PhilPaine.com

This, the sec­ond-last of Jane Jacobs books, con­tin­ues the “dia­logue” ini­ti­at­ed in Sys­tems of Sur­vival. The start­ing point of the con­ver­sa­tion is this prof­fered axiom: “human beings exist whol­ly with­in nature as part of the nat­ur­al order in every respect”. From here, Jacobs argues that ecosys­tems and economies should be con­cep­tu­al­ized in rough­ly the same way, and that the same prin­ci­ples of co-ordi­na­tion, inter­de­pen­dence, com­bi­na­tion, and re-com­bi­na­tion under­lie them. It is good, sol­id stuff — vin­tage Jacobs. Plen­ty of con­crete exam­ples are used to bring the abstract argu­ments down to earth.

I rec­om­mend that any­one engaged in any of the dis­ci­plines of the human­i­ties — his­to­ry, eco­nom­ics, pol­i­tics, archae­ol­o­gy, urbanol­o­gy, anthro­pol­o­gy, soci­ol­o­gy, phi­los­o­phy — should famil­iar­ize them­self with this remark­able wom­an’s work. She made major con­tri­bu­tions to all of these fields, and cre­at­ed a body of thought that tran­scends their boundaries.