Acta Sociologica
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From Value to Consumption. A Social- theoretical Perspective on
Simmel's Philosophie des Geldes
Roberta Sassatelli
Acta Sociologica 2000; 43; 207
DOI: 10.1177/000169930004300302
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From Value to
Consumption. A Socialtheoretical Perspective on Simmel’s Philosophie
des Geldes
Roberta Sassatelli
University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
ABSTRACT
Re-interpreting Simmel’s work on money as an attempt to develop a critical sociology of
consumption from a relativist theory of value, this paper illustrates the extent to which
it may be seen as something more, and different than, sociological impressionism. The
modern social space of valuation is chiefly defined by the development of money
economy within metropolitan settings. This allows for the public commensurability of
values and pushes for their private incompatibility. Subjectivism is heightened in so far
as individuals’ capacity to sustain difference is vital to social, objective exchange.
Contrary to neo-classical economics, the appreciation of individual choice entails for
Simmel a critical appraisal of the social conditions of its existence which results in a
discussion of the risks associated with the pressure to perform as autonomous choosers.
The paper concludes with a view on what may be a Simmelian sociology of
consumption, one which enriches the classical focus on social distinction with a critical
concern for the modern conditions of valuation and self-constitution. Fashion and style
may be conceived of as techniques of consumption that, embodying particular
combinations of difference and indifference, help govern the modern world of goods. In
this view, these mundane practices have the potential to function as a balancing
practice of self-constitution, taking place between the indifference of the market which
allows individualization, and the risk that the individuality thus constituted remains
empty, a reproducer of commensurability unable to bestow value on things.
Roberta Sassatelli, School
of Economic and Social Studies,
E-mail. (R. [email protected]. uk)
© Scandinavian Sociological Association
to Lukacs ( 1918:145-146), Simmel
the ’genuine philosopher of impressionism’.
a ’dazzling stimulator’ who never ’brought
matters to a close’. Even some recent works
such as David Frisby’s influential Sociological
Impressionism ( 1981 ), which has initiated a
revival of interest in Simmel’s writings, have
reinforced such a picture. Frisby envisages his
own volume as a monograph on Sinunel’s social
theory. However, his call for a social-theoretical
was
7TJ, UK.
2000
1. Introduction
According
UEA Norwich NR4
appraisal of Simmel’s work is at odds with his
aestheticizing reduction of Simmel to a sociological flaneur. Aimed at drawing out ’the
significance of the interaction between Simmel’ss
sociological and aesthetic concerns’ (Frisby
1992a:169) along much beaten routes, Frisby’s
wealth of documentary material could have
1
brought him to no where else.
In this paper I start from the consideration
that to conceive of Simmer perspectivism as
sociological impressionism is to foreclose any
possibility of tracing some substantive theore-
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208
tical unity in his writings. Simmel’s insistence
the ambivalence of any observation or social
arrangement may, for example, become at once
a deficiency of resolution and an excess of
on
malleability.
His
reducible to a
dismissed as
writings are thereby easily
prophetic pastiche, celebrated or
an anti-litteram
postmodernist
multifaceted urban commodireading would be particularly
inappropriate for Simmel’s masterpiece Philosophie des Geldes ([1907] 1990). This work is
increasingly considered central to Simmel’s
entire opus (Rammstedt 1992; Tenbruck
1958). After a century, we cannot dismiss its
theoretical relevance. My aim. therefore, is to
offer a social-theoretical perspective, however
partial it may be, on how to make systematic
use of an innovative author. In particular, I
will argue that Simmel’s book on money
may be seen as the first attempt to build a
sociology of consumption founded on a theory
of valued2
To proceed in this direction I will avoid
splitting Simmel in two: the philosopher and the
sociologist. Especially in the Anglo-American
world there has been a tendency to play down
the former. I would like to take his spirit whole,
on the understanding that only so will we not
forget one of the most important lessons he had
to teach. The systematical task I have set for
myself will probably appear foreign to Simmel’s
style. Yet, taking the Plrilosophie as the first and
founding piece of a puzzle, and drawing on the
other various ramifications of his opus to
proceed with the design, a rather coherent
picture will slowly emerge.
commentary
on
fication. Such
a
_
2.
Perpectivism and the subject/object
relationship
Perspectivism entails the notion that knowledge
is always an outlook from a perspective. In
Simmel, this goes with the idea that the concept
of truth is
meaningful and
not in spite of truth
because it is relative. Such a
possible,
access
to truth is
but
stands as
the foundation of Simmel’s relativist theory of
value. In order to consider his theory of value as
linked to what could now be named a sociology
of consumption, we need to recognize his
epistemological position. It is Simmel’s epistemology which gave way to a relativist theory of
value and which, in turn, amounted to a
sociological analysis of the socio-cultural conditions of subjective valuation in commercial
being relative,
concern
modernity. Thereby, instead of understanding
Simmel’s perspectivism as merely the sign of the
nrnour de [’art poiii- [’art or as the result of a blase
detachment, my interpretation takes him at his
word.
