Search

This paper revisits Erving Goffman's Frame Analysis fifty years after its publication. The paper first situates this book within the context of its intellectual precursors, namely Georg Simmel's 1917 essay “Sociability,” Alfred Schutz's 1945 article “On Multiple Realities,” and Gregory Bateson's 1955 paper “A Theory of Play and Fantasy.” It then examines the book's three main themes, namely framing, keying, and disattention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the founders of sociology, it was Georg Simmel who provided the most thorough analysis and theory of space. This paper aims to reconstruct Simmel's spatial theory and his observations of spatial relations. The German sociologist engaged with spatiality in a threefold way. First, he tried to provide a systematic social theory of space; second, analyzing spatial relations was important for his diagnosis of modernity; third, he dealt with the subjective constitutions of space in his shorter, essayistic writings. This paper argues that the importance of the third strand for a sociological understanding of space has seldom been recognized in sociology. In addition, it also shows that despite the diversity in perspectives, there is an underlying coherence to Simmel's theory of space. As a result, it becomes evident that Simmel was not only ground-breaking in conceptualizing space from a sociological point of view, but that his theory of space continues to be inspirational and relevant to this day for interpreting the entanglement of social and spatial relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides, in the first part, a critical examination of the standard framing of the subjectivism vs objectivism dualism in the concept and practice of 'landscape character' (LC) and, in the second part, some philosophical suggestions for its improvement. After a brief overview of the emergence of the LC notion, partly in response to the modernist-aestheticist view of landscape, and of the mentioned dualism that this notion harbours, I will discuss some main problems associated with the currently dominant 'objectivist strain' in the framing of the dualism. Such problems have a common root, namely a narrow unexamined view of experience and the aesthetic dimension. In the constructive part, I will propose to reframe the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity on a pragmatist-aesthetic basis, drawing on Simmel's notion of landscape 'mood'. Finally, I will outline some implications and advantages of the suggested alternative over both the objectivist strain in the current discourse and the modernist-aestheticist paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of IDP: Revista de Internet, Derecho y Politica is the property of Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose -- The purpose of this paper is to show the relationship between food as a shared good (or public within the household) in the economic sense, and food as a shared meal in the sociological sense. Design/methodology/approach -- Quantitative data derived from a household budget survey (HBS) in Cyprus are used to set up questions to which answers are suggested using the qualitative approach of in-depth interviews. Findings -- The main finding is that the relatively high expenditure by elderly couples on food for home consumption may be explained by frequent inter-household, intra-extended family meals in Cyprus. Research limitations/implications -- The paper provides evidence that household expenditure on food may not be directly indicative of household consumption of food. Researchers interested in household consumption of food should therefore be aware of the differences between household and extended family and, where extended family continues to be significant, they should be wary of using data from HBSs to analyse food consumption. One limitation is that the results are derived from in-depth interviews with a purposive sample of nine households. It may be appropriate to replicate the study, either in Cyprus or in similar societies where extended family remains significant, at a larger scale. Practical implications -- The evidence that household expenditure may not be indicative of household consumption suggests that questions on social context of consumption should be included in HBSs. Originality/value -- This paper draws together, for the first time, economic ideas on expenditure on food derived from the quantitative research of Ernst Engel on one hand and implications of the theories of Georg Simmel on the sociology of the meal on the other. The paper shows that some issues arising from quantitative analysis of HBSs cannot be explained using data from that source; this is particularly so where consumption of food is inter-household. