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fortmis OP wrote

Unless cultural tendencies keep these urban forms within the carrying capacities of their landbase,

Can you elaborate here?

I couldn't think of one that could be ecologically sustained at a large size,

Your points on sustainability are interesting, but I think my use of the word might not have been precise, since I said "sustainably ungoverned" because we know it's possible for a city to be temporarily ungoverned, and I wanted to ask specifically about the possibility of a long-term ungovernability.

You need global trade and vast systems of exploitation to keep the thing running for a single day, let alone a single lifetime

Haha yepppppp

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mindforgedmanacles wrote

Can you elaborate here?

Absolutely, sorry for not providing more detail on what I was implying. As has been stated in other replies, places like Çatalhöyük might have only initially been inhabited for small parts of the year, putting less continual ecological strain on the landbase of those who lived there. Also, an urban area comprised of hundreds of bolos could potentially even out the strain on a specific area, even if the populations were sedentary. This is just me speaking in hypotheticals, of course.

Your points on sustainability are interesting, but I think my use of the word might not have been precise, since I said "sustainably ungoverned" because we know it's possible for a city to be temporarily ungoverned, and I wanted to ask specifically about the possibility of a long-term ungovernability.

Aye once again my apologies, I guess to ponder on the possibility of long-term ungovernability, perhaps ritual might play into it? It's questionable as to whether or not some sort of temporary "fluid" hierarchies (like what Graeber and Wengrow described in the Inuit) would be avoidable, but rituals, festivals, narratives and more could all urge people to cast out domination whenever it would attempt to rear its Leviathanic head.

I think of what Perlman talked about with the Potawatomi and their rituals to cast out Wiiske (a trickster deity who brought the double-edged sword of useful technologies and their potential for great ruin), or the ways that different "uncivilized" peoples use satire and mockery to keep those with pretenses to rule in check. That being said, all of these peoples mentioned lived (or continue to live) in societies with no more than several thousand people, and so in a context where the vast majority of people you interact with are strangers? I try not to buy into biological essentialism for most things, but Dunbar's Number really does seem to have a lot going for it.

Sorry if that didn't really answer anything you didn't already know of.

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fortmis OP wrote

rituals, festivals, narratives and more could all urge people to cast out domination whenever it would attempt to rear its Leviathanic head.

Pierre Clastres talks about this in his series of essays on native tribes in South America, such as the Yanomami... The collection is called Archeology of Violence. It's so so good.

and so in a context where the vast majority of people you interact with are strangers?

And yess exactly... I see this as being at the core of the problem with cities

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