aesthetics of social reality
Simmelian ideas have appeared frequently here at orgtheory. I recently read an interesting 1973 Social Forces piece by Murray Davis — yes, the same one who introduced the “that’s interesting!” heuristic into scientific endeavors — titled (jstor, gated): “Georg Simmel and the Aesthetics of Social Reality.”
Don’t know that the article necessarily nails all the issues, but its nevertheless definitely worth the read in terms of the links between Simmel’s aesthetic sensibilities and his social theory. Simmel’s work is replete with issues of form, geometry, art, distance and so forth — and somehow it all gets interwoven into a rather intriguing and unique vision of social relations and society.
For more Simmel, here’s an online resource with fulltext access to various Simmel pieces, and then jstor obviously has the various, translated Simmel AJS etc essays.
