"Disruptive Tourism and its Untidy Guests envisions alternative arrangements of social life by we... more "Disruptive Tourism and its Untidy Guests envisions alternative arrangements of social life by welcoming 'the untidy guest' to discourses, theories and philosophies of tourism. Written by an author collective with backgrounds in philosophy, sociology, tourism, hospitality and development studies, the book transfers the focus of tourism theories away from managing sustainability and toward alternative – disruptive – ontologies and epistemologies for future tourist hospitalities and mobilities. The co-authors 'mess around' with tourism studies by invoking the radical potentialities of 'untidiness'. Tourism and the host-guest relations it entails are explored by means of deliberately untidy
concepts: camping, parasites, silence, unlearning and serendipities. Instead of trying to manage or tidy up tourist situations and encounters, Disruptive Tourism and its Untidy Guests embraces the messiness of human relations and argues for more creative,
embodied and ethical ontologies of tourism, hospitality and mobility.
CONTENTS
1. Introduction: Alternative Tourism Ontologies
2. Camping In Clearing; Jennie Germann Molz
3. Paradise With/Out Parasites ; Olli Pyyhtinen
4. Towards Silent Communities; Soile Veijola
5. Unlearning Through Hospitality; Emily Höckert
6. Messing Around With Serendipities; Alexander Grit
7. Conclusion: Prepositions and Other Stories"
[Catalogue blurb:] More-than-Human Sociology is a call for a bolder, more creative sociology. In ... more [Catalogue blurb:] More-than-Human Sociology is a call for a bolder, more creative sociology. In the book, Olli Pyyhtinen argues that to make sociology responsive to life in the 21st century we need a new sociological imagination, one that addresses connectivity, understands the world in which we live as both a human and non-human world, and is sensitive to the multiple scales on which things exist. A fresh and innovative take on the promise of sociology, this book will appeal to scholars and students both within sociology and the social sciences more broadly.
Co-authored by Soile Veijola, Jennie Germann Molz, Olli Pyyhtinen, Emily Höckert, and Alexander G... more Co-authored by Soile Veijola, Jennie Germann Molz, Olli Pyyhtinen, Emily Höckert, and Alexander Grit, Disruptive Tourism and its Untidy Guests envisions alternative arrangements of social life by welcoming 'the untidy guest' to discourses, theories and philosophies of tourism. Written by an author collective with backgrounds in philosophy, sociology, tourism, hospitality and development studies, the book transfers the focus of tourism theories away from managing sustainability and toward alternative – disruptive – ontologies and epistemologies for future tourist hospitalities and mobilities. The co-authors 'mess around' with tourism studies by invoking the radical potentialities of 'untidiness'. Tourism and the host-guest relations it entails are explored by means of deliberately untidy concepts: camping, parasites, silence, unlearning and serendipities. Instead of trying to manage or tidy up tourist situations and encounters, Disruptive Tourism and its Untidy Guests embraces the messiness of human relations and argues for more creative, embodied and ethical ontologies of tourism, hospitality and mobility.
Bringing social theory and philosophy to bear on popular movies, novels, myths, and fairy tales, ... more Bringing social theory and philosophy to bear on popular movies, novels, myths, and fairy tales, The Gift and its Paradoxes explores the ambiguity of the gift: it is at once both a relation and a thing, alienable and inalienable, present and poison. Challenging the nature of giving as reciprocal, the book engages critically with the work of Mauss and develops a new theory of the gift according to which the gift cannot be reduced to a model of exchange, but must instead entail a loss or sacrifice. Ultimately, the gift is examined in the book as the impossible occurrence of gratuitous giving.
In addition to exploring the conditions of possibility and impossibility of the gift, the book draws on the thought of figures such as Derrida, Serres, Simmel, Cixous, Irigaray and Heidegger to argue for the relevance of the phenomenon of the gift to broader issues in contemporary social sciences. It takes up questions concerning the constitution of community and the processes by which people are included in or excluded from it, gender relations, materiality, the economy, and the possibility that death itself could be a gift, in the form of euthanasia or self-sacrifice.