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Filosofía (00348236) is the property of Universidad de Chile, Facultad de Filosofia y Humanidades and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper aims to reconstruct the concept of alienation as a live topic for active social theorizing. Joining Marxian and Simmelian ideas, it provides a multi‐dimensional, formal, and synthetic theory of alienation. The paper develops a set of theoretical tools for articulating formal elements of action that make alienation possible, without giving conceptual priority to alienation in the sphere of production, or within that sphere to the alienation of labor. These tools make it possible to derive classical notions of alienation as specific, contingent combinations of multiple elements, theorizing them as concrete socio‐historical configurations of a broader universe of possibilities. They also organize systematic reflection on various forms and relations of alienation; not only those between for instance labor and capital, but also among all four factors of production: land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurship. The paper accordingly develops an original, multi‐dimensional theorization of alienation for a complex, pluralistic world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the notion of 'participation' as it has been used in the social sciences throughout the 20th century. It proposes that there are two main traditions of use – an 'individual' one, and a 'dividual' one – and it argues in favour of the latter. It does this by examining how Simmel and Goffman, on the one hand, and Lévy-Bruhl and Durkheim, on the other, defined participation. Developed by Lucien Lévy-Bruhl in the first part of the last century, 'participation' in the dividual sense is today being given new life by sociocultural anthropologists such as Marshall Sahlins and phenomenologically inclined cognitive scientists such as Shaun Gallagher. The paper addresses the roots of the concept in Scholastic theology and proposes to show how central it can come to be to a sociocultural anthropology that is willing to take on frontally the challenges presently being posed by embodied cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the secret society to pose questions about the politics, epistemology and ontology of organizing. Against assumptions of transparency, or the possibility of hermeneutic understanding, I suggest that much organizing is actually invisible and opaque. The paper begins with a consideration of the characteristics of historical and contemporary organizational conspiracies, and then moves on to elaborate what sort of ‘facts’ need to be claimed about a secret society to bring it into existence. After a section on the politics of contemporary organizational conspiracies, the paper concludes with some speculations on what the example of the secret society can tell us about the paranoia required by contemporary organizational researchers, as well as the ontology of organizations. After all, we have still never seen an organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some sociologists contributing to the foundations of relational sociology on the international stage have been recently remarking a kind of affinity between both notions of social relation and social life: they particularly refer to the pioneering views of Georg Simmel, who is largely mentioned and concerned in the following paper. The interaction among social subjects generates unexpected and emergent forms which sociologist must detect and inquiry: the interactive feature of any relation refers to the "content" of the social relation itself. Form and content stand for social life. This paper aims at addressing and deepening relational perspective, as regarded by Pierpaolo Donati, towards a Lebenssoziologie: in short, it hints to concern sensu strictissimo social relations as forms of social life. This lucky locution (i.e. Lebenssoziologie), adopted by Scott Lash more than ten years ago into a new interpretation of Simmel's social theory, concerns social life in terms of stream which fits with analysis on such themes as media and ICT. In this contribution, Donati's relational sociology is challenged and thematised in relation of a critical and relational Lebenssoziologie. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst loneliness may be receiving greater media and political attention, the tendency to present the issue as a discrete individual problem separable from wider social concerns has led to some frustration amongst the sociologically minded. The purpose of this paper is to provide a sociological account of loneliness which is not as susceptible to individualist interpretations as other works in the genre have been. As such the paper focuses on how the structure of a society, rather than its culture, might lead to loneliness. To this end, the paper makes original use of the works of Georg Simmel (1858–1918). Specifically, Simmel's account of how we come to know other people through synthetic construction is applied to his better‐known theory of intersecting social circles. The author claims that when taken together these two aspects of Simmel's thought suggest that social structure can create a form of social isolation in which people find it very difficult to get to know one another, due to a lack of multiple‐context interactions with the same people during their day‐to‐day behavioural patterns. This clustering of interactions within narrow interlocuter‐contexts is hypothesised to account for a portion of the variability in loneliness across individuals, societies and historical time, and is provisionally named as structural loneliness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that the practices of stereoscopic photography throughout the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century can be interpreted as technological answers to many of the questions raised by the theories of art regarding the landscape genre, such as immersion, volume, scale, and subjectivity. However, it was not a direct influence, since stereoscopic photography was perceived as part of popular culture and, thus, excluded from the artistic field. Stereoscopy's middlebrow reputation is largely due to the perception that photography's automated character and its mass diffusion as a