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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 complete collected works of Georg Simmel are now available. Yet, the standing of Simmel’s sociological theory is still a subject of controversy. Is Simmel only a brilliant impressionist, a flâneur in the territories of modernity? Providing an illuminating and coherent presentation of Simmel’s sociological theory, The Challenge of Modernity seeks to demonstrate how Simmel contributed a structured sociological theory that fits the criteria of a ‘sociological grand theory’. Indeed, starting by the theory of modernity and its dimensions of social differentiation, monetarisation, culture reification and urbanisation; it reconstructs the architecture of Simmel’s sociological epistem...
Ho addresses two fundamental theoretical questions about how best to practice ethnographic inquiries to obtain qualitative, experience-near, and shareable accounts of human living. The first question is regarding the epistemology of ethnography. Ho posits that writing is epistemologically prior to the researcher’s fieldwork experience in the production of ethnographic knowledge. This stance is developed using the theories of hermeneutics put forward by Paul Ricoeur and Hans-Georg Gadamer who both consider that once a text is produced, its meaning is dissociated from the intention of the author. The second question is: what is the putative object that the ethnographer writes about? Ho argue...
The World Multiple, as a collection, is an ambitious ethnographic experiment in understanding how the world is experienced and generated in multiple ways through people’s everyday practices. Against the dominant assumption that the world is a single universal reality that can only be known by modern expert science, this book argues that worlds are worlded—they are socially and materially crafted in multiple forms in everyday practices involving humans, landscapes, animals, plants, fungi, rocks, and other beings. These practices do not converge to a singular knowledge of the world, but generate a world multiple—a world that is more than one integrated whole, yet less than many fragmente...
This volume examines the global influence and impact of DIY cultural practice as this informs the production, performance and consumption of underground music in different parts of the world. The book brings together a series of original studies of DIY musical activities in Europe, North and South America, Asia and Oceania. The chapters combine insights from established academic writers with the work of younger scholars, some of whom are directly engaged in contemporary underground music scenes. The book begins by revisiting and re-evaluating key themes and issues that have been used in studying the cultural meaning of alternative and underground music scenes, notably aspects of space, place...
This book explores the relationship between populism or populist regimes and constitutional interpretation used in those regimes. The volume discusses the question of whether contemporary populist governments and movements have developed, or encouraged new and specific constitutional theories, doctrines and methods of interpretation, or whether their constitutional and other high courts continue to use the old, traditional interpretative tools in constitutional adjudication. The book is divided into four parts. Part I contains three chapters elaborating the theoretical basis for the discussion. Part II examines the topic from a comparative perspective, representing those European countries w...
Relying on a thorough understanding of the role of ideology, discourse, and framing, this volume discusses ISIS as an Islamist ideological organization, and examines its philosophical scaffolding within the material conditions produced by neoliberal capital. As Raja asserts, it is this nexus of specifically retrieved Islamic history and the current global economic system that creates the kind of social identity ideally suited for ISIS. The combination of the historical narratives and the contemporary means of communication enables ISIS to frame and spread its message, recruit its adherents, and replicate itself. While many scholarly and journalistic works on ISIS provide a wealth of informat...
There is no threat to Western democracies today comparable to the rise of right-wing populism. While it has played an increasing role at least since the 1990s, only the social consequences of the global financial crises in 2008 have given it its break that led to UK’s ‘Brexit’ and the election of Donald Trump as US President in 2016, as well as promoting what has been called left populism in countries that were hit the hardest by both the banking crisis and consequential neo-liberal austerity politics in the EU, such as Greece and Portugal. In 2017, the French Front National (FN) attracted many voters in the French Presidential elections; we have seen the radicalization of the Alternat...
The Research Handbook on the Sociology of Emotion investigates the role of emotions in key institutions understood as the frames and fabrics of society. It takes a critical look at society-framing institutions such as the state, the military, the market, and international organizations.
Interdisciplinary in approach, this book employs the key concepts of fragmentation and reconfiguration to consider the ways in which human experience and artistic practice can engage with and respond to the disintegration that characterises modern cities. Asking how we might unsettle and decrypt the homogeneous images of cities created by processes linked to capitalism and globalisation, it invites us to consider the possibility of reimagining and rethinking the urban spaces we inhabit. An exploration of the complex relationship between aesthetics, the arts and the city, Rethinking the City: Reconfiguration and Fragmentation will appeal to scholars across various disciplines, including philosophy, urban sociology and geography, anthropology, political theory and visual and media studies.