The Simmelian Legacy - Paperback

by Olli Pyyhtinen (Author)

While Georg Simmel is widely known, the impact of his work has been far from straightforward, with the ways in which his ideas have been taken up by later thinkers as complex and diverse as the ideas themselves. The Simmelian Legacy is a comprehensive study of the work of this influential sociologist and philosopher and its reception in the Anglophone, German, and French intellectual worlds.

By returning to Simmel and his legacy, this text gives voice to a corpus of vast significance and great potential that has lived too much in the shadows. It examines how his relational mode of thought transforms the landscape of sociological problems to subvert conventional conceptions of Simmel's oeuvre as well as of sociology's history. It not only rediscovers key dimensions of Simmel's thought, but also explores its gradual and uneven re-emergence within subsequent scholarship.

This is an engaging and lucid, intellectually illuminating and thoroughly accessible overview of the thought of one of sociology's key thinkers that will be essential reading for both scholars and students of sociology and social theory.

Back Jacket

The Simmelian Legacy is a comprehensive study of the work of sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel (1858-1918) and its reception in the Anglophone, German, and French intellectual worlds. By returning to Simmel and rediscovering his legacy, the book gives voice to a corpus of vast significance and great potential that nevertheless has lived too much in the shadows. Author Olli Pyyhtinen argues that Simmel's most significant contribution to sociology consists above all of his relational mode of thought. By examining how that thought transforms the landscape of sociological problems, The Simmelian Legacy subverts conventional conceptions of both Simmel's oeuvre and sociology's history. The book not only rediscovers key dimensions of Simmel's thought and neglected lines of flight, but also explores its gradual and uneven re-emergence within subsequent scholarship. The Simmelian Legacy will appeal to both students and scholars of varying degrees of familiarity with Simmel, and the reader will take away an abundance of insights and provocative ideas.

Author Biography

Olli Pyyhtinen is Associate Professor at the New Social Research programme at the University of Tampere, Finland. He is the author of Simmel and 'the Social' (Palgrave, 2010), The Gift and Its Paradoxes (2014) and More-than-Human Sociology (Palgrave, 2015), and one of the authors of Disruptive Tourism and Its Untidy Guests (Palgrave, 2014). He has also edited the volume The Anthem Companion to Georg Simmel (2016) together with Thomas Kemple. Currently Pyyhtinen is also the editor-in-chief of the Finnish national sociology journal Sosiologia.
Olli Pyyhtinen is Associate Professor at the New Social Research programme at the University of Tampere, Finland. He is the author of Simmel and 'the Social' (Palgrave, 2010), The Gift and Its Paradoxes (2014) and More-than-Human Sociology (Palgrave, 2015), and one of the authors of Disruptive Tourism and Its Untidy Guests (Palgrave, 2014). He has also edited the volume The Anthem Companion to Georg Simmel (2016) together with Thomas Kemple. Currently Pyyhtinen is also the editor-in-chief of the Finnish national sociology journal Sosiologia.