Simmel and 'the Social'

This book argues for the centrality of Georg Simmel's social theory to the relational and processual emphases that are often considered as much more recent developments in social theory. Situating Simmel's work in particular with respect to New Vitalism and Bruno Latour's work, the book shows that Simmel has still an enormous amount to contribute.

Olli Pyyhtinen teaches sociology at the University of Turku, Finland. His research interests include social theory, process thinking, object-oriented sociology, collectivity, and art.

Key to Abbreviations: References to Simmel's Texts	p. vii
Acknowledgements	p. x
Introduction	p. 1
On Simmel scholarship	p. 8
Conceptual portraiture	p. 14
The structure of the book	p. 19
The Social in Social Theory?	p. 22
Society and the social	p. 23
Social theory	p. 28
Sociological culture	p. 33
The social-a porous, contested or family resemblance concept?	p. 35
Relationality, Life and Philosophy	p. 38
Theory of relations	p. 39
Relationism and relativism	p. 46
Life-philosophy	p. 49
Simmel's two notions of 'life'	p. 54
Life as more-life and more-than-life	p. 58
Immanent transcendence	p. 60
The life of philosophy	p. 62
Thought and boundary	p. 65
Event Dynamics	p. 68
The event	p. 69
Eventalization through reciprocal effects	p. 75
Process and form	p. 79
Living reciprocity vs. autonomous forms	p. 81
Becomings	p. 85
Excluded Thirds, Included: On Being-with	p. 89
Being-with-you	p. 90
How is the social bond possible?	p. 94
Betweenness	p. 97
The third	p. 101
Relation as no-thing	p. 107
Relations and Circulating Objects	p. 110
Bridge and door as metaphysical objects	p. 112
Money	p. 118
Dynamics of subject and object	p. 126
Beyond dualisms	p. 128
Individuality and the Outside of Relations	p. 133
Quantitative and qualitative individualism	p. 135
The in-dividual	p. 140
The self-identity of the living being	p. 144
From types of individuals to individuated type	p. 148
Individuality of owness	p. 152
Entanglement of life in death and death in life	p. 154
A death that is owned	p. 158
Conclusion: Simmel and Contemporary Social Theory	p. 163
Simmel and Latour in comparison	p. 165
Stabilization, objects and performativity	p. 170
Life/plasma	p. 174
Notes	p. 177
References	p. 186
Glossary	p. 198
Index	p. 205
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Simmel and 'the Social'

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