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Simmel Studies
No full textArticles published in Simmel Studies are original articles, not yet published or considered for publication elsewhere. Contributors may submit articles in English, German and French, and each article should be accompanied by a brief abstract (150 words) in English and the complete address of the author, including e-mail.
Simmel Studies is abstracted and indexed by Sociological Abstracts (SA). Social Planning/Policy & Development Abstracts (SOPODA), and Linguistics and Language Behaviour Abstracts (LLBA)
La Lebenssoziologie e la sfida della sociologia relazionale nella concettualizzazione della relazione come “forma” di vita sociale
No full textSome 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 Lebenssoziologi
Georg Simmel and the “Relational Turn”. Contributions to the foundation of the Lebenssoziologie since Simmel
No full textThe first aim of the paper is an interpretation of Georg Simmel’s sociology in “relational terms” – i.e., under the categories of the “relational sociology”; it focuses, thus, to show how Simmel’s social theory and philosophy of culture fit for the construction of a Lebensoziologie. Considering Simmel as a “relational sociologist” means to demonstrate how his contribution is decisive to the history of sociology, since he defines the “Wechselwirkung” (reciprocity, relational exchange) and its forms as the very matter of the social sciences. Simmel represents the “relational turn” in the wide sociological milieu. Since Simmel’s contribution, sociology attempted to consider and investigate social facts in terms of “relation” and reciprocity. The current sociological debate insists on considering Simmel as a “relational” sociologist in various declinations (coherent to Bourdieu’s social theory or to the social network analysis framework). In his late essays and books Simmel gives a “vitalist” accent to the analysis of social facts: the social is above all “social life”, according to the consolidated forms/contents dialectical model. Grundfragen der Soziologie. Individuum und Gesellschaft represents his last attempt to corroborate a sort of “sociology of life” (Lebenssoziologie). Even if this term does not explicitly appear in Simmel’s words, it summarizes his social and cultural theory - since the volume Soziologie - and offers some key-concepts for the successive sociological debate
The Unpublished Correspondence between Hans Simmel and Max Horkheimer (1936-1943). Some remarks on Critical Theory, Georg Simmel's Sociology, and the Tasks of the Institute for the Social Research
No full textThe focus of analysis is the reconstruction of the relationship between the
philosopher and sociologist Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) and Hans Simmel
(1891–1943), Georg Simmel’s first son. Its basis is an unpublished folder at the
Universitätsarchiv, Frankfurt am Main. Under review is the attempt by
Horkheimer to arrange a visa for Hans Simmel to travel to the US. On the one hand,
a testimony is revealed of an intellectual debt (Horkheimer’s to Georg Simmel), which
was transformed into a biographical debt toward Hans; on the other hand, we sketch a
tragic link with the rise of the Nazi party and the consequences of the persecution and
diaspora of Jews from Germany, as well as the Institute for Social Research (New York)
commitments to help German intellectuals. Consequently, there are two principal aims:
firstly, to reconstruct the biographical events which connect Hans Simmel and Max
Horkheimer at a specific period (1936–1943), furnishing details about concrete aspects
of their historical situation; secondly, in the background we examine the ambivalent
relationship between Georg Simmel’s thought and the former Frankfurt School authors,
who appreciated Simmel’s innovative style, yet distanced themselves from his irrationalbourgeois
approach (due to the stigmatization of Korsch and Lukács)
Fostering the dialogue between sociology and critical theory: some remarks on the normative character of social relations from Georg Simmel’s sociological theory
Full text linkThis paper aims at reconstructing some aspects of Georg Simmel’s relational sociology in order to highlight the possible convergence between (relational) sociology and Critical Theory. Georg Simmel focuses on the idea that society consists of the interactions (Wechselwirkung) among individuals, and these interactions generate forms of socialization (Formen der Vergesellschaftung) which are investigated by the sociologist. In this regard, the very subject of the social ontology is the social relation. Within the frame of this interaction, individual conducts are expected to be managed under an ethical and intrinsic vocation: each individual plays the social role and society is the moral arena in which any individual feel the constraining forces as ethical claims (as also Durkheim sustained). Good and evil in society govern individual conducts, as well as Critical Theory points out the possible “social pathologies” and “social disfunctions” given by new and old forms of domination and control (or simply unauthentic paths of individual life). Through a reconstruction of the main topics in relational sociological literature, Simmel’s
texts and the recent debate within Critical Theory, this paper wants to put accent on the inner normative character of social relations, arising from interaction, giving by forms of social life, and carrying possible pathologies when they cannot accomplish to its purposes which is guaranteeing a “good life” for individuals involved
Lo sguardo dell'altro. Il problema della sociologia in Georg Simmel (ovvero la sociologia come problema)
No full textIntroduzione alle due versioni (quella del 1894 e quella del 1908) de "Il problema della sociologia" di Georg SImme
“Constructing a New Storey Beneath Historical Materialism”: Georg Simmel and the Foundations of a “Relational” Critical Theory.