A rigorous yet accessible examination of the phenomenon of the gift in relation to a range of contemporary concerns, The Gift and its Paradoxes will appeal to scholars and students within sociology, philosophy, anthropology, political theory and film and literature studies.
Special Issue: The work of François Dépélteau (Guest Editor: Prof. Peeter Selg)
The text considers the writings of François Dépelteau from the framework of hospitality, as an in... more The text considers the writings of François Dépelteau from the framework of hospitality, as an invitation for scholars to participate in specifying the key ideas and practices of the relational sociology movement. Thereby, instead of searching for cues where he would speak about hospitality, the text explores his thinking as hospitality. It examines how his writings performatively try out and expand the possibilities of creating hospitality within the relational sociology movement. The article suggests that the antinomy between what Jacques Derrida has called unconditional and conditional hospitality proves helpful when trying to explicate Dépelteau’s views on keeping relational sociology alive as a project or intellectual movement. The difficulty of the community building, it will be maintained, comes down to finding a balance between embracing difference and protecting identity.
The paper, based on an ongoing research project conducted in Finland, examines voluntary dumpster... more The paper, based on an ongoing research project conducted in Finland, examines voluntary dumpster diving as a practice of valuation. Its main questions are: How is voluntary dumpster diving intertwined with the question of value? And, conversely, what can dumpster diving teach us about practices of valuation more generally? The article proceeds via three steps. First, in order to emphasize the creative side of dumpster diving as a practice of valuation, we draw on Georg Simmel’s theory of value, supplementing it with the concepts of actuality and virtuality, as elaborated by Gilles Deleuze. Second, we look more closely into the practicalities of valuation evident in dumpster diving. It involves a particular orientation to the urban environment that we call the scavenger gaze. Third, the informants also value the practice itself in relation to its societal relevance. They think about dumpster diving as a way of doing good and as part of an ecologically sound form of life. All in all,...
In this experimental text, we reflect in the form of a dyadic teaching diary upon a course we rec... more In this experimental text, we reflect in the form of a dyadic teaching diary upon a course we recently taught together on the ‘sociological imagination’. One of the main aims we set for the class was to ponder how the social scientific imagination could be enriched, and figure out ways to stress its social and political relevance. From the pedagogical point of view, we wanted to create a course which would disrupt the students’ oft-criticized routine of rote-learning, and in which they would learn to use digital platforms for the purpose of producing and sharing knowledge, meet each other, and have their social scientific thinking refreshed and perhaps even renewed. In pondering the weeks spent together with our students, we suggest that what gradually happened in our ‘postdigital classroom’ and outside of it was an Event—something surprising and unexpected that could not be controlled entirely.
This article is a multi-authored response to an editorial ‵Postdigital Science and Educa-tion′ pu... more This article is a multi-authored response to an editorial ‵Postdigital Science and Educa-tion′ published in 2018 by Petar Jandrić, Jeremy Knox, Tina Besley, Thomas Ryberg, Juha Suoranta and Sarah Hayes in Educational Philosophy and Theory as a mission statement for the journal Postdigital Science and Education. Nineteen authors were invited to produce their sections, followed by two author-reviewers who examined the article as a whole. Authors' responses signal the sense of urgency for developing the concept of the postdigital and caution about attempts at simplifying complex relationships between human beings and technology. Whilst the digital indeed seems to become invisible, we simultaneously need to beware of its apparent absence and to avoid overemphasizing its effects. In this attempt, authors offer a wide range of signposts for future research such as 'the critical postdigital' and 'postdigital reflexivity'; they also warn about the group's own shortcomings such as the lack of 'real' sense of collectivity. They emphasize that postdigital education must remain a common good, discuss its various negative aspects such as smartphone addiction and nomophobia, and exhibit some positive examples of postdigital educational praxis. They discuss various aspects of postdigital identities and point towards the need for a postdigital identity theory. With these varied and nuanced responses, the article opens a wide spectrum of opportunity for the development of postdigital approaches to science and education for the future.