visual commodity would prevent it from gaining any artistic value. To assert the possibility of a filiation in landscape theories, I focus on two essays by Georg Simmel, 'The Alps' (1911) and 'The Philosophy of Landscape' (1913), which are representative of these modern debates. I argue that the exclusion of photography from Simmel's essays does not prevent us from a cultural reading, clarifying both that exclusion and the possibility of relating stereoscopic images to the pictorial challenges of the time. This is to state that visuality, although moulded by institutions and power, also spreads across many different social fields. I take as an example the alpine stereo photographs by the Portuguese amateur Manuel Alvarez, a tourist and photographer in the Swiss Alps at the same period of Simmel's essays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses the paradox that people in modern societies believe themselves to be very happy and satisfied with their lives while simultaneously are subjected to increasing time pressure and pace of life. It starts with presenting evidence for time pressure covering objective and subjective indicators. Evidence for Germany is given by comparing time-budgets in 1991/92 and in 1999. Time use among full time employed in Germany and other EU-societies in the 1990s is compared to the US and Japan by means of diary-data. As regards work life, overwork and the gap between actual and preferred working hours are examined. Survey-results on the relationship between work load, time pressure, stress and health are reported. Most of these data support the conclusion that time pressure has emerged as a major social problem. Hence citizens are beginning to consider time prosperity as a dimension of their well-being beyond their consumer wealth. However, this growing pace of life does not reduce life satisfaction and happiness. Here a paradox evolves as increasing time pressure goes hand in hand with increased subjective well-being (SWB) at country level in cross-cultural comparison as well as at individual level. In the third section some answers to this paradox are explored: A first answer is offered through the modernization theory: life satisfaction and QOL are proliferating along with economic growth and living standards. This process at the same time accelerates social life. Hence, the negative effects of time pressure are counterbalanced by various yields of the modernization process resulting in a pattern of "heavy-going" satisfaction. A second explanation is the psychological approach: time pressure fulfils positive functions for mobilizing individual resources. A variation of this argument is that the multiple-choice-society offers a wide variety of attractive options resulting in people engaging in too many activities. Here, the enjoyment of life is equated with taking advantage of every opportunity. However, this paper prefers a third approach based on Simmel's explanation of the ambivalent consequences of modernity. Even where the majority of citizens report high levels of happiness and life satisfaction – which can be explained through "arousal" or "eu-stress" – the need to ease the time-burden of disadvantaged groups and to down-speed work and social life in general is essential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Money has been a polarising and unresolved socio-economic issue for more than 300 years. In this article, we explore how the state became increasingly involved in money and, through the words of prominent monetary theorists, identify the problem of the state in money. We analyse Bitcoin to see if it is a solution to this problem but move on to contend that the political dimension needs to be the focus of theory in the 21st century and that control of the supply of money, and the power that it gives, is the root of contention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for a sociological and relational concern of “gratitude” in Simmel’s thought as a key feature of human interaction as well as a key “emotive disposition” (Stimmung) to engage with the challenges of modern society. Georg Simmel is undoubtedly one of the most crucial theorists and a pillar in the social sciences, and his theoretical contribution also stands as the foundation of relational sociology stricto sensu. He taught that interactions supporting social processes must be investigated as forms of relations. A relation is a precise mode of being connected to others; it is a tie emerging from reciprocal action and acquires its consistency by generating causal effects on involved actors. Among his main insights within the sociological tradition, Simmel’s excellent concepts and arguments engage emotions as a sociological matter, that is, under a relational aspect. Not only do emotions have sociological relevance (that is, they are a worthy subject for sociologists), but they also characterize the precise manner of interaction among individuals. Emotions are the relational effect of being associated in an increasingly differentiated society, which apparently only neutralizes individuals’ emotive sides, or else instrumentally drives or “colonizes” them. Simmel explored gratitude as a particular emotion that is a form of relation and interaction: it has an eccentric position among the other emotions that he investigated in his many essays. Gratitude represents a non-symmetrical or economic (exchangeable) “transactive” emotion: it puts the giver and receiver in a peculiar socio-emotional form of reciprocity. By considering relations, emotions, and gratitude through rigorous textual exploration, this paper tackles Simmel’s view and challenges a globalized world and hybridized digital society. Finally, gratitude could be regarded as a demarcation criterion for identifying and distinguishing social interaction forms from other kinds of non-social processes or transactions.