No full textRelational sociology (RS) and historical materialism are often considered
as opposite paradigms: on the one hand, RS represents an ontological attempt
to “steer” inquiries into the social realm under the relational approach, i.e.
the relation is the very sociological matter; on the other hand, Marx and historical
materialism are often reduced to methodological holism, referring relations
to the economic. First, I argue in this paper for going beyond this dualism and
reconciling RS (namely addressing Georg Simmel as the first systematic theorist)
and historical materialism within the frame of Critical Theory, according to
the recent address given by Axel Honneth and Rahel Jaeggi. The Critical Theory
must answer the question of ‘social life’ as relation, focusing on the particular
and the individual, disentangling the tie between the rationalization aspect and
the vital sphere, as well as the interlacement between ‘the informalization of economic
and economization of the informal’ (Honneth).
Secondly, I aim to lead Simmel’s relational theory back to his Lebenssoziologie.
In his last writings, he focused on the question dealing the origin of ‘forms’ within
the social life under the categories of Wechselwirkung and Vergesellschaftung.
The intellectualization of modern life (since Simmel’s reflections in ‘Philosophy
of Money’) is the mechanism to objectify and ‘monetize’ (the money as a pure
mean) any aspect of life, even in the moral and the political sphere. Beyond the
inexorable mechanism of modern intellectualization, Simmel also denoted the
inner ‘vital’ character of any social relation. He put the basis for a Lebenssoziologie:
despite Lash’s interpretation and reduction to the monistic-informational model
and Jaeggi’s immanentism, this paper furnishes, finally, a ‘relational and transcendental
(emergentist)’ interpretation of Simmel’s sociology
Lo sguardo dell'altro. Il problema della sociologia in Georg Simmel (ovvero la sociologia come problema)
No full textIntroduzione alle due versioni (quella del 1894 e quella del 1908) de "Il problema della sociologia" di Georg SImme
Fuhse and Donati on Relational Sociology: beyond the structural view of social networks
No full textThis paper aims to compare Pierpaolo Donati’s Relational Theory of
Society (also called Relational Sociology), and the theoretical proposal of Jan
Fuhse’s Relational Sociology. It focuses on two main issues: 1) Epistemology
– the «Relational Sociology» paradigm; 2) Ontology – what the social relation
consists of. Both perspectives (Donati and Fuhse) aim at describing the social
reality as a “relational construct”. The core issue and the real distinguishing
divergence point between these two theories is precisely the concept of
“relation”, then its application in methodological and empirical fields. Fuhse
starts with the network analysis sociological tradition (White) to reach a
relational “communicative” theory of society (Luhmann), whereas Donati
insists to build his sociological paradigm from the perspective of the “relation”
concept. The former reduces and considers networks as “communicative
events”, the latter does not renounce to analyse social facts as “relations”,
synthetizing structure, culture and agency in a wide “relational” social theory
La costituzione dell'oggetto sociale nella forma della relazione: un tentativo di rileggere Pierre Bourdieu attraverso Georg Simmel
No full textIl presente saggio mette a confronto la proposta teorica di due autori classici della sociologia, Georg Simmel e Pierre Bourdieu, e lo fa ruotando attorno alla nozione centrale di “relazione”. Nei due autori essa assume un significato differente (“reciprocità” in Simmel e “struttura strutturante/strutturata” in Bourdieu) e contribuisce alla fondazione dello studio dei fenomeni sociali sotto l’ormai consolidata categoria della “sociologia relazionale”. Pur non citandolo direttamente, Bourdieu ha molto in comune con il sociologo berlinese, in particolare nell’analisi di alcuni oggetti sociologici: dalla dimensione interattiva del sociale e dalla configurazione relazionale dello “spazio sociale” alle indagini sul gusto estetico, dalla centralità del rapporto tra oggettività e soggettività fino alla dimensione della vita individuale (stile di vita) nella modernità. Questi aspetti sono presi in esame attraverso una comparazione sistematica e una rigorosa ricognizione testuale. Ciò che certamente separa i due sociologi è la dimensione “pratica” che assume la disciplina sociologica in quanto scienza engagée, e questa attitudine è evidente e porta a esiti paradigmatici differenti. Se la scienza sociale per Bourdieu assume i tratti di un’arte marziale, che mira alla liberazione dalle catene dell’ingabbiamento (relazionale), in Simmel l’approccio sociologico è sempre mirato al “comprendere” (se si vuole in un senso storicistico), che non condanna né assolve, ma che semplicemente pone la relazione al centro di una nuova metafisica del sociale
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