the analytic purpose at hand, The overall status or role of a
given family member (ego) may be macro relative to ego's relation to a
certain kin group member, but micro relative to the status or role of ego's
lineage in a ma rriage exchange system; the marriage system in turn may
be micro relative to a mythic cycle. The job satisfaction of a worker may
be macro relative to the psychological stress on his or her children, but
micro relative 10 the quality of his or her job. Tha t in tum may be micro
relative 10 the morale or efficiency of the factory or branch office, which
is micro relative to the financial condition of the corpora tion, which is
micro relative to the competitiveness of the industry or the business
cycle of the national or iJltemational emnomy which are, however,
127
 A NEW PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIETY

micro relative to the ideological spirit of the age. ( Dean R. Gerslein, 'To
f term macro-macro, however, is not necessary, since it red uces to the micro­
NOTES

macro case a t the immediately larger scale.

unpack micro a n d macro: link small with large a n d part with whole ',
ibid., p. 88) ] 4. Mark Granovetter. Gettin,IJ a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers (Chicago, lL:
12. Roy B h a s k a r. A Realist Theory o( Science (London: Verso, 1 997), p . 1 14 . While University 01 Chicago Press, 1 99 5 ) .

Bha skar's realism comes very dose to De!euze's in some aspects it is J 5 . David Krackhardt, 'The strength 0 1 strong ties: t h e importance of philos i n
incompatible with it because Bhaskar is a self-d eclared essentialist. As he organizations', i n Networks and Organizations, (eds) N i t i n Nohria and Robert

writes: G. Eccles (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1 992), pp. 2 1 8- 1 9.

In general to classify a group of things together in science, to call t h e m by ] 6. Femand Braude], The Wheels of Commerce (New York: H a rper & Row, 1 979),
the same name, presupposes that they possess a real essence or n at u re in p. 30 .

common, though it does not presuppose that the real essence or nat ure is
1 7. When exactly in the history of D u rope prices began to be determined
impersonally, a s opposed to through the decisions o f feudal lords, is a
known . . . A chemist will classify diamonds, graphite and black carbon
together because he believes that they possess a real essence in common controversial point. B ra u del argues that a l l 'the evidence relating to prices a s

which may be identified as the atomic (or electronic) structure of carbon : early a s the twelfth century i n dicates that they were already fluctuating,

( Ibid .. p. 2 1 0 ) evidence that by then "modern" markets existed a n d might occa sionally be
linked together in embryonic, !Own-to-town networks' (ibid . . p. 2 8 ) .
1 3 . Peter Hedstriim a n d Richard Swedberg, ' Social mechanisms: an i n t roduc­
tory ess a y ' , in Social Mechanisms. An Analytical Approach to Social Th eory,
1 8. A l a n Garfinkel. Forms of lJxplanalion ( N e w Haven, CT: Y a l e Un iversity Press,

(cds) Peter Hedstrom and Richard Swedberg ( C a mbridge: C a mbridge

1 98 1 ), pp. 58-62.

University Press, 1 9 9 8 ) , pp. 22-3. The authors propose t h ree different types ] 9. As the sociologist Anthony Giddens argues, unlike the components of a
of mechanism: m acro-micro, m i cro-micro a n d micro-macro. The first type physical entity with emergent properties ( s uch as bronze, a metallic alloy

would figure i n expla n a tions o f the relations between a social s i t u a t ion having properties that a re more than the sum of the p roperties o f its parts,

involving l a rge sociological phenomena ( s u ch as the distribut ion of income copper, tin and sometimes lead). the parts of a social assemblage seldom

or power i n a popul a t i o n ) a n d i ndividual socia l actors. The large-scale come in pure form. It i s easy t o imagine the component parts o f hronze a s

process may, for exa mple, create different opportunities a n d risks for existing separately prior t o their coming together a n d forming a n alloy, 'but

different actors, who must include these opport u n ities and risks a s part of human actors, a s recognizable competent agents. do not exist i n sepa ration

their reasons to act. The second type refers m a i n l y to social-psychological from one a nother as copper, tin, and lead do. They d o not come together ex

mecha nisms, that is, to the men t a l processes explaining the making of nihilo to form a new entity by their fusion or association' ( Anthony Giddens,

particular decisions (in the case of motives) or to the processes behind the The Constitution of Society [Berkeley, CA: University o f C a l i fornia Press, 1 986],

lormation of habits, the production of emotions or the acquisition of beliefs pp. 1 7 1 -2 ) .