This interview with Olli Pyyhtinen explores his recent work on the writings of Georg Simmel. It f... more This interview with Olli Pyyhtinen explores his recent work on the writings of Georg Simmel. It focuses in particular upon his new book, The Simmelian Legacy. Taking that book as its focal point, the interview examines the influence of Simmel’s work, the key concepts and ideas it provides and how we might use it today.
While the circular economy invites us to realize the potential of the so-called ‘waste-based comm... more While the circular economy invites us to realize the potential of the so-called ‘waste-based commodity frontiers’, reintegration into capitalist value chains is not the only way for discards to be resurrected. In this article, we examine the ways in which the collective of dumpster divers is organized in relation to giving, receiving and reciprocating of various waste-gifts. Our intention is not only to expand existing theorizations of the gift to new domains but also to critically interrogate them, identify their limitations and explore what dumpster diving can teach us about the gift. In particular, the analysis foregrounds the heterogeneity of gift practices. Arguing against universal notions of the gift, the article proposes that waste assumes four main forms of gifts and relations among dumpster divers: givenness (parasitic relation); solidarity-based giving (relation of reciprocity); free giving (asymmetrical relation); and non-giving, as a withdrawal from returning the discar...
The article advances a type of relational sociology that is sensitive to the continually ongoing ... more The article advances a type of relational sociology that is sensitive to the continually ongoing formation of beings and relations over the course of time. While the dynamic and fluid character of relations has been stressed by other relational scholars as well, the article suggests by drawing from the work of Simmel and anthropologist Tim Ingold that to attend to the coming-into-being and change of beings and relations, we need to alter the very grammar of considering relations: instead of fathoming them as connectionsbetweenentities, we had better examine them as lines of lifealongwhich things become, act, change, move, and grow. This is to interweave the concept of relations with the notion oflife, which the article conceptualizes by turning to the life-philosophy of Simmel. Instead of regarding life as encapsulated inside living organisms, Simmel considers it as form-giving immanent in the world’s incessant processes of becoming.
In this text, we offer a vision of waste as integral and immanent to valuation practices and argu... more In this text, we offer a vision of waste as integral and immanent to valuation practices and argue that engaging with waste materials can thereby significantly contribute to the field of valuation studies. We lay special emphasis on the intertwined practices and processes of assembling and disassembling value and waste. Creating value is a process of joining together: classifying, grouping, combining, making, re-forming. Yet it is also a process where persons, things, parts of bodies, or landscapes are disentangled, abandoned, dismissed, or corrupted. The notion of disassembly attracts attention not only to the center of the action of valuation but also to its peripheries—to things and materials which are cast aside, to spaces which accommodate that which has been disassembled, and the ambiguities and potentialities opened up by processes of disassembly. Thinking with waste also pushes us to think about how various regimes of value are connected and how they coexist and/or compete. ...
"Disruptive Tourism and its Untidy Guests envisions alternative arrangements of social life by we... more "Disruptive Tourism and its Untidy Guests envisions alternative arrangements of social life by welcoming 'the untidy guest' to discourses, theories and philosophies of tourism. Written by an author collective with backgrounds in philosophy, sociology, tourism, hospitality and development studies, the book transfers the focus of tourism theories away from managing sustainability and toward alternative – disruptive – ontologies and epistemologies for future tourist hospitalities and mobilities. The co-authors 'mess around' with tourism studies by invoking the radical potentialities of 'untidiness'. Tourism and the host-guest relations it entails are explored by means of deliberately untidy
concepts: camping, parasites, silence, unlearning and serendipities. Instead of trying to manage or tidy up tourist situations and encounters, Disruptive Tourism and its Untidy Guests embraces the messiness of human relations and argues for more creative,
embodied and ethical ontologies of tourism, hospitality and mobility.