Contrary to a longstanding tradition of associating the attractive force of the modern economy with its unbridled materialism, I claim in my paper that the power of capitalism lies in the transfer of human desire into the realm of the abstract. Our passionate attachment to the capitalist system stems from its money-mediated capability to organize the infinite: money is a special form of structuring infinity, which I term the "count to infinity." The paper develops this concept, drawing on three in-depth analyses offered by Georg Simmel in his The Philosophy of Money: first, the infinite structure of value, or, money as bad infinity; second, money as the pure vehicle of life; and third, money as the "absolute means." It is my main contention that by moving human desire into the realm of the abstract, money has provided life with a vessel to elevate itself to a higher plane of energy, thus transcending the bounds of the human species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper puts forward the hypothesis that in recent decades, pupils of schools in the western world have been given a new form of individuality. This construction has been nourished by both the demand for emancipation as it was expressed in the critical sociology of education (and pedagogy) and by the neoliberal turn in education policy. It unfolds consequences of such an alliance between romantic and neoliberal individualism, and argues that some of Simmel's concepts might fruitfully be engaged to grasp important aspects of today's educational culture. Against this backdrop, the paper discusses the construction of the new individuality in regard to educational changes in control and discipline, individually adapted education and assessment and finally academic knowledge. Primarily by using examples from the Norwegian case, the paper analyses how recent opinions on these issues can be viewed as different expressions of an educational culture promoting alienation as emancipation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The present paper aims to reflect over the social figure of the foreigner in the light of the current condition of migrants fleeing from countries at war. The analysis is rooted in the thought of Georg Simmel, his conception of society as a set of social relations through which it is possible to know and understand the attitudes and the appearance of society itself. It traces the author&'s thought, who intuited more than a century ago, the dual role of the foreigner to be either a guest/traveller or a citizen of arrival contexts. Their image linked to the concept of a stranger, that of being never completely close, but at the same time an indispensable function, which produces consequences for the construction of social exchanges and relationships. A reinterpretation of Simmel and its pregnant relevance are the background of such work, aimed at embracing new arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper confronts Georg Simmel's distinction between the dyad and the triad with the phenomenological analysis of analogous structures undertaken by E. Lévinas, B. Waldenfels, and J.-L. Marion. Simmel insists on keeping the dyad and the triad apart while only the triad is considered worthy of sociological research. On the contrary, phenomenologists reveal deep interrelation between the relationship with the other and the third party where the latter is actually co-present in the dyad. The presupposed link between the two and the three implies a different understanding of sociality that would respect its members in their uniqueness, unlike the world of interchangeable individualities common for social science. The third party can appear as the dimension of law and the ordinary (in Waldenfels), as the other of the other and the figure of humanity (in Lévinas), or as the child in the case of erotic relationship (in Marion). The last aspect of the third party provides a link to family studies. A brief outline of the situation illustrates oscillation between the triadic and dyadic interpretations of the family with the apparent prevalence of the dyad in recent decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While mobilities research is cognisant of the need to theorise the politics of mobility, the extent to which a political theory of movement has been developed is debateable. In this paper, I develop a more substantive theorisation of movement as a constitutive political relation in light of the empirical advances generated by mobilities research. This account of kinetic politics is an important conceptual development that holds promise for the closer alignment of mobilities research with critical security studies, which in turn raises the possibility of a fuller understanding of movement in global politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most studies on the links between secrecy and creativity have focused on individual sources of creativity and the impact of organizational management on creative initiatives. However, because of their very focus on individual practices of concealment and personal creative capacities, they have paid scant attention to collective interactions occurring around secrets. In this paper, we illuminate some mechanisms through which the creative work achieved in secret by scientists is enhanced by the exceptional character of their situation within the company. Coping with these exceptional circumstances leads the group to increase commitment, cohesion and efficiency. We theorize creativity as a result of the multiplication of social interactions among individuals and the social consequences of working and cooperating in secret. We show that secrecy can help rather than be detrimental to organizations when it is analysed as a social fabric of interactions around work and common feelings triggered by the risks of working in secret. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that ambivalence can serve as a proxy for consensus-based debates in public discourse as it allows for individuals to maintain flexible and analytic perspectives on matters that otherwise appear contradictory. In particular, an affirmative understanding of ambivalence will be presented to supplement the highly influential Habermasian approach by drawing from sociological theories of ambivalence found in the work of Simmel, Bauman and Kołakowski. While the theme of ambivalence is not completely absent from Habermas's work on the public sphere, it is typically described as a structural consequence of contradiction rather than a form of action that is capable of working with and around inconsistencies in ethics, knowledge and social values. This allows for participation to be sustained through contradiction, rather than being withdrawn in frustration, while also encouraging open-minded judgements capable of avoiding forms of fanaticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the paper at hand I introduce Goethe's ontology and methodology for the study of life as an alternative to current theories. 'Life,' in its individual, social and/or pan-natural form, has been a recurring topic in the social sciences for the last two centuries and may currently experience a renaissance, if we are to believe Scott Lash. Goethe's approach is of particular interest because he formulated it as one of the first critical responses to the nascent discipline of biology. It can be characterised broadly as phenomenology with a strong dose of life philosophy. For this reason, and to draw its contours more clearly, I compare his approach to the respective thoughts in Husserl's and Simmel's work. The comparison focuses on the two central concepts phenomenon and life but also discusses broader epistemological and methodological issues, such as the relationship between observer and observed, the relationship between culture (cultural sciences) and nature (natural sciences), the nature of causality as well as preferred methods of study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Freud's concept of 'transference-love' – the phenomenon where patients fall in love with their psychoanalysts – could become the basis for a theory of collective life. Freud's radical claim that transference-love, despite its immoral appearance, is real love is situated in relation to the problems facing the sociology of romantic love: modern couples are problematised for being unable to provide a normative foundation for not only sexual desire, but social solidarity outright. This article restates the problem: transference is not a lesson in how love resists norms, but how love is resistant to logic. Transference-love arises out of a social condition Georg Simmel called life's fragmentary character, marked by asymmetries appearing symmetrical: instead of transference being a case where we fall in love with the wrong person, transference is a case where our mistaken apprehensions of others is the precondition for our bonds to them. Viewed through the phenomenon of transference, love illuminates this asymmetrical form of life. It is argued that transference could be understood, sociologically, as demonstrating a logical impossibility to collective life: that a shared life together is possible, but nevertheless relies upon something that evades each of us. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a critical exposition and a comparison of the arguments of three key thinkers – Max Weber, Georg Simmel and Albert Hirschman – who rejected purely economic accounts of the development and nature of capitalism – whether Marxist or neo-classical – and sought to develop an account of capitalism as culture; as a form of life, conduct, an ethic, a system of ideas and ideals. Such approaches are characterized by (i) their emphasis on the resistance that capitalism faced, and continues to face; (ii) the examination of capitalism at the level of meaning and experience; and (iii) an interest in its institutional and cultural framing. Both the similarities and points of disagreement between these three accounts are discussed. Taking up David Frisby’s concern with Simmel’s politics – Frisby being the dedicatee of this special issue – the paper concludes by focusing on Simmel’s ‘sociological ambivalence’ in his analysis of the money economy as the source both of greater personal freedom and of the fracturing of personality and growing subservience to ‘objective culture’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over a century ago, German sociologist Georg Simmel observed that the figure of the stranger is characterised by a peculiar mixture of physical proximity and social distance. In both social science and popular media, the stranger tends to be treated as equivalent to the immigrant or the unknown Other. This paper takes some of the ideas that the stranger