(in the case o f reaso n s ) . Finally, the third type refers to mec h a n i sm s Giddens is tll LIS correct i n aiticizing t h e limited concept o f emergence that

governing the i n teractions among indivi d u a l actors which genera te implies only to originary emergence. But he is wrong in thinking that giving

collective outcomes. up this conception implies surrendering the parHo-whole relation in favour

The problem i s that t he terms 'micro' and 'macro' are used i n their absolute of a seamless web. The example of bronze was used by Emile D u rkheim to

sense, with 'micro' referring to individual pe rsons and 'macro' designating a rgue for the existence o f social emergent properties. See Emile D u rkheim,

society as a whole. But in a ssemblage theory the distinction between micro­ The Rules of Sociological Method (New York: The Free Press, 1 98 2 ) , p. 39.

and macro-levels is relative to scale. Relalivizing the distinction implies that

20. Paul DiMaggio, 'Nadel's paradox revisited: relational and cultural aspects of
orga nizational structure', i n Networks and Organizations, p . 1 32 .
their third type of mechan ism, micro-micro, can be eliminated since a t any
given scale it reduces to the m icro-macro one at the immediately smaller scale.
2 1 . Jeffrey L. Pressman and A a ron Wildavsky, Implementation (Berkeley, CA:

And similarly for what we ma y term macro-macro mech nisms. When � University of C alifornia Press, 1 9 84), p . 92.

'macro' refers to 'total society' there i s no need to con sider the interactions 22. This ability t o operate across scales i s particularly s u rprising, given that both
between wholes. But once tbe distinction is relativized we do need to consider genetic a n d linguistic materials are 'more micro' than a ny of the entilies of

that wholes made out o f i n d ividual persons, such as interpersonal networks or which they form a parI. B ut Deleuze and Guanari see this 'molecularization'

institutional organizations, may interact with one another a s wholes. The 01 expressi oll a s predsely what gives genes and words their ability to

129
128
 A NEW P H i lOSOPHY OF SOCIETY
NOTES

produ('e more complex relations between the micro and the macro.
See 9. Ibid.. p . 308.
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 5 9 .
1 0. O n the effects of madness see ibid., p. 1 n.
2 3 . Peter L . B erger a n d Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality ( New I I . Ibid., p. 308.
York: A nchor Books. 1 967 ) . 1 2 . The most famous critique 01 the combinatorial poverty of associationism is
Jerry A. Fodor and Zenon W. Pylyshyn, 'Connectionism and cognitive
Chapter 3 architecture: a critical analysis', in John Haugeland (ed . ) , Mind Des(qn II.
Philosophy, Psychology and ArtiJicial Intelligence (Ca mbridge, MA: MIT Press,
I . 'All the perceptions of the h u m a n mind resolve themselves into two kinds,
1 99 7 ) , pp. 309-50.
which I shall call IMPRESSION S and I D E A S . The difference betwixt them
For a discussion of recent associationist extensions that may compensate
consists in the degrees of force and liveliness with which they strike u po
n
for this poverty see William Bechtel and Adele Abrahamsen, Connectionism
the mind. and make their way into our thought a n d consciousness. Those
and the Mind. An Introduction to Parallel Distributed Processing in Networks
perceptions, which enter with the most force and violence, we may n a me
(Ca mbridge, MA, and Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1 99 1 ), pp. 1 0 1 -2; Andy
impressions; and under this name I comprehend all our sensations, passions
Clark, Microcognition. Philosophy, Cognitive Science, and Parallel Distributed
and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the souL By ideas I
Processing (Ca mbridge, MA: MIT Press, 1 990), pp. 1 4 3-5 1 .
mean the faint images of these in thinking a n d reasoning . . .' ( David Hume,
1 3 . A theory of grammar that meets both the combinatorial productivity
A Treatise of Human Nature [London: Penguin, 1 969J, p. 49. [emphasis in
the
requ irement as well as the evolutionary one is Zellig Harris, A Theory of
origina l ] )
LanHuage and lnformation: A Mathematical Approach (Oxford: Clarendon Press.
2 . Ibid" p . 4 6 2 .
1 98 I ) . I give a fully evolutionary h istory of real languages a nd dialects,
3 . Hume, in fac!, makes a distinction between relations which m a y change
based on Zellig Harris's ideas, in Manuel DeLanda, A Thousand Years of
without changing the related ideas (contiguity, identity, causality) a n d those
Nonlinear History (New York: Zone Books, 1 9 ( 7 ) , Ch. 3.
in which this is not the case ( resemblance, contrariety, degrees of quality
1 4 . Hume, A Treatise af Human Nature, p . 1 44. A belief 'can only bestow on our
and p roportions of quantity) (ibid., pp. I l 7-1 8 ) . This would seem to
ideas an additional force or vivacity'.
contradict the statement that all links between ideas are relations of
J 5. Ibid., p. 1 46.
exteriority. Yel, a s Deleuze argues, this is not so. The four relations which do
1 6 . Ervin Goffman, Interaction Ritual. Essays on Face-ta-Face Behaviour (New York:
seem to depend on ideas imply a comparison, that is, an operation which is
Pantheon Books, 1 9 6 7 ) , p . I (my italics ) .
exterior to the ideas being compared. See Gilles Deleuze, Empiricism and
1 7 . Ibid .. p. 1 9 .
Subjectivity (New York: Columbia University Press. 1 99 1 ) , pp. 99- 1 0 1 .
1 8 . Ibid .. p . 1 0 3 .
4 . Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, p . 6 0 .
1 9 . Ibid., p . 34.
S . As Deleuze puts it:
20. Ibid., p . 1 03 .
. . . i f the principles of association explain that ideas are associated, only
2 1 . Analytical philosophers, f o r decades infatuated w i t h s y n t a x and semantics,
the principles of the passions can explain that a particular idea, rather
afe beginning to t u rn around and include this pragmatic dimension. Thus.
than another, is associated at a given moment . . . Everything takes place
Ian Hacking, in his analysis of the term 'social (onstruction', deliberately
as if the principles of a ssociation provided the subject with its ne('essary
resists asking the question 'what is its semantic content?' and asks instead
form, whereas the principles of the passions provided i t with its singular
'what is its point?' (i.e. what is its significance?) See Ian Hacking, The Sodal
content. ( Deleuze, Empiricism and Subjectivity, pp. 1 0 3-4 )
Construction of What? ( C a mbridge, MA: Harvard U niversity Press, 2000 ) , p. 5 .
6 . Ibid., p . 98. Deleuze is here contrasting an ' assemblage or collection' with a
An argu ment t h a t queslions o f significance a r e not the same as questions
'system'. This is similar to the contrast he draws in his latter work between
of significatioll can be found i n Denis C. Phillips, Philosophy, Science, and Sodal
'assemblages' and 'strata'. As I argued in Chapter I, I prefer to deal with this
lnquiry (Oxford: Pergamon Press. 1 98 7 ) . p. 1 09 .
contrast not as a dichotomy between two types but as a third dimension
2 2 . Goffman. Interaction Ritual, pp. 1 62-4.
characterizing assemblages, with highly coded assemblages being 'strata'
2 3 . Ibid .• pp. 2 1 8- 1 9 .
7. Hume, A Treatise of Human Natu re, p. 3 2 7 .
24. John Scott, Social Network Analysis (London: Sage Publications. 2000 ) , pp. 1 1 ,
8 . Ibid., p . 5 I .
3 1 and 7 5 .

