By David Frisby

Till lately little of Simmel's paintings was once on hand in translation and likely key texts have been unknown outdoor Germany. David Frisby, the eminent Simmel student, offers not just an creation to the main sociological writings of this crucial determine, but additionally a controversy for a reconsideration of his paintings. the writer outlines the cultural and ancient context within which Simmel labored; reports Simmel's most vital writings; and examines his legacy to sociology by way of illuminating his hyperlinks with Weber's theories and his influential dating with Marxism. Simmel, a valuable determine within the improvement of contemporary sociology, and a latest of Weber and Durkheim, was once one of many first to spot sociology as a separate self-discipline. His principles encouraged Weber, the Chicago institution, and lots of later sociologists. His advent of a few simple thoughts to sociology, similar to trade, interplay and differentiation, attest to his highbrow stature and the far-reaching importance of his paintings.

Show description

Read Online or Download Georg Simmel (Key Sociologists) PDF

Best social theory books

Craft of Sociology: Epistemological Preliminaries

The paintings of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has emerged, over the past 20 years, as some of the most tremendous and leading edge our bodies of concept and study in modern social technology.
The Craft of Sociology, either a textbook and an unique contribution to epistemology in social technological know-how, specializes in a easy challenge of sociological study: the need of an epistemological holiday with the preconstructed items social perform deals to the researcher.
Pierre Bourdieu and his co-authors argue within the epistemological culture of students like Bachelard, Canguilhem, Koyre, a practice that identifies the development of the item as being the elemental clinical act.
Their approach of discussing the difficulty makes it obtainable not just to lecturers and specialists of epistemology, but additionally to complex scholars of social technological know-how, utilizing for representation a variety of texts from many of the social sciences in addition to from philosophy of technology. The booklet contains an interview with Pierre Bourdieu and an advent by means of the editor to his sociological technique.

Making Sense of Nature

We take heed to a cacophony of voices teaching us tips on how to imagine and consider approximately nature, together with our personal our bodies. the inside track media, natural world documentaries, technological know-how magazines, and environmental NGOs are between these clamouring for our cognizance. yet are we empowered by means of all this data or is our dependence on a variety of groups permitting our concepts, sentiments and actions to be unduly ruled by means of others?

Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior

In a super sequence of books approximately social habit, together with The Presentation of Self in daily life, Asylums, and Stigma, Erving Goffman has uncovered all that's at stake whilst humans meet head to head. Goffman’s paintings, as soon as of the good highbrow achievements of our time, is an without end interesting remark on how we enact ourselves through our responses to and our readings of different humans.

No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age

The predicament of the revolutionary circulation is so obtrusive that not anything lower than a primary rethinking of its uncomplicated assumptions is needed. modern-day progressives now paintings for pro corporations more well-off with the interior online game in Washington DC (and capitols in the course of the West), the place they're outmatched and outspent through company pursuits.

Additional resources for Georg Simmel (Key Sociologists)

Sample text

Simmel is thus able to reveal aesthetic constellations and configurations that both exist in but are often hidden in ‘the flat surface of everyday life’. In his reading of Kant’s philosophy, the aesthetic realm ‘connects with the mere image of things, with their appearance and form, regardless of whether they are supported by an apprehendable reality’. Such a reading reveals an affinity with the sphere of circulation and exchange (the circulation of images of things) of commodities, and anticipates a concern in much postmodern theory.

They are, as it were, autonomous, timeless forms that…preserve the ‘pathos of distance’ in all directions in a proud and exclusive reserve. [11] In this respect too Simmel’s works are very different from those of his contemporaries such as Durkheim and Weber. The essay form takes up the anti-systematic impulse of intellectual creativity that proves annoying to orthodox members of the scientific community. It is more suited to a different conception of sociology which Nisbet has somewhat loosely described as ‘sociology as an art form’.

Leck, Simmel and Avante-Garde Sociology. The Birth of Modernity 1880–1920, New York, Humanity Books (2000). Small, ‘Individuum und Gesellschaft’, American Journal of Sociology, 30, 1924, p. 353. This page intentionally left blank. 1 Introduction Today, over a century after Georg Simmel commenced publishing works on psychology, philosophy and, later, sociology, it is difficult to imagine how significant Simmel was in the development or sociology. Contrary to our conception of the development of the social sciences in Germany, sociology as an independent discipline emerged relatively late compared with its neighbouring disciplines.

Download PDF sample

Georg Simmel (Key Sociologists) by David Frisby
Rated 4.64 of 5 – based on 7 votes