CONTENTS
1. Introduction: Alternative Tourism Ontologies
2. Camping In Clearing; Jennie Germann Molz
3. Paradise With/Out Parasites ; Olli Pyyhtinen
4. Towards Silent Communities; Soile Veijola
5. Unlearning Through Hospitality; Emily Höckert
6. Messing Around With Serendipities; Alexander Grit
7. Conclusion: Prepositions and Other Stories"
[Catalogue blurb:] More-than-Human Sociology is a call for a bolder, more creative sociology. In ... more [Catalogue blurb:] More-than-Human Sociology is a call for a bolder, more creative sociology. In the book, Olli Pyyhtinen argues that to make sociology responsive to life in the 21st century we need a new sociological imagination, one that addresses connectivity, understands the world in which we live as both a human and non-human world, and is sensitive to the multiple scales on which things exist. A fresh and innovative take on the promise of sociology, this book will appeal to scholars and students both within sociology and the social sciences more broadly.
Co-authored by Soile Veijola, Jennie Germann Molz, Olli Pyyhtinen, Emily Höckert, and Alexander G... more Co-authored by Soile Veijola, Jennie Germann Molz, Olli Pyyhtinen, Emily Höckert, and Alexander Grit, Disruptive Tourism and its Untidy Guests envisions alternative arrangements of social life by welcoming 'the untidy guest' to discourses, theories and philosophies of tourism. Written by an author collective with backgrounds in philosophy, sociology, tourism, hospitality and development studies, the book transfers the focus of tourism theories away from managing sustainability and toward alternative – disruptive – ontologies and epistemologies for future tourist hospitalities and mobilities. The co-authors 'mess around' with tourism studies by invoking the radical potentialities of 'untidiness'. Tourism and the host-guest relations it entails are explored by means of deliberately untidy concepts: camping, parasites, silence, unlearning and serendipities. Instead of trying to manage or tidy up tourist situations and encounters, Disruptive Tourism and its Untidy Guests embraces the messiness of human relations and argues for more creative, embodied and ethical ontologies of tourism, hospitality and mobility.
Bringing social theory and philosophy to bear on popular movies, novels, myths, and fairy tales, ... more Bringing social theory and philosophy to bear on popular movies, novels, myths, and fairy tales, The Gift and its Paradoxes explores the ambiguity of the gift: it is at once both a relation and a thing, alienable and inalienable, present and poison. Challenging the nature of giving as reciprocal, the book engages critically with the work of Mauss and develops a new theory of the gift according to which the gift cannot be reduced to a model of exchange, but must instead entail a loss or sacrifice. Ultimately, the gift is examined in the book as the impossible occurrence of gratuitous giving.
In addition to exploring the conditions of possibility and impossibility of the gift, the book draws on the thought of figures such as Derrida, Serres, Simmel, Cixous, Irigaray and Heidegger to argue for the relevance of the phenomenon of the gift to broader issues in contemporary social sciences. It takes up questions concerning the constitution of community and the processes by which people are included in or excluded from it, gender relations, materiality, the economy, and the possibility that death itself could be a gift, in the form of euthanasia or self-sacrifice.
A rigorous yet accessible examination of the phenomenon of the gift in relation to a range of contemporary concerns, The Gift and its Paradoxes will appeal to scholars and students within sociology, philosophy, anthropology, political theory and film and literature studies.
Special Issue: The work of François Dépélteau (Guest Editor: Prof. Peeter Selg)
The text considers the writings of François Dépelteau from the framework of hospitality, as an in... more The text considers the writings of François Dépelteau from the framework of hospitality, as an invitation for scholars to participate in specifying the key ideas and practices of the relational sociology movement. Thereby, instead of searching for cues where he would speak about hospitality, the text explores his thinking as hospitality. It examines how his writings performatively try out and expand the possibilities of creating hospitality within the relational sociology movement. The article suggests that the antinomy between what Jacques Derrida has called unconditional and conditional hospitality proves helpful when trying to explicate Dépelteau’s views on keeping relational sociology alive as a project or intellectual movement. The difficulty of the community building, it will be maintained, comes down to finding a balance between embracing difference and protecting identity.
