The Spatial Sense of Empire : encountering Strangers with Simmel, Tocqueville and Martineau

This essay takes Georg Simmel&rsquo;s conceptualization of space as a form of sociation (Vergesellschaftung) in his 1908 masterpiece, Sociology, as a framework for critically re-reading two 19th century classics in the sociology of empire. Alexis de Tocqueville&rsquo;s Democracy in America (1835/1940) is shown to illustrate Simmel&rsquo;s understanding of social-spatial boundaries by portraying the cultural and historical geography of America as an &lsquo;optic space&rsquo; of racial (in)equality. Similarly, Harriett Martineau&rsquo;s study of morals and manners in Society in America (1837) exemplifies Simmel&rsquo;s ideas on social-spatial sensibilities with its attention to how everyday settings serve as a kind of &lsquo;acoustic space&rsquo; of gendered (un)freedom. Drawing on related arguments by recent thinkers and critics, and rectifying the relative neglect of how socio-spatial dynamics are addressed in the texts of classical sociology, the essay examines a description in each work of a particular personal encounter with strangers which exemplifies how the spatial sense of empire disrupts assumptions that new-world democracy has superseded old-world colonialism. Considered as illustrations of Simmel&rsquo;s thesis concerning the spatial orders of society, the &lsquo;traveling and anecdotal theories&rsquo; of Martineau and Tocqueville provide &lsquo;sociological allegories&rsquo; designed to instruct reading publics on how law, empire, and social mores constitute bounded fields of struggle within the contact zones of modern empire. Este art&iacute;culo toma la conceptualizaci&oacute;n del espacio como una forma de asociaci&oacute;n (Vergesellschaftung) de Georg Simmel, en su obra maestra de 1908, Sociology, como un marco en el que hacer un an&aacute;lisis cr&iacute;tico de dos cl&aacute;sicos del siglo XIX de la sociolog&iacute;a del imperio. Se toma la obra de Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835/1940), para ilustrar el concepto que Simmel ten&iacute;a de los l&iacute;mites socio-espaciales, retratando la geograf&iacute;a cultural e hist&oacute;rica de Am&eacute;rica, como un &ldquo;espacio &oacute;ptico&rdquo; de (des)igualdad racial. De forma similar, el estudio que Harriett Martineau realiza de la moral y las costumbres en Society in America (1837), ejemplifica las ideas de Simmel sobre las sensibilidades socio-espaciales, con su teor&iacute;a sobre c&oacute;mo los escenarios cotidianos son una especie de &ldquo;espacio ac&uacute;stico&rdquo; de (falta de) libertad de g&eacute;nero. A partir de argumentos relacionados de pensadores y cr&iacute;ticos recientes, y rectificando la negligencia relativa sobre c&oacute;mo se abordan las din&aacute;micas socio-espaciales en los textos cl&aacute;sicos de sociolog&iacute;a, este art&iacute;culo analiza en cada obra una descripci&oacute;n de un encuentro personal particular con extra&ntilde;os, que ejemplifica c&oacute;mo el sentido espacial del imperio altera las asunciones de que la nueva democracia del mundo ha superado al antiguo colonialismo. Las &ldquo;teor&iacute;as de viaje y an&eacute;cdotas&rdquo; de Martineau y Tocqueville, consideradas ilustraciones de las tesis de Simmel en relaci&oacute;n a los &oacute;rdenes espaciales de la sociedad, ofrecen &ldquo;alegor&iacute;as sociol&oacute;gicas&rdquo; dise&ntilde;adas para instruir al p&uacute;blico lector sobre c&oacute;mo derecho, imperio y costumbres sociales constituyen &aacute;mbitos limitados de lucha en las zonas de contacto del imperio moderno. DOWNLOAD THIS PAPER FROM SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2004301</p

Elective affinities of the Protestant ethic : Weber and the chemistry of capitalism

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Les illusions spéculaires du capitalisme : Balzac et Marx sur les fictions critiques de l’économie politique

