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i agree--my starting point, when i try to open a field is: what are we trying to name when we use the term: globlaization, citizenship, the nationale, etc. The project i am developing now asks this about terms like "war" and "city." both are words deeply embedded in particular, albeit globally present, histories. Further, the current instances we have been describing here, resist the conventional meanings: so it is easy to use terms such as terrorism becasue this is a war that does not fit war as in word war 2 (though of course, there were lots of instances that fit into today's "terrorism" bit. Question then is whether these current situations are anomalous (which i think is the easiest way out of a problematic, and I resist going that way), or become heuristic (in the sense of producing knowledge about the terms themselves: war and city. saskia Saskia Sassen Robert S.Lynd Professor of Sociology Department of Sociology and Committee on Global Thought Columbia University 422 Fayerweather Hall 1180 Amsterdam Avenue New York, NY 10027 USA T - 212.854.0790 F - 212.854.2963 E/M - sjs2@columbia.edu http://www.columbia.edu/cu/sociology Quoting t byfield <tbyfield@panix.com>: > Interesting. > > It isn't hard to see how and why it's tempting to hypostatize concepts > like "war" and "city," but it'd be wise to treat each one skeptically, > and even more so in relation to each other. And one needn't reach very > far back in history at all to come up with absolute contrasts. These > contrasts have many origins: the actual and theorized relationships > between cities and their surroundings, the need for invading forces to > establish strongholds close enough to support command and logistics > needs, the various technical capacities of forces in conflict (of which > there are, as often as not, many), styles of warfare that are much more > complex than the simplistic dichotomy of a/symmetrical warfare, efforts > to manipulate media (regional, global, sympathetic, etc), and so on. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org