The paper, based on an ongoing research project conducted in Finland, examines voluntary dumpster... more The paper, based on an ongoing research project conducted in Finland, examines voluntary dumpster diving as a practice of valuation. Its main questions are: How is voluntary dumpster diving intertwined with the question of value? And, conversely, what can dumpster diving teach us about practices of valuation more generally? The article proceeds via three steps. First, in order to emphasize the creative side of dumpster diving as a practice of valuation, we draw on Georg Simmel’s theory of value, supplementing it with the concepts of actuality and virtuality, as elaborated by Gilles Deleuze. Second, we look more closely into the practicalities of valuation evident in dumpster diving. It involves a particular orientation to the urban environment that we call the scavenger gaze. Third, the informants also value the practice itself in relation to its societal relevance. They think about dumpster diving as a way of doing good and as part of an ecologically sound form of life. All in all,...
In this experimental text, we reflect in the form of a dyadic teaching diary upon a course we rec... more In this experimental text, we reflect in the form of a dyadic teaching diary upon a course we recently taught together on the ‘sociological imagination’. One of the main aims we set for the class was to ponder how the social scientific imagination could be enriched, and figure out ways to stress its social and political relevance. From the pedagogical point of view, we wanted to create a course which would disrupt the students’ oft-criticized routine of rote-learning, and in which they would learn to use digital platforms for the purpose of producing and sharing knowledge, meet each other, and have their social scientific thinking refreshed and perhaps even renewed. In pondering the weeks spent together with our students, we suggest that what gradually happened in our ‘postdigital classroom’ and outside of it was an Event—something surprising and unexpected that could not be controlled entirely.
This article is a multi-authored response to an editorial ‵Postdigital Science and Educa-tion′ pu... more This article is a multi-authored response to an editorial ‵Postdigital Science and Educa-tion′ published in 2018 by Petar Jandrić, Jeremy Knox, Tina Besley, Thomas Ryberg, Juha Suoranta and Sarah Hayes in Educational Philosophy and Theory as a mission statement for the journal Postdigital Science and Education. Nineteen authors were invited to produce their sections, followed by two author-reviewers who examined the article as a whole. Authors' responses signal the sense of urgency for developing the concept of the postdigital and caution about attempts at simplifying complex relationships between human beings and technology. Whilst the digital indeed seems to become invisible, we simultaneously need to beware of its apparent absence and to avoid overemphasizing its effects. In this attempt, authors offer a wide range of signposts for future research such as 'the critical postdigital' and 'postdigital reflexivity'; they also warn about the group's own shortcomings such as the lack of 'real' sense of collectivity. They emphasize that postdigital education must remain a common good, discuss its various negative aspects such as smartphone addiction and nomophobia, and exhibit some positive examples of postdigital educational praxis. They discuss various aspects of postdigital identities and point towards the need for a postdigital identity theory. With these varied and nuanced responses, the article opens a wide spectrum of opportunity for the development of postdigital approaches to science and education for the future.
This interview with Olli Pyyhtinen explores his recent work on the writings of Georg Simmel. It f... more This interview with Olli Pyyhtinen explores his recent work on the writings of Georg Simmel. It focuses in particular upon his new book, The Simmelian Legacy. Taking that book as its focal point, the interview examines the influence of Simmel’s work, the key concepts and ideas it provides and how we might use it today.
While the circular economy invites us to realize the potential of the so-called ‘waste-based comm... more While the circular economy invites us to realize the potential of the so-called ‘waste-based commodity frontiers’, reintegration into capitalist value chains is not the only way for discards to be resurrected. In this article, we examine the ways in which the collective of dumpster divers is organized in relation to giving, receiving and reciprocating of various waste-gifts. Our intention is not only to expand existing theorizations of the gift to new domains but also to critically interrogate them, identify their limitations and explore what dumpster diving can teach us about the gift. In particular, the analysis foregrounds the heterogeneity of gift practices. Arguing against universal notions of the gift, the article proposes that waste assumes four main forms of gifts and relations among dumpster divers: givenness (parasitic relation); solidarity-based giving (relation of reciprocity); free giving (asymmetrical relation); and non-giving, as a withdrawal from returning the discar...