130 131
 \1
I

A N E W P H I L O S O P H Y OF S O C I E T Y NOTES

2 5 . Ibid . . pp. 70-7 3. 43. N o general population larger t ha n a local community ever maintains a
26. Ibid . , p. 1 2. coherent system of stratificatio n i n a strong sense of the word; even the
27. Ibid., p. 79. See also Graham Crow. Social Solidarities ( B uckingham: Open so-called caste systems of India accommod ated great variation in rank
U niversity Press. 2002), pp. 52-3. orders from village to village. In general. rank orders remain incon­
28. Crow. Social Solidarities. pp. I J 9-20. sistent, apparent strata contain considerab le heterogene ity, and mobility
2 9 . On local dialects as badges of identity see William Labov. 'The social setting blurs dividing lines. (Ibid., pp. 28-9)
of linguistic change'. in Sociolinguistic Patterns (Philadelphia, PN: University of 44. The idea of difference, or gap, is at the basis of the very notion of space,
to one
Pennsylvania Press. 1 97 2 ) . p. 27 1 . that is, a set of distinct and coexisting positions which are e x terior
their
30. Crow. Social Solidarities, pp. 1 28-9. another and which are defined in relation to one another through
3 1 . Ibid., pp. 86-8. mutual exteriority and their relations of proximity, vicinity. or
distance, as
32. Charles Tilly. Stories. Identities. and Political Change (Lanham. MD: Rowman & well as through relations of order. such as above, below, or between.
Littlefield. 2002). pp. 2 8-9. Certain properties of members of the petit-bourgeoise can, for example,
position
3 3 . Charles Tilly. Durable Inequality ( Berkeley. CA: U niversity of California Press, be deduced from the fact that they occupy an intermedi ate
1 999). p. 66. being objectively identifiabl e or
between two extreme positions, without
34. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatlari. Anti-Oedipus (Minneapolis. MN: University subjective ly identified with one or the other position . (Pierre Bourdieu,
of Minnesota Press ), pp. 1 47, J 5 5 . Practical Reason ( lStandlord, 1 998]. CA: Stanford U niversity
Press, p. 6
3 5 . Tilly. Stories, Identities. and Political Change. p. J 2. Tilly is perhaps the most [emphasis in the original])
1 990), p. 54
coherent advocate of realism in social theory today although his fear of 4 5 . Pierre B o urdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridg e: Polity Press,
essences has made him espouse a rather watered-down version of it. He (my italics ) .
assemblag e
declares himself to be a 'relational realist'. tha t is, someone who believes in 4 6 . Ibid., p . 5 5 . A more generous reading o f t h e habitus, along
t h e mind- independent e xistence of relations but not of the entities that lines. would be as the topologica l diagram of the set of habits and
theory
of the
enter into relations. although he grudgingly acknowledges the existence of routines that make u p individua l persons, that is, a s the structure
h uman beings with physiological needs. Enduring entities, in his account. space of possibilitie s for different combinati ons of habits a n d skills.
which gives
presuppose essences a n d arc thus less worthy of commitment. As he puIS it, 47. 'So far as the social world is concerne d, the nco-Kant ian theory,
symbolic
social explanations can be either in terms of essences or in terms of bonds. language and. more generally, representa tions a specificall y
See Tilly. Durable Inequality, p. 45. on of reality, is perfectly justified. By structurin g
efficacy in the constructi
of naming
B u t . first of aU, a commitment to entities need n o t involve essences a t all if the perception that social agents have of the social world. the act
and
the entities are accounted for by the historical process that produced them. helps to estahlish the structure of this world' ( Pierre Bourdieu, Language
Secondly, although social interaction is indeed relational. i n the sense that [Cambrid ge: Harvard U niversity Press, 1 99 11 , p. 1 0 5 ) .
Symbolic Power
the capacities exercised by the social actors are not reducible to the actors' 4 8 . Tilly, Durable Inequality. p . 76.
defining properties, capacities do depend on the existence of these enduring 49. Ibid .. p. 36.
properties, and thus. on the existence of enduring entities. Finally. to
subordinate entities to relations comes dangerously close to a commitment
Chapter 4
10 relations of interiority, that is, to wholes in which the pans are
J . Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New
York: Free
constituted b y the very relations which yield the whole.
36. Ibid., p. 90. Press of Glencoe, 1 964). p. B I.
37. Ibid., p. 54. 2. Ibid., pp. 32 8-- 3 6.
38. Ibid., p. 89. 3 . Ibid .. p. 348.
39. Ibid., pp. 1 06-7. 4. Ibid .. p. 3 5 9.
the very 'belief in
40. Ibid., pp. 52-3. 5. As Weber puts it, even in the most rational b u reau cracy
to be establishe d and habitual and this means i t is panly
4 1 . Ibid., pp. 1 0 5-6. legality comes
42 . Tilly. Stories. Identities. and Political ChanHe. J 02-3. traditiona l' (ibid .. p . 382 ) .

