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Simmel

• Main themes in the work of Simmel:
• Dualism (On one hand its this, on the other its that) e.g. Strangers: Neither here nor there.
• Aesthetics (Beauty and what people think is beautiful) - Does not matter at which point you look.
• Characters

Simmel: Characters

• Characters are the things that make society emblematic - they are not the same as roles. Examples of characters in society include the cynic, the prostitute, the stranger. The stranger is the most important; they are potential wanderers who have not yet overcome their freedom of coming and going. e.g. European Jews who used their position of a stranger to become traders. Their potential impermanence impacts the host of the stranger because they may still be there tomorrow but they will leave at some point.
• The strangers may act as an objective judge - they can tell the powerful how it is as they have no stake in the status quo and hence nothing to lose in this sense.

The Metropolis

• Home of the Objective Culture - where modernity is intensified.
• it is fast changing and demanding.
• Calculation is involved greatly here.
• feelings get dulled by constant interaction and hence we are less in touch with our feelings - we have to do this to be able to cope. freedom therefore limits - were are free to do what we want but due to the cease of emotional creativity and meaning - they are limited and choose things that they are compelled to.
• a paradox - the more freedom we have the more limited we are.

Simmel: Fashion

• A part of leisure - fills up our time and consciousness
• it changes faster to fill up the space and keeps up with the temp of life
• it raises even the unimportant important by making him the representation of a class
• makes us feel different but the same as others at the same time
• dependant on group for approval

Domination of the Objective Culture

• Gender relations
• - Thoroughly male - man used to mean human
• - Historical power relations
• Philosophy of money
• - Money shapes our experience of modernity
• - Way of measuring the productivity of labour and commodities
• Exchange
• - The exchange of personal energy, it creates inner bonds between societies. WE are becoming more dependant on others but less care is given to who these people are. We start to look at the world as a whole exchange and this affects how we see people. it is responsible for impersonal relationships between people.
• Money becomes universal measure
• - Whole world can be reduced to a measurement in money - everything has a price. it flattens cultural differences between people as everyone relates in this way.
• Means and the ends