The article advances a type of relational sociology that is sensitive to the continually ongoing ... more The article advances a type of relational sociology that is sensitive to the continually ongoing formation of beings and relations over the course of time. While the dynamic and fluid character of relations has been stressed by other relational scholars as well, the article suggests by drawing from the work of Simmel and anthropologist Tim Ingold that to attend to the coming-into-being and change of beings and relations, we need to alter the very grammar of considering relations: instead of fathoming them as connectionsbetweenentities, we had better examine them as lines of lifealongwhich things become, act, change, move, and grow. This is to interweave the concept of relations with the notion oflife, which the article conceptualizes by turning to the life-philosophy of Simmel. Instead of regarding life as encapsulated inside living organisms, Simmel considers it as form-giving immanent in the world’s incessant processes of becoming.
In this text, we offer a vision of waste as integral and immanent to valuation practices and argu... more In this text, we offer a vision of waste as integral and immanent to valuation practices and argue that engaging with waste materials can thereby significantly contribute to the field of valuation studies. We lay special emphasis on the intertwined practices and processes of assembling and disassembling value and waste. Creating value is a process of joining together: classifying, grouping, combining, making, re-forming. Yet it is also a process where persons, things, parts of bodies, or landscapes are disentangled, abandoned, dismissed, or corrupted. The notion of disassembly attracts attention not only to the center of the action of valuation but also to its peripheries—to things and materials which are cast aside, to spaces which accommodate that which has been disassembled, and the ambiguities and potentialities opened up by processes of disassembly. Thinking with waste also pushes us to think about how various regimes of value are connected and how they coexist and/or compete. ...
Dumpster diving for food implies using discarded edibles found in
waste containers behind superma... more Dumpster diving for food implies using discarded edibles found in waste containers behind supermarkets, for example. People who voluntarily engage in this activity suggest that it is a form of hands-on social critique. In this article, we use interview materials to describe and conceptualize this practice. The main question we pose is: in what way is voluntary dumpster diving a ‘critical practice’? Drawing on the pragmatic sociology of critique, we show how it is a question of an entangled practice in multiple ways: first, dumpster diving is at once a means of contestation and experimentation on the limits of the contemporary form of life and yet simply a way of getting food for free or having fun with friends; second, while being a thoroughly rational endeavour for its practitioners, the activity is simultaneously rife with affect; finally, although dumpster divers are fully aware that they are dependent on the capitalistic form of food supply, the practice allows them to challenge its institutional self-evidences and distance themselves from it.
The text considers the writings of François Dépelteau from the framework of hospitality, as an in... more The text considers the writings of François Dépelteau from the framework of hospitality, as an invitation for scholars to participate in specifying the key ideas and practices of the relational sociology movement. Thereby, instead of searching for cues where he would speak about hospitality, the text explores his thinking as hospitality. It examines how his writings performatively try out and expand the possibilities of creating hospitality within the relational sociology movement. The article suggests that the antinomy between what Jacques Derrida has called unconditional and conditional hospitality proves helpful when trying to explicate Dépelteau's views on keeping relational sociology alive as a project or intellectual movement. The difficulty of the community building, it will be maintained, comes down to finding a balance between embracing difference and protecting identity.
In this text, we offer a vision of waste as integral and immanent to valuation practices and argu... more In this text, we offer a vision of waste as integral and immanent to valuation practices and argue that engaging with waste materials can thereby significantly contribute to the field of valuation studies. We lay special emphasis on the intertwined practices and processes of assembling and disassembling value and waste. Creating value is a process of joining together: classifying, grouping, combining, making, reforming. Yet it is also a process where persons, things, parts of bodies, or landscapes are disentangled, abandoned, dismissed, or corrupted. The notion of disassembly attracts attention not only to the center of the action of valuation but also to its peripheries-to things and materials which are cast aside, to spaces which accommodate that which has been disassembled, and the ambiguities and potentialities opened up by processes of disassembly. Thinking with waste also pushes us to think about how various regimes of value are connected and how they coexist and/or compete. As such, waste is not a coherent thing, but rather one that gets displaced and transformed in valuing practices which coexist in various ways.