132 133
 A NEW P H I L O S OPHY OF S O C I E T Y N O TES

6. James S . Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory (C ambridge, MA: Belknap
Press, 2000) , p. 66.
7. A sick worker must be treated by a doctor using accepted medical
procedures; whether the worker is treated effectively is less important. A
b u s company must service required routes whether or not there are
many passengers. A university must maintain appropriate departments
independent of the departments' enrollment. Activity, that is, has ritual
significance: it maintains a ppearances and validates an organization.
(John W. Meyer and Brian Rowan, 'Institutionalized organizations :
formal structure as myth and ceremony', in Walter W. Powell a n d Paul J .
MiMaggio [eds], The New Institutionalism i n Organizational Analysis
[ Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1 9 9 1 J , p. 5 5 )
8. W. Richard Scott a n d John W. Meyer, 'The organization o f societal sectors:
propositions and early evidence', in Powell and DiMaggio (eds), The New
Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, p. 1 24. Valuable as this nco·
institutional work in sodology may be i t is fatally flawed in one sense: it
relies on social constructivism and its idealist ontology. Hence, despite the
apparent recognition that there are real technical questions involved i n the
operation of some organizations, ultimately what 'counts as technical' is j us t
a mere convention, that i s , a matter o f definition, a n assertion which makes
the distinction between technical and eerernonial factors useless.
9. Michel Foucau It, Discipline and Punish . The Birth of Prison (New York: Vintage
Books, 1 9 79), p. 1 69.
1 0 . Ibid., p. 1 7 1 .
I I . Ibid., p. 1 5 3.
12. Ibid., pp. 1 95-6.
1 3 . Ibid., pp. 1 9 1 -2 .
1 4. Ibid., p . 1 90.
1 5 . Weber, The Theory of Sodal and Economic Organization, p. '36 3 .
1 6 . In Deleuze's application of assemblage analysis t o Foucault's work he
singles out the b uildings of hospitals a n d prisons as the material components
(or as the ' form of content') and the discourses of medicine or criminology a s
t h e expressive components ( o r the 'form of expression' ) . See Gilles Deleuze,
Foucault ( Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1 9 88), p. 62.
1 7 . Jeffrey Pfeffer and Gerald R . Salancik, The External Control of Organizations. A
Resource Dependence Perspective ( Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
2 00 3 ) , p. 46.
1 8. Ibid" pp. 48-50.
19. Ibid., p. 5 1 . Despite these useful insights there is a major shortcoming to the
theory of resource dependence. The authors' reliance on social constructi­
vism to think about the way in which an organization (or rather, its
a d ministrative staff) 'perceives' its relations with other organizations leads
them to the idealist conclusion that an organization's environment is created
by those relations to which it actually pays attention. As they p u t it: 'Noting
that an organization's environment is enacted, or created b y attentional
processes, tends to shift the focus from characteristics of the objective
environment to characteristics of the dedsion process by which organiza­
tions select and ignore information' (ibid., p. 74). But why would anyone
want to shift attention away from the objective distribution of opportunities
and risks that an environment affords an organization? It is onl y by
preserving the distinction between real opportunities to acquire resources
(or real risks of losing a u tonomy) and the awareness that an organization
may or may not have of them, that one can speak of 'missed opportunities'
(or of ' u nderestimated risks') and of the effects that such mistaken
evaluations may have on an organization's ability to cope with real
dependencies. The notion of an 'enacted environment' is, in fact, quite
useless, but the fact that the sodal constructivist part of the theory of
resource dependence can be so easily separated from the rest shows that its
role is mostly ceremoni a l rather than technical.
20. Ibid" Ch. 6.
2 1 . Walter W. Powell, 'Neither market nor Hierarchy. Network forms of
organization', in Michael Handel (cd.), The Sociology of Organizations
(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 200 3 ) , p. 326.
22. John R. M unkirs a n d James L S t urgeon, ' O ligopolistic cooperation:
conceptual and empirical evidence of market structure evolUlion', in Marc
R. Tool and Warren J. Samuels ( e d s ) , The Economy as a System of Power (New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press, 1 989).
2 3 . Paul M . Hohenberg and Lynn Hollen Lees, The Making of Urban Europe 1 000-
1 950 (Cambridge, MA: Ha rvard University Press, 1 985), p. 202.
24. Michael Best, The New Competition ( Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1 990), pp. 1 4- 1 5 .
2 5 . Ibid., p. 205.
26. Annalee Saxcnian, Regional Advantage. Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley
and Route 128 ( Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1 996), pp. 2-3.
27. Pfeffer and Salandk. The External Control of Organizations, pp. 94-5.
28. Best, The New Competition, pp. 239-40.
29. Howard T. Odum and Elizabeth C. Odum, Energy Basis for Man and Nature
(New York: McGraw-HilL 1 98 1 ), p. 4 1 .
3 0 . Saxenian, Regional A dvantage, pp. 34-6.
3 1 . Pfeffer a n d Salandk, The External Control of Oman izations, pp. 1 78-9.
U. Walter W. Powell and Paul J. DiMaggio 'The iron cage revisited: institutional
isomorphism and collective rationality i n organizational fields', in Powell
and DiMaggio (eds), The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, pp.
7 1 -2.

