Simmel and the Dialectic of the Double Boundary: The Case of the Metropolis and Mental Life |
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| Authors: | Deena Weinstein Michael A Weinstein |
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| Institution: | professor of sociology at DePaul University since 1980, received her doctorate from Purdue University in 1972. Author of seven books and more than twenty articles in twentieth-century philosophy, sociological theory, sociology of science, organization theory, voluntary associations, and mass communications and popular culture, Weinstein explores the interface between philosophy and social structure over a wide range of cultural contexts. Among her published works are Bureaucratic Opposition: Challenging Abuses at the Workplace;(1979), "Fraud in Science" (1979), Serious Rock: Bruce Springsteen/Rush/Pink Floyd (1985), and "Television as Religion" (1985). In addition Weinstein has served as an organizational consultant to governmental agencies, corporations, voluntary associations, and community groups. professor of political science at Purdue since 1974, received his doctorate from Case Western Reserve University in 1967. Recipient of the best paper prize from the Midwest Political Science Association (1969), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1973), and a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship (1975), he is the author of nineteen books and more than sixty articles in the fields of twentieth-century philosophy, political theory, sociological theory, jurisprudence, and criticism. Among Weinstein's published works are Finite Perfection: Reflections on Virtue;(1985) and Culture Critique: Fernand Dumont and New Quebec Sociology (1985), which reflect, as do his other writings, a concern with understanding the diverse manifestations of the twentieth-century mind. |
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| Abstract: | George Simmel's sociology was only one expression of his overall project of understanding the modern human condition. Works such as "The Metropolis and Mental Life" have been appropriated by sociology for their substantive insights. These works are more fully understood when they are interpreted in terms of Simmel's late philosophical writings, which are based on an image of man as standing between boundaries and therefore of being a boundary for them. In light of the boundary dialectic the metropolis becomes, for Simmel, a symbol of the failed mediations attempted in modernity between the objective culture of things and the subjective culture of personal development. |
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