While the circular economy invites us to realize the potential of the so-called 'wastebased commo... more While the circular economy invites us to realize the potential of the so-called 'wastebased commodity frontiers', reintegration into capitalist value chains is not the only way for discards to be resurrected. In this article, we examine the ways in which the collective of dumpster divers is organized in relation to giving, receiving and reciprocating of various waste-gifts. Our intention is not only to expand existing theorizations of the gift to new domains but also to critically interrogate them, identify their limitations and explore what dumpster diving can teach us about the gift. In particular, the analysis foregrounds the heterogeneity of gift practices. Arguing against universal notions of the gift, the article proposes that waste assumes four main forms of gifts and relations among dumpster divers: givenness (parasitic relation); solidarity-based giving (relation of reciprocity); free giving (asymmetrical relation); and non-giving, as a withdrawal from returning the discards to nature conceived as an Other (the relation of non-relation).
The article examines the six-volume autobiographical novel cycle My Struggle by the contemporary ... more The article examines the six-volume autobiographical novel cycle My Struggle by the contemporary Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard as a case of parrhe ¯ sia, that is, telling the truth about oneself. The novel poses writing as a problem, in terms of truth. By exploring through My Struggle the preconditions, consequences, and difficulty of speaking the truth and how the practice may contravene social norms, the paper tries to get at the role that secrecy and truthfulness play in and for social relationships. In exposing his innermost thoughts, feelings, and desires and revealing family secrets for everyone to see and read about them, Knausgaard exceeded rules that govern sociality and felt obliged to be inconsiderate to others, on whom the parrhesiast practice nevertheless always depends. Ultimately, the novel is a freedom experiment that fails, transcending the boundary between art and life, literature and the social.
The article proposes that if sociology is to make sense of a world that is
ever more complex and ... more The article proposes that if sociology is to make sense of a world that is ever more complex and complicated, it is important to reconsider the scale(s) of our relations and actions. Instead of assuming a nested vertical hierarchy of the micro to macro binary, scale should be treated not only as multiple, but also as something produced and sustained in practice. Coming to grips with the complex world, we are living in also necessitates attending to the conduits and connections between various sites, fields, and terrains to which our lives are entangled. The article concludes with a note on the marginalization of sociology from public discussions, and it argues that it is possibly by attending to ambiguity and to the unfinished making of our contemporary world that sociology might have the most to give to discussions about the economy, about the future of humanity, and how to organize society.
This article is an imagined dialogue between Weber and Simmel which makes a modest use of some of... more This article is an imagined dialogue between Weber and Simmel which makes a modest use of some of the resources of theatrical play in order to provide an overall portrait of both thinkers and to bring their thought to bear on our present. The dialogue consists of three acts focused on three central problematics in as many critical moments in Weber and Simmel’s lives: Act I takes place during the preparations for the first conference of the German Sociological Association and thus deals with the constitution of sociology as a socio-cultural science. Act II takes place amidst the First World War and its theme is evidently politics. Finally, Act III, where our two characters correspond instead of maintaining a face-to-face dialogue, is situated towards the end of the war and focuses on the attitude to life and indeed to death, as Simmel’s tragic yet admirable death takes place then. A brief introduction explains how we tried to use the possibilities of the dialogical form to expound Weber’s and Simmel’s thought, to compel them to confront their own blind spots and ‘unthoughts’, as well as to explore new ways of teaching the classics and transmitting their thought.
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Books by Olli Pyyhtinen
concepts: camping, parasites, silence, unlearning and serendipities. Instead of trying to manage or tidy up tourist situations and encounters, Disruptive Tourism and its Untidy Guests embraces the messiness of human relations and argues for more creative,
embodied and ethical ontologies of tourism, hospitality and mobility.