Rather than being grounded in some kind
of absolute foundation - i.e. use value or labour
the process of valuation is for Simmel a
-
continuous
’regressus
in
infitiitmn’ unfolding
social interaction (Simmel 1898, in
Gassen and Landmann 1958:94; see also
Boudon 1989: Cavalli 1989: Kaern 1990:
Levine 1985: Lichtblau 1991; Oakes 1985).
Simmel could thereby only turn to what
appeared as typical of the modern social space
of valuation, namely the development of a
money economy within metropolitan settings.
We may consider that it is to provide the
necessary sociological horizon to his theory of
value that even his famous essay on the
metropolis was written. Simmel was indeed
well aware that his interest in the metropolitan
embeddedness of modern commercial culture
was tied to his experience as a Berliner in a
period of formidable cultural and economic
change (Gassen and Landmann 1958). All the
same, his observations suggest something in
more theoretical terms about the social construction of value. Berlin offered the pretext and
the context for Simmel to speculate on the fact
that, when every single property may become
an object for sale, the value of property itself
changes. It also helped him in figuring out that,
when money exchange replaces personal obligations with impersonal networks of functions.
people’s values change.
In many passages of Die Grossstadte und
das Geistsle~~en ([1903]1971) concern for the
changing conditions of valuation clearly
emerges. The metropolis is depicted by Simmel
as a catalyst of money economy. Metropolitan
commercial culture entails an extension of
subjective meanings and wants beyond the
immediate spatial and temporal networking of
the subject. Just as individual life in the
metropolis ’is extended in a wave-like motion
over a broader national and international area’,
so ’production for the market’ means production for ’entirely unknown purchasers who
never appear in the actual field of vision of the
producers themselves’ ( Simmel [19 3] 1971:
3 3 5. 327). Simmel considers that such transformations are not confined to the superficial
level, i.e. to the growth of ’de-personalized’
modalities of social relations like commercial or
polite encounters governed by discretion. On the
across
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209
contrary, they reach the ’depths of the soul’,
being bound with the ’meaning and the style of
life’ ([1903] 1971:328). Everyday life has been
filled with ’weighing, calculating, enumerating
and the reduction of qualitative values to
quantitative terms’; relationships
defined with
can now
be
unprecedented degree of ’precision’, ’certainty in the definition of the
equalities and inequalities’ and ’unambiguousness in agreements and arrangements’ ( [ 190 3]
1971:328). An image of the objectivity of these
relations emerges alongside the necessity for the
an
individual to make
sense
and govern such
objectivity. Accordingly, the inhabitants of the
large, commercial metropolis of modernity are
becoming more and more calculating. Unable to
realize an utopia of perfect calculability, commercial modernity still implies a process of
intellectualization: city-dwellers develop a capacity
to
think of remote ends and of
3
complex chains of means.3
a
Placing
greater emphasis
ever more
on
their
ambivalent nature, Simmel develops these
themes in his Philosophie des Geldes. Emile
Durkheim (1901:145) defined this work as
’spurious speculation’ mainly for methodological reasons and for what may now appear an
asset. The Plzilosophie is, in fact, an example of
the most perilous interdisciplinary pursuit
within modern episteme, namely a conscious
and outspoken attempt to bridge philosophy and
sociology. In particular, Simmel wanted to
survey both the epistemological and the social
preconditions of economic organization. He
maintains that ’the fact that two people
exchange their products is by no means simply
an economic fact. Such fact - that is, one whose
content would be exhausted in the image that
economics presents of it - does not exist’
(Simmel [1907] 1990:55). Like any other
science, including the natural sciences, economics does not reproduce reality. It rather
offers a perspective on it (Simmel 1892). Simmel
thus sets out to develop a broader picture
pursuing two complementary viewpoints. On
the one hand, he addresses the epistemological
prerequisites of our perception of reality as
economy, ’the preconditions that, situated in
mental states, in social relations and in the
logical structure of reality and values, give
money its meaning and its practical position’;
on the other hand. he considers the social
circumstances which are both the product and
the effect of the ’historical phenomenon of
money’ influencing subjective experience, the
’inner world’ of the subjects, their ’vitality’. the
’linking of their fates’, their ’culture’ (Simmel
[1907] 1990:54).
In the Philosophie, market exchange circuits are seen as defining, from the institutional
’objective’ point of view, the modern relation
between subjects and objects. A focus on the
subject/object relationship is crucial for Simmel’s argumentation. This is so for at least two
reasons.
Firstly, it offers a framework for
spinning epistemological and sociological concerns together. By shaping the subject/object
relation, money exchange casts the value of
specific objects, contributes to the constitution
of personal identity and moulds knowledge. It is
in this sense that Simmel described his Philosophie as ’a book in which I seek to exhibit the
spiritual bases and the spiritual significance of
economic life’, trying to show the relationships
between ’the forms of the economy’ and the
forms of subjectivity or ’the spheres of interest
making up internal life’ (Simmel [1900b]
1993:62). Secondly, such focus allows Simmel
to study material culture as such, in its takenfor-grantedness. It is through material culture,
through the objects that people have defined in
previous interactions via the entire spectrum of
economic action - exchange, consumption and
production - that the social process takes place.