concept generates and pushes them outwards by using Simmel's observation as a springboard to develop the relational concept of strangership. Where the study of strangers focuses on the specific traits of individuals and groups, the concept of strangership focuses instead on the characteristics of relationships between strangers. Three conditions for the emergence and/or presence of strangership are described. In the spirit of contemporary theoretical work that seeks to connect the special position of the stranger to inequality, the paper concludes by proposing the concept of strangership as a way to foreground the relational character of life lived amongst strangers in ways that can thicken how we think about both solidarity and inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recruitment of the next generation of workers is of central concern to contemporary HRM. This paper focuses on university campuses as a major site of this process, and particularly as a new domain in which HRM's ethical claims are configured, in which it sets and answers a range of ethical questions as it outlines the 'ethos' of the ideal future worker. At the heart of this ethos lies what we call the 'principle of potentiality'. This principle is explored through a sample of graduate recruitment programmes from the Times Top 100 Graduate Employers, interpreted as ethical exhortations in HRM's attempt to shape the character of future workers. The paper brings the work of Georg Simmel to the study of HRM's ethics and raises the uncomfortable question that, within discourses of endless potentiality, lie ethical dangers which bespeak an unrecognised 'tragedy of culture'. We argue that HRM fashions an ethos of work which de-recognises human limits, makes a false promise of absolute freedom, and thus becomes a tragic proposition for the individual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes how the evolution of the 19th century life sciences was adopted and reflected by the contemporary philosophy. As the paper shows, there have been manifold (and nowadays very little known) connections between life sciences and philosophy. In the spotlight of this very controversial argument stood the concept of life. Whereas the life sciences (cell theory, materialism debate, and Darwinism) attempted to grasp this concept in a strictly reductive manner, the German life-philosophy ("Lebensphilosophie") established an integral and often highly metaphysical view of man and culture that was in many cases based on the concepts of 19th century life sciences. The paper shows how the concept of life put forward by the life sciences was criticized by Friedrich Nietzsche and Georg Simmel who thus formulated a metaphysical but yet non-transcendental concept of life and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers substantive and methodological issues that are raised by the deployment of Goethe's notion of the Urphänomen in the work of Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin. The paper is exploratory. I employ Goethe's idea, and his approach to empirical observation and theory more generally, to examine affinities and contrasts between the methodology of Simmel and Benjamin. Like Goethe, both Simmel and Benjamin make imaginative use of analogical reasoning, and their approaches resist conventional sociological classification as particular kinds of 'theory'. Simmel and Benjamin are thinkers who seek to present their arguments in a mode which cannot be divorced from their substance. By comparing their approaches in relation to Goethe's idea, we can illuminate new aspects of Benjamin's historiography and Simmel's approach to societal and historical form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper outlines the main features of the contemporary discourse on hybrid subjectivity, a discourse which is internally differentiated along 'organic', 'intentional', and critical social theory lines. It then examines how these discourses can be applied to our understanding of hybrid cultures and identities. The article focuses on two central claims underlying the intentional approach: one, that cultural boundaries are theoretically and empirically problematic; and secondly, that a hybrid position provides the potential for an enlightened and critical world-view. In response, two contentions are articulated that will provide a more nuanced understanding of the hybrid self. Drawing on the work of Simmel and Park, the paper, in contrast to the intentional account, highlights the ambivalence of boundaries; secondly, a critical investigation of the enlightened hybrid consciousness is offered which suggests that this new form of consciousness underplays the role of prejudice and ambivalence. As a result of these discussions, the article demonstrates that the discourse on hybrid identity raises key theoretical issues either ignored or insufficiently addressed by existing scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contains a re‐reading of Simmel and Goffman with an eye to the mobility practices of the contemporary city. The paper offers a ‘new’ perspective on mobility in the contemporary city by re‐reading two sociological ‘classics’ as there is a need to conceptualise the everyday level of flow and mobility in the midst of an intellectual climate dominated by grand theories of networks and globalisation. In the re‐reading of Simmel and Goffman, the aim is to reach an understanding of how contemporary material mobility flows and symbolic orders and meanings are produced and re‐produced. You may argue