CONTENTS
1. Introduction: Alternative Tourism Ontologies
2. Camping In Clearing; Jennie Germann Molz
3. Paradise With/Out Parasites ; Olli Pyyhtinen
4. Towards Silent Communities; Soile Veijola
5. Unlearning Through Hospitality; Emily Höckert
6. Messing Around With Serendipities; Alexander Grit
7. Conclusion: Prepositions and Other Stories"
In addition to exploring the conditions of possibility and impossibility of the gift, the book draws on the thought of figures such as Derrida, Serres, Simmel, Cixous, Irigaray and Heidegger to argue for the relevance of the phenomenon of the gift to broader issues in contemporary social sciences. It takes up questions concerning the constitution of community and the processes by which people are included in or excluded from it, gender relations, materiality, the economy, and the possibility that death itself could be a gift, in the form of euthanasia or self-sacrifice.
A rigorous yet accessible examination of the phenomenon of the gift in relation to a range of contemporary concerns, The Gift and its Paradoxes will appeal to scholars and students within sociology, philosophy, anthropology, political theory and film and literature studies.
Papers by Olli Pyyhtinen
concepts: camping, parasites, silence, unlearning and serendipities. Instead of trying to manage or tidy up tourist situations and encounters, Disruptive Tourism and its Untidy Guests embraces the messiness of human relations and argues for more creative,
embodied and ethical ontologies of tourism, hospitality and mobility.
CONTENTS
1. Introduction: Alternative Tourism Ontologies
2. Camping In Clearing; Jennie Germann Molz
3. Paradise With/Out Parasites ; Olli Pyyhtinen
4. Towards Silent Communities; Soile Veijola
5. Unlearning Through Hospitality; Emily Höckert
6. Messing Around With Serendipities; Alexander Grit
7. Conclusion: Prepositions and Other Stories"
In addition to exploring the conditions of possibility and impossibility of the gift, the book draws on the thought of figures such as Derrida, Serres, Simmel, Cixous, Irigaray and Heidegger to argue for the relevance of the phenomenon of the gift to broader issues in contemporary social sciences. It takes up questions concerning the constitution of community and the processes by which people are included in or excluded from it, gender relations, materiality, the economy, and the possibility that death itself could be a gift, in the form of euthanasia or self-sacrifice.
A rigorous yet accessible examination of the phenomenon of the gift in relation to a range of contemporary concerns, The Gift and its Paradoxes will appeal to scholars and students within sociology, philosophy, anthropology, political theory and film and literature studies.
waste containers behind supermarkets, for example. People who
voluntarily engage in this activity suggest that it is a form of
hands-on social critique. In this article, we use interview materials
to describe and conceptualize this practice. The main question
we pose is: in what way is voluntary dumpster diving a ‘critical
practice’? Drawing on the pragmatic sociology of critique, we
show how it is a question of an entangled practice in multiple
ways: first, dumpster diving is at once a means of contestation
and experimentation on the limits of the contemporary form of
life and yet simply a way of getting food for free or having fun
with friends; second, while being a thoroughly rational endeavour
for its practitioners, the activity is simultaneously rife with affect;
finally, although dumpster divers are fully aware that they are
dependent on the capitalistic form of food supply, the practice
allows them to challenge its institutional self-evidences and
distance themselves from it.
ever more complex and complicated, it is important to reconsider the
scale(s) of our relations and actions. Instead of assuming a nested
vertical hierarchy of the micro to macro binary, scale should be treated
not only as multiple, but also as something produced and sustained in
practice. Coming to grips with the complex world, we are living in also
necessitates attending to the conduits and connections between various
sites, fields, and terrains to which our lives are entangled. The article
concludes with a note on the marginalization of sociology from public
discussions, and it argues that it is possibly by attending to ambiguity
and to the unfinished making of our contemporary world that sociology
might have the most to give to discussions about the economy, about the future of humanity, and how to organize society.