134 135
 A N E W P H I L O S O P H Y O F S O C I ETY N OT E S

3 3 . Michael T . Hannan a n d John Freeman, Or,qanizational Ecolo,qy ( C a mbridge, 50. David Sanders, Patterns of Political Instability (London: Macmillan. 1 98 1 ), pp.
MA: Harvard University Press, 1 98 9 ) , p. 66. 5 - 1 0.
34. Oliver E. Williamson, 'Transaction cost economics and orga nization theory', 51. While some discrepancy between statutory objectives and policy
in Oliver E. Williamson ( ed . ) , Or,qanization Theory (New York: Oxford dedsions is almost inevitable (il for n o other reason than disagreements
University Press, 1 99 5 ) , p. 2 2 3 . about how general rules apply to specific cases), such differences can be
3 5 . Oliver E. Williamson, 'Chester B arnard and t h e incipient science of reduced if the statute stipulates unambiguous objectives, assigns
organization', ibid., p. 1 96 . implementation to sympathetic a gencies who will give i t high priority,
T h e focus of neo-institutional economists is a t times too narrow ( the only minimizes the number of veto points and provides sufficient incentives
choice being between making or buying, or hetween internal hi(�rarchies (such as subsidies or compensatory changes in unrelated policies) to
and external markets) so it does not cover all the possible resource overcome recalcitrant officials, provides sufficient financial resources t o
interdependencies that may arise. In particular, division of labour among conduct the technical analyses a n d process individual cases, and biases
organizations of similar size ( t h a t is, in the absence o f clear-cut domination the decision rules and access points in favour of programme objedives.
by a much larger firm) may lead to specialization on products or activities ( Mazmanian and Sahatier, Implementation and Public Polity, p. 3 6 )
which are dissimilar but closely complementary. This, in turn, presents firms 5 2 . Douglass C. North. Institutions, Institutional Chan,qe and Bconomic Performance
with another choice, not to make or b u y b u t to make or cooperate, The ( New York: Cambridge University Press, 1 99 5 ) , pp. 1 20-3 1 .
resulting interdependencies may lead to all iances or partnerships based on 53 . Tilly. Stories, Identities, and Political Chan,qe, p . 1 29 .
contracts for the transfer, exchange or pooling of technologies, standards 5 4 . T.K. Oommen, Citizenship. Nationality, and Ethnicity ( C a mbridge: Polity Press,
and even personnel. See G . B . Richardson, The organization of industry', in 1 997 ) . See p. 34 for the difference between state-led and state-seeking
Peter J. B u ckley and Jonathan Michie (eds ) . Firms, Or,qanizations and nationalisms and pp. 1 3 5-45 for mixtures in concrete cases.
Contracts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2 00 1 ). pp. 59-63. 5 5 . Charles Tilly, Bi,q Structures, Lar,qe Processes, Hu,qe Comparisons (New York:
36. Terry M. Moe, 'The politics of structural choice: toward a theory ot public Russell Sage Foundation, 1 984), pp. 1 03 - 1 1 .
bureaucracy', i n Or,qanizmion Theory, p. 1 2 5 .
3 7 . Best. The New Competition, p . 82 .
Chapter 5
38. Jeffrey L. Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky, Implementation (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1 984). Ch. 5 . I . Robert E. Park, The city: suggestions for investigation of h uman behaviour
3 9 . Daniel A. Mazmanian a n d Paul A . Sabatier, Implementation and Public Policy i n the urhan environment', i n Robert E . Park and Ernest W . B u rgess (eds) ,

(Lanham, MD: U niversity Press of America, 1 989 ), p. 9 . The City (Chicago, l L : University o f C h i cago Press, 1 984). p p . 4-{i.

