Cobre, estanho e chumbo em DeLanda (2019 [2006])

A second qualification is related to the first. I argued in the previous chapter that assemblages are always produced by processes that are recurrent and that this implies that they always exist in populations. Given a population of assemblages at any one scale, other processes can then generate larger-scale assemblages using members of this population as components. This statement is correct, but only if not taken to imply an actual historical sequence. Although for the original emergence of the very first organizations a pre-existing population of persons had to be available (not, of course, in a state of nature, but already linked into interpersonal networks) most newly born organizations tend to staff themselves with people from other pre-existing organizations. [Nota de rodapé 19: As the sociologist Anthony Giddens argues, unlike the components of a physical entity with emergent properties (such as bronze, a metallic alloy having properties that are more than the sum of the properties of its parts, copper, tin and sometimes lead), the parts of a social assemblage seldom come in pure form. It is easy to imagine the component parts of bronze as existing separately prior to their coming together and forming an alloy, ‘but human actors, as recognizable competent agents, do not exist in separation from one another as copper, tin, and lead do. They do not come together ex nihilo to form a new entity by their fusion or association’ (Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society [Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986], pp. 171–2). Giddens is thus correct in criticizing the limited concept of emergence that implies only to originary emergence. But he is wrong in thinking that giving up this conception implies surrendering the part-to-whole relation in favor of a seamless web. The example of bronze was used by Emile Durkheim to argue for the existence of social emergent properties. See Emile Hurkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method (New York: The Free Press, 1982), p. 39.] With very few exceptions, [40] organizations come into being in a world already populated by other organizations. Furthermore, while some parts must pre-exist the whole, others may be generated by the maintenance processes of an already existing whole: while cities are composed of populations of interpersonal networks and organizations, it is simply not the case that these populations had to be there prior to the emergence of a city. In fact, most networks and organizations come into being as parts of already existing cities. (DeLanda 2019 [2006]:39-40)

DELANDA, Manuel. 2019 [2006]. A new philosophy of society: assemblage theory and social complexity. London: Bloomsbury Academic.