that other academic disciplines such as anthropology and human geography have made important contributions to this understanding. What has not been done, however, is to show how these two sociological thinkers can move beyond mere application to this field of study. With their sociological sensitivity, they rather carry important insights that will benefit the sociology of mobility. Arguably Simmel and Goffman offer the opportunity to connect the global flows to the everyday level of social practice, as well as linking more basic/classic sociological theory to contemporary issues of mobility. The reason to ‘look back’ is therefore to capture some of the past's ‘sociological imagination’ and relate it to an important social phenomenon of the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aspect of our imaginary is the variety and the quantity of phenomenon that characterizes our everyday life. This fragmentary scenario makes it tough to consider every element as a part of a unique imaginary. However, we can take into account some classic works in order to consider different phenomenon manifestations of a unique generative principle. The aim of this paper is to examine the works of Goethe, Simmel, and Benjamin, considering that they have in common the capacity to assemble multitude in a single image of thought. In fact, although they start from different field of research, they examine the empirical world as an expression of a unique generative principle. Therefore, for Goethe leaf is the "original form" of the botanical world. While, in Simmel's work life is the "central idea" of the modern daily life. Finally, Parisian Arcades are for Benjamin the origin of the modern capitalism. Thus, the leaf, the life, and the Arcades, are meaningful examples to focus our attention on the opportunity to discover a synthetic image of our imaginary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay intends to highlight the role and value that the theme of the Leben ("life") takes on in the sociology of culture and in the philosophy of values of Georg Simmel. The aim of the paper is also to test the relevance and validity of the Simmelian perspective, starting from the established fact of Simmel's unavoidability, up to the possible use of the program of his Lebenssoziologie, term indicating, faithfully to the teachings of the Berlin sociologist, the science that investigates the "vital social forms". The characteristic feature of modern society is the progressive proliferation of catalyst semantic centers, for which the "hidden king" of our age seems lost. The extreme paradox that we live is given by the coexistence on the one hand of a very refined rationality and technology making the other ever closer (in a social, political, anthropological, biological, astronomical, etc. sense), and on the other hand, of an inability to "represent", "imagine" this other. The "tragic" dialectic of the social structuring, and therefore of the cultural production, indicated and studied masterfully by Simmel, is the fulcrum of the Lebenssoziologie that underpins his last works and which still shows all its freshness, its argumentative vigor and its relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Szociologiai Szemle is the property of Hungarian Sociological Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Logos: A Journal, of Religion, Philosophy Comparative Cultural Studies & Art (08687692) is the property of Logos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Sociologie de l' Art is the property of L'Harmattan Edition Diffusion and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Sociologie de l' Art is the property of L'Harmattan Edition Diffusion and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Digital Hidden King. Media Among Mediatized Construction of Reality and Radical Mediation. The paper intends to explore Georg Simmel’s concept of “hidden king”, as central concept of a given era. Therefore, we analyze the concepts of “mediated construction of reality” (Couldry, Hepp 2016) and “radical mediation” (Grusin 2017), which, in our opinion, can be conceived as the “hidden king” of contemporary digital society. The massive digitization of contemporary society and culture has led to deep mediatization (Hepp, Hasebrink 2018). Therefore, digital media have helped to redefine the forms of knowledge, time and spaces of social life. In this context, Couldry and Hepp rethought the constructionism of Berger and Luckmann and the figurative sociology of Norbert Elias, in a new theoretical framework based on the centrality of the media in the construction of social symbols and collective interactions. Starting from similar bases, Richard Grusin (2015) elaborates the concept of radical mediation. Overcoming the separation between subject and object, Grusin defines mediation “as the process, action, or event that generates or provides the conditions for the emergence of subjects and objects, for the individuation of entities within the world”. Furthermore, mediation operates not by neutrally reproducing meaning or information, but “by actively transforming human and nonhuman actants, as well as their conceptual and affective states”. Mediation is thus conceived as the constitutive dimension of every relationship or contact between human and non-human actants, objects and subjects, technical media and forms of biological life. In the last part of the paper, we try to highlight the vitality of Simmel’s sociology, able to dialogue with the mediological theories of Grusin and Couldry and Hepp.