Sociability Matters: Working through common senses of valued social form and exchange

TY - CONF

T1 - Sociability Matters: Working through common senses of valued social form and exchange

AU - Anderson, Sally Dean

PY - 2015/11

Y1 - 2015/11

N2 - Our search for ways to conceptualize human life leads to a constant casting, recasting and casting off of concepts that create (and phase out) particular domains of investigation. Drawing from and on common senses, a concept like sociability retains a positive feel. In the abstract, this generic English term points (approvingly) to extra-familiar interaction, to exosociality or civil sociality. This paper addresses the ‘aura of approval’ (Strathern 2014) surrounding sociability, and argues that its valuation, its very lack of neutrality, make it a useful a heuristic device for inquiring into political, aesthetic, moral and ludic concerns with human sociation and relation. In this, Simmel’s ideal type of ‘pure’ sociability cannot be directly applied to present political and moral concerns with civil sociation, including academic concerns with cosmopolitanism. Yet it does open for useful and even pressing questions of how people engage strangers as familiars and vice versa. Incorporating the stranger(r) as familiar as well as estranging the familiar are not just analytical strategies. As generic acts of sociability, they are at the heart of human sociation.

AB - Our search for ways to conceptualize human life leads to a constant casting, recasting and casting off of concepts that create (and phase out) particular domains of investigation. Drawing from and on common senses, a concept like sociability retains a positive feel. In the abstract, this generic English term points (approvingly) to extra-familiar interaction, to exosociality or civil sociality. This paper addresses the ‘aura of approval’ (Strathern 2014) surrounding sociability, and argues that its valuation, its very lack of neutrality, make it a useful a heuristic device for inquiring into political, aesthetic, moral and ludic concerns with human sociation and relation. In this, Simmel’s ideal type of ‘pure’ sociability cannot be directly applied to present political and moral concerns with civil sociation, including academic concerns with cosmopolitanism. Yet it does open for useful and even pressing questions of how people engage strangers as familiars and vice versa. Incorporating the stranger(r) as familiar as well as estranging the familiar are not just analytical strategies. As generic acts of sociability, they are at the heart of human sociation.

KW - sociability

KW - valuation

KW - morality

KW - social exchange

KW - familiar

KW - stranger

UR - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319277035_Sociability_matters_Working_through_common_senses_of_valued_social_form_and_exchange

M3 - Paper

T2 - AAA

Y2 - 17 November 2015 through 22 November 2015

ER -