4 0 . B, D a n W o o d and Richard W. Waterman, Bureaucratic Dynamics ( B oulder. 2. Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society ( Berkeley, C A : University of

CO: Westview Press, 1 994) . pp. 22-30, C alifornia Press, 1 98 6 ) , pp. 1 1 8- 1 9. Giddens' treatment of regionalized

4 1 . Pfeffer and Salancik, The External Control of Or,qanizations, pp. 2 1 0- 1 1 . locales is similar t o Deleuze and Guattari's concept of a territory: a concept

42 . Charles Tilly, Stories. Identities. and Political Chan,qe (Lanham, MD: Rowman & they develop in relation to animal territories hu t that is not confined to this

Littlefield, 2002 ), p. 1 3. example. To see the parallel, we must add t o Giddens' definition in terms of

4 3 . Hannu Nurmi. Comparin,q Votin,q Systems (Dordrecht: D. Reidel. 1 987 ) . pp. 2-3. rhythmic or periodiC routines the expressive marking of boundaries. A

44. James O. Freedman, Crisis and LelJitimacy. The Administrative Process and territory is. in this sense, 'an act of rhythm t h a t has become expressive'

American Government ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1 97 8 ) . pp. C1. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus ( Mi nneapolis,

1 6- 1 9. MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1 98 7 ) , p. 3 1 5 . Actually, there are three

4 5 . Ibid., pp. 44-6. elements in the definition of a territorial assemblage. One needs ' a block of

46. Ibid., pp. 1 2 9-30 and 1 6 1-76. space-time constituted b y the periodic repetition of [aj component' (ibid .. p.

47. Wood and Waterman. Bureaucratic Dynamics pp. 3 3-7. 3 B) made into a territory b y marking its houndaries. drawing 'a circle

48. Ibid., p. 1 44 . around that uncertain a n d fragile centre. to organize a limited space' ( ibid.,

4 9 . R o lf Torstendahl, Bureaucratization i n Northwestern Burope, 1880- 1 985 p . 3 1 1 ) . And. i n addition to rhythm and boundary, there must be the

(London: Routledge. 1 99 1 ) , p p . 203- 1 6. possihility o f opening u p the circle, of venturing a w a y from home through a

