Synopses & Reviews
The central argument of this book is that we need to abandon our state-centric approach to political understanding and learn to see like a city if we are to make sense of contemporary politics. Chapter 1 explains how urbanism works as governmentality, the term Michel Foucault introduced to describe the ways in which people are ruled through their freedom, rather than in opposition to it. Then, chapter 2, shows how a political ontology of urbanism as a way of life a the term is from Louis Wirth a challenges the dominant political ontology, one that James C. Scott has described as seeing like a state. Chapter 3, explores how ideas relevant to seeing like a city emerge from the work of Max Weber, the Chicago School sociologists (especially Louis Wirth), F. A. Hayek, Jane Jacobs, and Richard Sennett. Chapter 4 relates these ideas to the art of government that Michel Foucault explained. Chapter 5, re-poses these insights in relation to the dominant traditions of political theory and social science, traditions that (argue) are keyed to a statist political ontology. Chapter 6 explores the problem of understanding politics in relation to the oikos or home of humanity, considered ecologically or economically. Chapter 7 extends the argument by relating it to the question of scale: challenge the claim that the scale on which we have to act politically is pre-determined economically, ecologically, or otherwise. Chapter 8, uses the ideas have developed to re-pose the problem of local self-government, a principle that claim is at the centre of liberal democratic theory, properly construed. And, the Conclusion, re-capitulates the main themes of the book in relation to the idea that the city or urbanism as a venue for politics is otherwise than sovereign.
Synopsis
To see like a city, rather than seeing like a state, is the key to understanding modern politics. In this book, Magnusson draws from theorists such as Weber, Wirth, Hayek, Jacobs, Sennett, and Foucault to articulate some of the ideas that we need to make sense of the city as a form of political order.
Locally and globally, the city exists by virtue of complicated patterns of government and self-government, prompted by proximate diversity. A multiplicity of authorities in different registers is typical. Sovereignty, although often claimed, is infinitely deferred. What emerges by virtue of self-organization is not susceptible to control by any central authority, and so we are impelled to engage politically in a world that does not match our expectations of sovereignty. How then are we are to engage realistically and creatively? We have to begin from where we are if we are to understand the possibilities.
Building on traditions of political and urban theory in order to advance a new interpretation of the role of cities/urbanism in contemporary political life, this work will be of great interest to scholars of political theory and urban theory, international relations theory and international relations.