Synopses & Reviews
"Of those who created the intellectual capital used to launch the enterprise of professional sociology, Georg Simmel was perhaps the most original and fecund. In search of a subject matter for sociology that would distinguish it from all other social sciences and humanistic disciplines, he charted a new field for discovery and proceeded to explore a world of novel topics in works that have guided and anticipated the thinking of generations of sociologists. Such distinctive concepts of contemporary sociology as social distance, marginality, urbanism as a way of life, role-playing, social behavior as exchange, conflict as an integrating process, dyadic encounter, circular interaction, reference groups as perspectives, and sociological ambivalence embody ideas which Simmel adumbrated more than six decades ago."—Donald N. Levine
Half of the material included in this edition of Simmel's writings represents new translations. This includes Simmel's important, lengthy, and previously untranslated "Group Expansion and Development of Individuality," as well as three selections from his most neglected work, Philosophy of Money; in addition, the introduction to Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie, chapter one of the Lebensanschauung, and three essays are translated for the first time.
About the Author
Donald N. Levine is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. He is the author of
The Flight from Ambiguity: Essays in Social and Cultural Theory, Greater Ethiopia: The Evolution of a Multiethnic Society, and
Wax and Gold: Tradition and Innovation in Ethiopian Culture, all published by the University of Chicago Press.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction by Donald N. Levine
I. Philosophy of the Social Sciences
1. How Is History Possible?
2. How Is Society Possible?
3. The Problem of Sociology
4. The Categories of Human Experience
II. Forms of Social Interaction
5. Exchange
6. Conflict
7. Domination
8. Prostitution
9. Sociability
III. Social Types
10. The Stranger
11. The Poor
12. The Miser and the Spendthrift
13. The Adventurer
14. The Nobility
IV. Forms of Individuality
15. Freedom and the Individual
16. Subjective Culture
17. Eros, Platonic and Modern
V. Individuality and Social Structure
18. Group Expansion and the Development of Individuality
19. Fashion
20. The Metropolis and Mental Life
21. Subordination and Personal Fulfillment
VI. Forms Versus Life Progress: The Dialectics of Change
22. Social Forms and Inner Needs
23. The Transcendent Character of Life
24. The Conflict in Modern Culture
Bibliographical Note