136 137
 A N E W P H I LOSO PH Y OF SOCI E T Y NOT E S

gap i n the border. This, o f course, corresponds t o the processes of Economy. Cilies, Re.qions, and Internalional Trade ( C ambridge, M A : M I T Press,
deterritorialization which can open up a n a ssemblage to future possibilities 1 99 9 ) . p. 4, See also Peter M. Allen, Cities and Regions as Self-Organizing
or even change its identity. Systems (Amsterdam: Gordon & Breach, 1 9 9 7 ) . p. 2 7 .
3. Fernand Braudel, The Structures oj Everyday LiJe ( B erkeley, CA: University o f 2 7 . Vance Jr, The Continuing City, p . 3 7 3 .
California Press, 1 992 ) , p . 2 6 7 . 2 8 . Deleuze and Guattari v i e w rhythmically repealed motifs and t h e counter­
4 , James E . Va nee Jr , The Continuing City. Urban Morphology i n Western Civilization points they create with the external milieu a s the two ways in which
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1 99 0 ) , pp, 24-5. expressive components self-organize in territorial assemblages, including
5. Braudel. The Structures oj Everyday LiJe, p . 308. animal assemblages, transforming what was mere signature into a style. See
6. Vance Jr, The Continuing City, p. 4 1 6. De\euze and G ualtari, A Thousand Plateaus, p . 3 1 7 .
7. Ibid., p. 378. 2 9 . Spiro Kostoff. The City Shaped. Urban Patterns and Meanings throughout History
8. Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life, p . 3 1 0 . (London: B u llfinch Press. 1 99 1 ) , pp. 284- 5 .
9. Ibid., p. 3 1 7 . 3 0. Vance J r , The Continuing City, p . 5 6 .
1 0. Ibid., p. 324. 3 1 . Braude!, The Structures of Everyday LiJe, p. 5 1 2 .
I I . Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish. The Birth of Prison (New York: Vintage 3 2 . Vance Jr, The Continuing City, pp. 5 0 2-4.
Books, 1 97 9 ) , p . 1 7 2. 3 3 . Hohenberg and Hollen Lees, The Making of Urban Europe, pp. 20-23 (for the
12. Giddens, The Constitution Of Society, p . 1 5 2 . period between the years 1 00 0 a nd 1 30 0 ) ; pp. 1 06-7 ( 1 5 0 0- 1 80 0 ) ; a nd pp.
1 3. Vance Jr, The ContinuinH City, p. 1 7 5 . 2 1 7-220 ( 1 80 0- 1 90 0 ) .
1 4. Ibid., pp. 1 20 a n d 1 84-5. 'The central morphological truth learned i n the 3 4 . Fujita e t aI., The Spatial Economy, p . 34.
bastides was t h a t inter accessible and proportionate layout o f the town is one 35. Allen, Cities and Re,q ions as Self-Organizing Systems, p. 5 3 .
of the more concrete expressions of functional equality. and a strong 3 6 . Hohenberg and Hollen Lees. The Making Of Urban Europe, pp. 5 1-4.
bulwark in its defense' (ibid .. p. 200 ) . 3 7 . Ibid., p. 240.
1 5. lhid" pp. 36-7. 3 8 . Fernand Braude!, The Perspective Of the World (New York: H a rper & Row,
1 6. A s the economist Thomas Shelling has shown, the dynamicS behind these 1 979), pp. 27-3 1 .
processes are those of people responding to a n environment which consists 3 9 . Hohenberg and Hollen Lees, The MakinH of Urban Europe, p . 6 6 .
0\ people responding to each other: given a group of people's preferences to 40. Braudel, The Perspective of the World, p p . 30-3 1 .
live i n proximity to similar groups, each decision made to move into or out 4 1 . Hohenberg and Hollen Lees, The Making of Urban Europe, p . 6.
of a neighbourhood will change the neighbourhood itself, in fluencing the 4 2 . Ibid" p . 2 8 1 .
future decisions of current residents and o f people wanting residence there. 4 3 . Paul Ken nedy. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Economic Chan,qe and
See Thomas C . Schelling. Micromotives and Macrobehaviour (New York: Military Conflictfrom 1 500 to 2000 (New York: Random HOllse, 1 987), pp. 70-
Norton, 1 97 8 ) . eh. 4. 71.
1 7. Robert E . Park, The city', ill Park and B u rgess, The City, p. 9. 44. J. Craig Barker, Intentational Law and International Relations ( London:
1 8. Vallee Jr, The Continuing City, p. 3 1 6 . Continuum, 2000), pp. 5-8. For the five-year negotiation period see
1 9 . Ernest W . B u rgess, 'The growth of the city', i n Park a n d B u rgess, The City, p . Geoffrey Parker. The Thirty Years ' War (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
5 0. 1 98 7 ) , pp. 1 70-78 .
20. Paul M. Hohenberg and Lynn Hollen Lees. The Making of Urban Europe 1 000- 4 5 . Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, p . 86 (emphasis in t h e
1 950 ( C ambridge. MA: Harvard University Press, 1 9 8 5 ) . p. 299. original ) .
2 1 . Vance Jr. The Continuing City, p . 409. 4 6 . Fernand Braudel, The Wheels oj Commerce (New York: Harper & Row. 1 97 9 ) ,
2 2 . Ibid., pp. 4 1 2- 1 3. pp. 544-5.
2 3 . Ibid., pp. 74-7. 47. Ibid., p. 5 2 5 (my emphasis) .
24. B raude!, Th e Structures of Everyday Life, pp. 484-9. 48. Bramlet The Structures of Everyday Life. p . 5 2 7 .
2 5 . Ibid., p. 486. 4 9 . Hohenberg and Hollen Lees, The MakinH of Urban Europe, p . 2 4 2 .
2 6 . Masahisa Fujita. Paul Krugman and Amho n y J. Venables, The Spatial 5 0 . Kostoff. The City Shaped, p p . 2 1 1 - 1 5 .

138 139
 A N E W P H I LO S O P H Y O F S O C I E T Y

5 1 . Ibid . . p. 2 1 7.
10
5 2 . I attempted synthesize a l l ava ilable materials on the political h i s t ory of
In dex
languages a n d dialects in Manuel DeLanda, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear
History (New York: Zone Books, 1 99 7 ) , Ch. 3 .
5 3 . C h ristopher D uffy, The Fortress in the Age of Vauban and Frederick the Great
( London: Routledge & Kegan P a u l , 1 98 5 ) , p. 87.
5 4 . Peter J . Taylor. Polilical Geography (New York: Longman, 1 98 5 ), p p . 1 1 3- 1 5 .
5 5 . B ra u d!'l introduced the term 'world-economy' to discuss t h e Mediterranean
as a coherent economic area in Femand Braude!, The Mediterranean. And the
Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, Vol. I . ( B erkeley. CA: University of
C alifornia Press. 1 99 5 ) , p . 4 1 9 . Braudel attributes the original concept to two
German scholars in Brau deL The Perspective of the World. p. 6 3 4, n. 4.
5 6 . Immanuel Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis. An introduction ( Durham, N C :
D u k e University Press, 20(4), p p . 1 1 - 1 7 .
5 7 . I b i d . . p . 1 6 . Wallerstein's macro-red uctionism derives directly from h i s use
of Hege l i an IOt a l ities to conceptu a lize l a rge-scale social entities. See Ari,totle 26-9 Conversations 1 2, 1 6 , 3 3. 52-5, 87

Immanuel Wal lerstein, The Capitalist World-Economy ( Cambridge: Cambridge Assemblage

University Press. 1 99 3 ) , p. 4. CodinglDecoding 1 5- 1 6. 1 9, 28, 59, 67. Veleuze, Gilles 3-4, 1 0- 1 L 1 4, 47. 49

91
58. Braudel. The Wheels of Commerce, p . 4 5 8 .
Diagram 3 1 . 1 2 5 (1 6) Emergence 4, 6. 1 0, 1 4, 1 7, 3 2 . 34, 38-9.

