Originally published in 1992, this book, written by one of the world's leading experts on Simmel, provides a fascinating set of insights into a thinker who is fast becoming recognized as the sociologist of modernity; an indispensible resource in confronting post-modernity. It examines the relevance of his work in relation to contemporary debates on culture, aesthetics and modernity.
When Sociological Impressionism was first published in 1981, it was the first comprehensive study on Simmel’s social theory to appear in English since 1925. A pioneering work, it did much to bring about the rediscovery of Georg Simmel as one of the key sociologists of the twentieth century. David Frisby provides a provocative introduction to aspects of Simmel’s social theory, seriously challenging many interpretations of his work, most notably the view that Simmel produced a formal sociology. By drawing on many little-known essays and pieces by Simmel and his contemporaries, the book locates him within the social and intellectual milieu in which he was working. This is a reissue of the second edition, published in 1992, which includes a new afterword confronting critical responses to the first edition. This is an important work, which will be of interest to students of sociology and social philosophy in Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Fragments of Modernity, first published in 1985, provides a critical introduction to the work of three of the most original German thinkers of the early twentieth century. In their different ways, all three illuminated the experience of the modern urban life, whether in mid nineteenth-century Paris, Berlin at the turn of the twentieth century or later as the vanguard city of the Weimar Republic. They related the new modes of experiencing the world to the maturation of the money economy (Simmel), the process of rationalization of capital (Kracauer) and the fantasy world of commodity fetishism (Benjamin). In each case they focus on those fragments of social experience that could best capture the sense of modernity.
This book explores the relationship between the production of new urban spaces and illiberal community-making in contemporary India. It is based on an ethnographic study in Noida, a city at the eastern fringe of the state of Uttar Pradesh, bordering national capital Delhi. The book demonstrates a flexible planning approach being central to the entrepreneurial turn in India’s post-liberalisation urbanisation, whereby a small-scale industrial township is transformed into a real-estate driven modern city. Its real point of departure, however, is in the argument that this turn can enable a form of illiberal community-making in new cities that are quite different from older metropolises. Exclusivist forms of solidarity and symbolic boundary construction - stemming from the differences across communities as well as their internal heterogeneities - form the crux of this process, which is examined in three distinct but often interspersed socio-spatial forms: planned middle-class residential quarters, ‘urban villages’ and migrant squatter colonies. The book combines radical geographical conceptualisations of social production of space and neoliberal urbanism with sociological and anthropological approaches to urban community-making. It will be of interest to researchers in development studies, sociology, urban studies, as well as readers interested in society and politics of contemporary India/South Asia.
When "Sociological Impressionism" was first published in 1981, it was the first comprehensive study on Simmel s social theory to appear in English since 1925. A pioneering work, it did much to bring about the rediscovery of Georg Simmel as one of the key sociologists of the twentieth century. David Frisby provides a provocative introduction to aspects of Simmel s social theory, seriously challenging many interpretations of his work, most notably the view that Simmel produced a "formal "sociology. By drawing on many little-known essays and pieces by Simmel and his contemporaries, the book locates him within the social and intellectual milieu in which he was working. This is a reissue of the second edition, published in 1992, which includes a new afterword confronting critical responses to the first edition. This is an important work, which will be of interest to students of sociology and social philosophy in Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Exploring Social Geography, first published in 1984, offers a challenging yet comprehensive introduction to the wealth of empirical research and theoretical debate that has developed in response to the advent of a social approach to the subject. The argument emphasises the essentially spatial structure of social interaction, and includes a succinct discussion of geographical research on segregation and interaction, which has combined numerical analyses and qualitative ethnographic field research. A distinctive view of social geography is adopted, inspired by the Chicago school of North American pragmatism, but also incorporating the formal sociological theories of Simmel and Weber. Exploring Social Geography will be of value to students of urban geography in particular. However, it will also indicate a wide-ranging and distinctive perspective for all students of the social sciences with a special interest in debates concerning urban, ethnic, racial, anthropological and theoretical issues.
The Routledge International Handbook of Simmel Studies documents the richness, variety, and creativity of contemporary international research on Georg Simmel’s work. Starting with the established role of Simmel as a classical author of sociology, and including the growing interest in his work in the domain of philosophy, this volume explores the research on Simmel in several further disciplines including art, social aesthetics, literature, theatre, essayism, and critical theory, as well as in the debates on cosmopolitanism, economic pathologies of life, freedom, modernity, religion, and nationalism. Bringing together contributions from leading specialists in research on Simmel, the book is thematically arranged in order to highlight the relevance of his oeuvre for different fields of recent research, with a further section tracing the most important paths that Simmel’s reception has taken in the world. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities, and to sociologists, philosophers, and social theorists in particular, with interest in Simmel’s thought.
Fragments of Modernity, first published in 1985, provides a critical introduction to the work of three of the most original German thinkers of the early twentieth century. In their different ways, all three illuminated the experience of the modern urban life, whether in mid nineteenth-century Paris, Berlin at the turn of the twentieth century or later as the vanguard city of the Weimar Republic. They related the new modes of experiencing the world to the maturation of the money economy (Simmel), the process of rationalization of capital (Kracauer) and the fantasy world of commodity fetishism (Benjamin). In each case they focus on those fragments of social experience that could best capture the sense of modernity.
This book reconstructs and compares the social theories of modernity of Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin, two classic thinkers in German social thought. The author focuses on five main topics: the historical-sociological method through which they investigate modernity; how are the concepts of history and society possible; the consequences of modern metropolis on the construction of individual subjectivity; the aestheticization of everyday life caused by the expansion of commodity culture; and the female culture as a counter-power to the domination of masculine objective culture. In the decades since Simmel and Benjamin, urban reality has undergone profound changes and we may even question the very existence of the subject of analysis: what is the city, the metropolis in today’s context of globalization and capital flows? Simmel’s and Benjamin’s metropolis has thus become an “endless city," beyond the physical and geographical confines of urban reality.
