ABSTRACT
In 2003 in the journal Urban Geography an article by the sociologist David R. Meyer was published. Meyer’s article amounts above all to an observation that theory on the global network of cities remains undeveloped. Meyer rightly observes that there is a ‘theoretical lacuna’ that needs to be addressed ‘if scholars are to make greater progress in understanding the global network of cities’ (2003:308). Meyer contends that we need to ‘deepen’ the theory of the global network of cities and so implies that we need to refine existing political-economic and world-systems approaches. However, my argument is somewhat different. This chapter further develops a line of argument (see Smith 2003a,b, 2005, 2006) that is moving away from, not deepening, political economy and worldsystems perspectives on the global network of cities. This chapter further develops the argument that one way to make progress in our theoretical and empirical research on urban networks is to engage with the ideas of Deleuze (and other poststructuralists), and the new philosophies of connection-inspired by Deleuze’s writings-of actornetwork theory (ANT) and non-representational theory.