Expressive Components 1 2. 1 6, 2 2 , 50, 47, 5 7 , 70, 1 08 , 1 2 9 ( 1 1 9 )

54-5, 5 7 . 60, 70- 1 . 88-9, 92, 97-8, Enforcement 6 5 , 68, 72. 80, 84, 89

1 00, 1 0 5-6. 1 1 5- 1 6 Essence 4. 26- 3 L 4 5, 48, n2 (I 35)

Material Components 1 2, 22. 49- 50, Explanat ion:

5 3-4, 5 7 , 60- 1 . 72-3, 8 1 . 89. 9 1 · 2 , by Causes 1 9-24, 3 1 . 36-4 1

95-7, 99, I D S , 1 1 0, 1 1 4-1 5 by Reasons and Motives 22-4, 39-40,

Terri rorialization I 49, 57. 64, 95

Deterri torialization 1 2 , 1 6, 1 9. 28, by To pol ogica l Comtraints 31

50, 54-5, 58, 6 1-2, 67. 73-4, 8 1 -3,

89-90, 92 3, 98-9. 1 0 1 - 3, 1 06-7, Foucault, Michel 72-3, 7 5 , 99

1 1 6- 1 8

Theory 3-S. 1 0- 1 9, 2 1 , 28. 30. Giddens, Anthony 5 , 9- 1 0. 94-5, 99

3'1-4, 38-40, 1 2 1 ( f 9, 1 0) , 1 2 2 ( ( 1 3 ) . GoHma n, Erving 5 , 5 2 - 5, 1 1 9

1 2 3 ( f 2 1 ) , 1 30 ( 1 6 ) Government 3 3· 4 , 3 6 , 59, 67, 84-93,

113

Bourdieu. Pierre 63-6

B raude!. Fernand 1 7- 1 8, 9 5 -7, 1 06, 1 1 0, Hacking. Ia n 2

1 1 4- 1 5 , 1 1 8 Hegel. G. W . F. '1- 1 0

Bunge. M,lrio 1 0, 20-1 lIume, David 47-5 1

Capacities 7 , 1 0- 1 1 . 1 2. 1 7 , 29, 3 5, 3 7-8, Identity 4. 1 0. 1 2 . 1 4· 1 5, 26, 28. 3 3 ,

75, 89 48-50, 54, 5 '1, 87. 89-90. 1 02-3, 1 06,

Cities 5 , 34, 37 9, 4 1 . 94, \ 0 3- 1 2 , 1 1 5- 1 6 1 16

Colt-man, James 70 Implementation 43, 8 1 . 85

141
140
 INDEX

Institutional Organizations 5-6, 1 2- 1 3, of Interiority 9-1 1 . 1 6, 1 8, 20, 45, 1 32

1 5, 33-5, 37-9, 4 1 ··4, 66, 68-75, 77-9, if 3 5 )
83-4, 88-90, 1 1 3- 1 4 o f Part-to-Whole 1 5, 27, 30, 33-40
Intensity 7, 48, 5 2 , 5 3, 5 5, 5 6 , 1 07
Interpersonal Networks 5-6, 1 2-13, 33-5, Resources 34-6, 42, 63-5, 70, 76·-8, 1 04,
43--4, 56-9, 66 1 08

Kennedy, Paul 1 1 2- 1 3 Seamless Web 4, 9- 10, 1 9, 2 1

Significance 22-3, 5 5, 62, 80
Language 2-3, 1 2, 14-16, 23, 44, 5 1 , 5 5, Singularities:
58, 62, 66, 74-5, 8 [ , 83, 9 1 . 1 1 6, 1 22 Individual 27-8, '10- 1 . 40, 48
if 1 4) Universal 29-3 1 . 40
Legitimacy 1 3, 68-7 1 , 84, 86, 88-9 Social Classes 62-7
Social Construction 3- -4, 45, 62, 66, 1 33
Markets 1 7- 1 8, 30, 32, 3 6, l l S (f 47), ) 34 (f 8, 1 9 )
Micro-Macro Problem 4-6, 17, 32, 1 27 Social Movements 3 3-4, 36, 59-62
if I l l . 1 2 8 if 13) Solidarity 1 3, 57, 8 0
S u bjectivity 32-3, 47-52
Ontology 1 -2, 7, 28, 40, 1 26 (f 7)
Temporality 40-4
Populations 1 6- 1 7, 2 1 . 24-5, 34, 39, 4 J , Territorial State 93, 1 1 1 - 1 3, 1 1 4- 1 8
59, 7 5 , 99, 1 07 Tilly, Charles 5, 58-63, 66, 87, 9 2
Propenies 6-7, 1 0- 1 1 . 1 7, 27-9, 37, 56, 76
Vance, James 9 7 , 1 00-1
RelatiOns
of Exteriority 1 0-1 I, 1 6, 1 8 , 45, 47-8, Weber. Max 5, 22·-4, 30, 68-9, 74, 88,
53, 56, 59, 63, 75-6 n

142