What is argued on Mondays, week by week, and the paper each lecture argues with.
Lectures#
Mondays. Each lecture sets up the paper you were asked to read and then disagrees with some part of it, which is why the reading comes first — an argument you have not heard the other side of is just a lecture.
Every week names its reading and says what the reading is for. Week 1 carries slides; the rest are talked.
The eight rules
Oldenburg's eight characteristics of a third place, and the argument that a life needs three settings rather than two.
Week 1 · 22 February 2027
Why we need anywhere at all
Belonging as a fundamental motivation rather than a preference, and what Baumeister and Leary's two conditions demand of a place.
Week 2 · 1 March 2027
Being unwelcome
Ostracism, the four needs it threatens, and the fact that Oldenburg's eight rules never mention who is kept out.
Week 3 · 8 March 2027
The counter
Social identity theory, and how "I drink there" becomes "I am one of the people who drinks there".
Week 4 · 15 March 2027
The chair
Anderson's cosmopolitan canopy, and the third places where you are a captive audience and conversation is not optional.
Week 5 · 22 March 2027
People you don't really know
Weak ties, why they carry the information your friends cannot, and why third places are the machinery that produces them.
Week 6 · 5 April 2027
Involuntary places
The laundromat and the waiting room — settings nobody chooses, doing social work their users would never claim for them.
Week 7 · 12 April 2027
The collapse
Putnam's measurements of decline, the arguments about what caused it, and the harder question of how you would know.
Week 8 · 19 April 2027
The guild hall
Steinkuehler and Williams score an online game against Oldenburg's eight rules, and the places where the fit fails are the interesting ones.
Week 9 · 26 April 2027
The front porch that is a server
Belonging online when the room never closes and keeps a perfect transcript of itself.
Week 10 · 3 May 2027
What it costs
The mortality evidence, read properly — what the effect size means, and what a meta-analysis of observational studies cannot establish.
Week 11 · 10 May 2027
Designing the next good place
The last lecture. Four components of belonging, and what it takes to make a proposal rather than a wish.
Week 12 · 17 May 2027