The Anthem Companion to Georg Simmel

Description

New interpretations of the work of sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel

'The Anthem Companion to Georg Simmel' brings together new interpretations of the work of this sociologist and philosopher. It discusses how Simmel’s work is relevant, interesting and significant for advancing contemporary discussions and debates. Compared to the volumes of works on other sociological giants like Émile Durkheim, Karl Marx and Max Weber, the Anglophone secondary literature on Simmel has remained relatively scarce until recently.

The book addresses general questions on ‘social life in process’ that characterize the whole of Simmel’s work and also includes chapters that focus on specific issues. The primary concern in each chapter is not just to review Simmel’s ideas or provide accurate readings but often neglected readings but also to explore how Simmel offers a model for addressing various disciplinary concerns and examine the degree to which he continues to speak to the experience of the present.

The international scholars writing in this companion are contributors to an emerging new wave of Simmel scholarship. Included in the volume is Austin Harrington’s translation of selections from Simmel’s book on Goethe and a comprehensive list of Simmel’s work in English.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Sociology

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 6
• EAN13: 9781783085910
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Anthem Companion to Georg Simmel
Anthem Companions to Sociology
Anthem Companions to Sociology offer authoritative and comprehensive assessments of major figures in the development of sociology from the past two centuries. Covering the major advancements in sociological thought, these companions offer critical evaluations of key figures in the American and European sociological traditions, and will provide students and scholars with an in-depth assessment of the makers of sociology and chart their relevance to modern society.

Series Editor
Bryan S. Turner – City University of New York, USA, and Australian Catholic University, Australia
Forthcoming titles in this series include:
The Anthem Companion to Hannah Arendt The Anthem Companion to Auguste Comte The Anthem Companion to Everett Hughes The Anthem Companion to Karl Mannheim The Anthem Companion to Robert Park The Anthem Companion to Talcott Parsons The Anthem Companion to Phillip Rieff The Anthem Companion to Gabriel Tarde The Anthem Companion to Ferdinand Tönnies The Anthem Companion to Ernst Troeltsch The Anthem Companion to Thorstein Veblen The Anthem Companion to Max Weber
The Anthem Companion to Georg Simmel
Edited by Thomas Kemple and Olli Pyyhtinen
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com

This edition first published in UK and USA 2016
by ANTHEM PRESS
75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK
or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA

© 2016 Thomas Kemple and Olli Pyyhtinen editorial matter and selection;
individual chapters © individual contributors

The moral right of the authors has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested.
Names: Kemple, Thomas M., 1962– editor. | Pyyhtinen, Olli, 1976– editor.
Title: The Anthem companion to Georg Simmel / edited by Thomas Kemple and Olli Pyyhtinen.
Description: London; New York, NY: Anthem Press, [2016] | Series: Anthem companions to sociology | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016035457 | ISBN 9781783082780 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Simmel, Georg, 1858–1918. | Sociology. | Social sciences – Philosophy.
Classification: LCC HM479.S55 A58 2016 | DDC 301–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016035457

ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-278-0 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78308-278-X (Hbk)

