Sociological Impressionism (Routledge Revivals)


Book Description

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.




Sociological Impressionism (Routledge Revivals)


Book Description

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.




Sociological Impressionism


Book Description

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.




Simmel and Since (Routledge Revivals)


Book Description

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.




The Routledge International Handbook of Simmel Studies


Book Description

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.




The Alienated Mind (Routledge Revivals)


Book Description

This book, first published in 1983, with a second edition in 1992, investigates the emergence of the sociology of knowledge in Germany in the critical period from 1918 to 1933. These years witnessed the development of distinctive paradigms centred on the works of Max Scheler, Georg Lukács and Karl Mannheim. Each theorist sought to confront the base-superstructure models of the relationship between knowledge and society, which originated in Orthodox Marxism. David Frisbsy illustrates how these and other themes in the sociology of knowledge were contested through a detailed account of the central sociological debates in Weimar Germany. This reissue of The Alienated Mind will be of particular interest to students and academics concerned with the development of an important tradition in the sociology of knowledge and culture, social theory and German history.




Fragments of Modernity (Routledge Revivals)


Book Description

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.




City and Modernity in Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin


Book Description

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.




Routledge Revivals: The Dilemma of Qualitative Method (1989)


Book Description

Originally published in 1989, The Dilemma of Qualitative Method is a stimulating guide to the discussion of qualitative versus quantitative approaches to social research, originated in nineteenth-century debates about the relationship between the methods of history and natural science. One of the key theorists in this area was Chicago sociologist Herbert Blumer. The book analyses the historical context of the dispute and provides a detailed account and systematic analysis Blumer’s methodological writings including his doctoral thesis. The strategies for qualitative research advocated by Blumer within the Chicago tradition are reviewed and assessed.




Nationalism and Nationhood in the United Arab Emirates


Book Description

This book shows how an encounter with everyday nationhood in the northern United Arab Emirates can make us revisit the classics of sociology as continuous analytical world-views. Through the textual universe of Georg Simmel, and in particular his analysis of modern life as the feeling of dualism, the project reflects about how seemingly crucial challenges to the national – the forces of globalization and the wish to be unique – are drawn together with the formation of nationhood in everyday life. It does so not least by attending to the instances of everyday nationhood – like fashion and car-driving – that are at the same time central ways of embodying the modern. This volume appeals to students of nationalism, classical sociology, and the modern Arab Gulf.