Balzac éclaire le tissu des fictions et des fantaisies qui soutient la vie sociale moderne et fournit un canevas à partir duquel Marx tentera d’analyser la production systématique des illusions sur lesquelles reposent les relations sociales. Entre les textes de Balzac et de Marx, entre les intrigues dramatiques de l’un et les analyses historiques de l’autre, il y a cependant plus qu’une simple image en miroir ou qu’une relation analogique : ce sont deux faces d’un réalisme qui tente, selon des jugements normatifs divergents, de cerner les virtualités enfouies dans le développement du capitalisme.Balzac's insight into the web of fictions and fantasies that upheld modern social conditions provided Marx with an implicit framework within which he attempted to analyse the systematic production of illusions on which such relations depend. Between the texts of Balzac and Marx, between the dramatic scripts of the former and the historical analyses of the latter, there is more than just a mirror image or analogical relation: they are two faces of a realism that seeks, according to diverging normative judgments, to grasp the potential alternatives embedded in the actual capitalist développement.Balzac ilustra el tejido de ficciones y fantasías que sustentan la vida social moderna y provee el entramado desde el cual Marx intentará analizar la producción sistemática de las ilusiones sobre las que se basan las relaciones sociales. Hay, sin embargo, entre los textos de Balzac y de Marx, entre las intrigas dramáticas de uno y los análisis históricos del otro, más que una simple imagen reflejada o una analogía: se trata más bien de las dos caras de un realismo que intenta captar, según juicios normativos divergentes, las virtualidades ocultas en el desarrollo del capitalismo

Simmel’s Sense of Modernity : Adventures in Time and Space

Among the many ways of making sense of modernity, one to say that the present is built on the ruins of the past, and that experience itself is fragmentary; another is to say that the contemporary world is a kind controlled experiment on nature and ourselves, but an experiment that now seems to be tragically out of control. The philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel (1956-1918) suggests that the current moment might also be pictured as a kind of adventure, a leap out of the everyday customs and habitual patterns of previous periods of history and into a risky world that seems enticing, exciting, unprecedented, and unknown. Rather than sketching a broad concept of modernity, however, he examines particular cultural technologies, techniques, and functions that have induced an historical shift from the expansion of life into more-life to its intensification as more-than-life. This talk examines this thesis from Simmel’s last work Lebensanschauung (1918) with reference to his remarks in Philosophische Kultur (1911) on the technoscientific magnification of perception and the intimate experience of flirting and sexual relations, and his comments in the monograph Rembrandt (1916) on cinema and the art of dying. Despite appearing as a haphazard mélange of topics, these lesser known writings are systematic and methodical in ways that prefigure recent studies of media, technology, and culture.Arts, Faculty ofSociology, Department ofUnreviewedFacult

Kemple & Huey : Observing the Observers

Using empirical research drawn from field studies on the policing of ‘skid row’ communities, this paper illustrates some of the theoretical, methodological and ethical problems that confront the researcher who studies surveillance and counter-surveillance within these contested settings. We begin by noting how, with the increasing use of the ‘broken windows’ policing model to regulate deviant individuals and to secure derelict urban spaces, researchers may be implicated in the use of surveillance and counter-surveillance by community stakeholders. Drawing examples from direct and covert field observations, field notes, and photographs, we demonstrate that there is a significant potential for the researcher to become identified as an agent of surveillance, and as a potential target of counter-surveillance, within such settings. We conclude by considering some of the theoretical, methodological and ethical implications of the researcher’s complicity in these dynamics for both the conduct of surveillance studies in general, and for urban fieldwork in particular.Arts, Faculty ofNon UBCSociology, Department ofReviewedFacult

Writing the republic: politics and polemics in the German Ideology

With the significant amount of new attention being paid to the political and theoretical debates of the Vormärz, the decade prior to the March riots that signaled the beginning of the 1848 revolution in Germany, it is important to keep in mind that, in addition to their roles as political activists and public intellectuals, the left Hegelians were also writers — that is, they were attempting not only to describe social reality, but also to address and convince a reading public. When rereading and reassessing their work, then, it is crucial not to lose sight of the formal and rhetorical articulations of their various claims, and particularly the polemical form of so much left Hegelian discourse