This title is also available as an e-book.
CONTENTS
Editors’ Introduction
Thomas Kemple and Olli Pyyhtinen
Chapter 1. Simmel and the Study of Modernity
David Frisby
Chapter 2. Sociology as a Sideline: Does It Matter That Georg Simmel (Thought He) Was a Philosopher?
Elizabeth S. Goodstein
Chapter 3. Modernity as Solid Liquidity: Simmel’s Life-Sociology
Gregor Fitzi
Chapter 4. On the Special Relation between Proximity and Distance in Simmel’s Forms of Association and Beyond
Natàlia Cantó-Milà
Chapter 5. The Real as Relation: Simmel as a Pioneer of Relational Sociology
Olli Pyyhtinen
Chapter 6. Vires in Numeris: Taking Simmel to Mt Gox
Nigel Dodd
Chapter 7. Simmel and the Sources of Neoliberalism
Thomas Kemple
Chapter 8. Frames, Handles and Landscapes: Georg Simmel and the Aesthetic Ecology of Things
Eduardo de la Fuente
Chapter 9. Goethe and the Creative Life
Georg SimmelIntroduced and translated by Austin Harrington
Appendix Simmel in English: A Bibliography by Thomas Kemple
Notes on Contributors
Index
EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION
Thomas Kemple and Olli Pyyhtinen
Thinking with Simmel
A ‘Companion to Simmel’ must come to terms with the many ways in which Georg Simmel (1858–1918) himself can be considered a ‘companion’ for understanding the complexities of modern life. Simmel’s voluminous writings do not so much guide or direct readers on how to examine their experiences of change and continuity as much as they complement and form a counterpart to those experiences. At most, the intellectual distance he exemplifies offers a kind of means for probing and coping with the stresses and stimuli of contemporary existence. In a similar way, this volume does not offer a set of instructions or a comprehensive overview for reading Simmel’s works, but rather, more modestly, it aims to accompany readers in their efforts to think and move through these works. Like a pet, a friend or a fellow traveller, this Companion follows some of the paths Simmel took in his journey to the very core of sociology, which he understood as the study of how the socius , generally speaking, holds together and falls apart. These contributions are therefore made in the spirit of Simmel’s own pieces on ‘The Sociology of Sociability’ ([1917a] 1971) and ‘The Sociology of the Meal’ ([1910a] 1997), where he describes how the regard each of us has for ourselves is linked with the frequency and felicity we have of being together with others. The chapters that follow are therefore meant to participate in and sustain a conversation in our time that Simmel initiated in his own with friends, listeners and readers through his books, lectures and essays.
Compared to the mounting masses of works on other sociological giants like Émile Durkheim , Karl Marx and Max Weber , until recent years the Anglophone secondary literature on Simmel has remained somewhat scarce. While there may be several reasons for this relative neglect, it cannot be explained by his work remaining unfamiliar to an English-speaking readership. On the contrary, throughout much of the twentieth century Simmel was the only European classic to exert a lasting influence on North American sociology (Levine, Carter and Gorman 1976, 813). His impact is evident among a variety of North American authors, ranging from the Chicago school sociologists Albion Small , Robert E. Park and Everett C. Hughes to Erving Goffman , Talcott Parsons , Kaspar D. Naegle , Robert K. Merton and Lewis E. Coser , and more recently to postmodernist sociologists such as Deena Weinstein and Michael Weinstein as well as a number of social network analysts like Roland Burt and Barry Wellman . Interestingly, it was from the United States that Simmel was re-imported after World War II from across the Atlantic even to Germany as a classic of urban studies, role theory, conflict theory and analyses of small groups.
Whilst the post-war North American reception of Simmel’s work focused especially on his studies of small groups and conflict (such as Becker and Useem 1948; Hare 1952; Caplow 1956; Coser 1956; Mills 1958; Bean 1970; and Thompson and Walker 1982), the more recent appreciation of Simmel’s work in the Anglophone world owes much to David Frisby (1944–2010) and Donald N. Levine (1931–2015). It was Frisby (1985) who portrayed Simmel as the ‘first theorist of modernity’, and we therefore include here one of Frisby’s last and most comprehensive statements on this theme. In his chapter, Frisby contextualizes Simmel above all in relation to the tradition of aesthetic modernism initiated by the poet Charles Baudelaire . Frisby laments that while the classical sociologists tried to delineate what is novel in modern society, they largely failed to grasp the experiential dimension of modernity. Simmel, however, makes an exception. The modernity that Simmel examines in his texts must, according to Frisby, be understood in the Baudelairean sense of ‘the transient, the fleeting, the contingent’. Simmel treats modernity as a specific mode of experience seated in the mature capitalist money economy and the modern metropolis .
Frisby’s work challenged what was until then the predominant one-sided image of Simmel by introducing to the Anglophone social scientific readership a much more versatile thinker. Both his writings and translations highlight Simmel’s ideas about culture, aesthetics, modernity and individuality, and draw attention to Simmel’s omnivorous analytical tastes for a wide range of phenomena, from money to the metropolis, the alpine journey, the ruin, the problem of style and trade exhibitions. Accordingly, contemporary scholars have emphasized Simmel’s contributions to a remarkably rich variety of themes such as money, value, taste and consumption (Dodd 1994; 2014; Zelizer 1994; Gronow 1997; Sassatelli 2000; Cantó-Milà 2005); gender (Oakes 1984; Dahme 1988; Kandal 1988; van Vucht Tjissen 1991; Witz 2001); space (Lechner 1991; Frisby 1992; 2001; Ziemann 2000; Löw 2001, 58–63; Schroer 2006, 60–81); time (Scaff 2005); secrecy and mendacity (Barbour 2012); material culture (Miller 1987; Appadurai 1988); nature (Gross 2000; 2001; Giacomoni 2006); and trust (Accarino 1984; Möllering 2001). In spite of this remarkable diversity of themes, many scholars agree with Levine (1985; 2012) in taking issue with the famous idea of Simmel as a sociolog