The peculiarity of material culture in commercial modernity may thus be addressed in its own
terms, rather than being reduced to productionist concerns as Karl Marx ( [ 1867] 19928) did
and, with very different emphasis, even Max
Weber ([1904] 1976) was tempted to do.
3.
Money
economy
Value and valuation
To follow this path through we need to consider
in some detail Simmel’s theory of value.
Revealing his Kantian roots, Simmel conceives
value and
reality
as
two
mutually independent
categories. Our ’mind
is not simply a passive
mirror of reality’, it lives ’in a world of values
which arranges the contents of reality in an
autonomous order’ (Simmel [1907] 1990:60~.
Kantian and neo-Kantian tradition in particular
conceived the subject as the creator of the
meaning and value of objects. Simmel regarded
value not as a characteristic of things, but as a
relational concept, a judgement on objects
which rests in the subject. He thus clearly
departed from sensationalism, running from
John Locke through Adam Smith and up to
Marx. with its postulate that objects not merely
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210
offer occasions for valuation
sensational cause of it.
but
are
the
Marx is an explicit target for Simmel’s
Plzilosopllie. Marx operated within an epistemological grammar which conceived the deep
value of a commodity as ’use value’, which is
’conditioned by the physical properties of the
commodity and has no existence apart from the
latter’ < [ 1 8 6 7 ] 1928:126). As with Smith,
objects act prior to subjects, value is generated
from them and the notion of value actually
employed is constantly drawn back to the
contribution of labour ( Dumont 1977: Rubin
1972; Shapiro 1993). We may, therefore,
contemplate that the value of objects derives
from their material relationship with the
human body and that it is through human
productivity that these values can be enhanced.
All in all, utility is an objective property of
things and is objectively realized by labour. The
subjectivity involved in Marx’s labour theory of
value is not one which ’produces value through
perspective. It is the subjectivity involved in
making objects materially available for oneself
in
an
economic
way’ (Shapiro 1993:62).
Labour is the source of value both as its concrete
measure and as its normative foundation. On
the one hand, moulded by the economic
’conditions of production normal for a given
society and with the average degree of skill and
intensity of labour prevalent in that society’
(Marx [1867]] 19? 8:129 ),
it
directly quantifies
the value of each commodity. The ’greater the
productivity of labour, the less the labour-time
required to produce an article, the less the mass
of labour crystallized in that article, and the less
its value’ ([1867]] 1928:131). On the other
hand, as ’the universal condition for the
metabolic interaction between man and nature’
([1867] 1928:290), labour ought to testify to
the determination of man as a man, his talents
and his striving for self-realization.
Hence, it is only partly true that Simmel did
not intend to pursue a substantive critique of
historical materialism (Cavalli 1989). His epistemology naturally yields to substantive arguments. For example, he repeatedly stresses the
cultural embeddedness of commercial capitalism. Economy and culture are ’in such close
integration that no one is able to say whether it
was the former that affected the latter or vice
versa’ (Simmel [1903]1971:327). More to the
point, Simmel’s relativism implies not only a
critique of teleology, but also a refusal to
indicate an absolute goal inherent in the
determination of mankind. He does not postu-
late some moral characteristics as unavoidable
human endowment. He rather sees human
beings as cognitive and affective operators.
This marks the gap with Marx. In Marx’s
analysis it is the primacy assigned to man’s
labour as universal and objective foundation of
values which opens the theoretical space for a
notion of alienation. Only what is essentially
itself and then
proper to mankind can
alienate itself from people. This essential
element is chiefly defined by production and.
as the creative transformation of the world, it is
an ’end in itself’ amounting to the ’absolute
working-out of (human)creative potentiality’
estrange
(Marx [1857] 1973:488). Postulating a certain
notion of what is - and ought to be - a human
being, the labour theory of value ultimately
yields to the warning that modern people are
alienated from their humanity. Modern value
construction within money exchange circuits
thereby results in abominations of personality.
In opposition to Marx’s normativism.
Simmel’s relativist theory of value aims to
show that ’an absolute is not required as the
conceptual counterpart to the relativity of
things’ ([1907] 1990:104). Just as each
description depends on aprioristic assumptions
working as to make description possible, so
values have no universal, objective foundation.
For Simmel, the specific value of a thing rests on
subjective judgement. Value as valuation conwanted item and ’remains inherent in
S
the subject’ ([1907] 1990:63). Subjective
valuation is a condition of the possibility of
values as cultural classification. To be sure,
valuation is correlated to the individual being
the locus of incompatible wants. Still, such
anthropological considerations are far from
normative, even if they may occasionally
amount to a sort of vitalism. Unlike neo-Kantian
gnoseological normativisni, Simmel does not
believe in the possibility of grounding subjective
valuation on the basis of a systematic foundation of objective criteria (Boudon 1989, Helle
1988, Oakes 1985). The gnoseological a priori
that he conceives at the roots of every form of
knowledge are not universal or a-temporal, but
variable in time and space. Furthermore they
are not reducible to a finite bundle of categories,
their complexity
complete computation and description (Simmel [1907] 1990 :60cerns a
impeding
65).
As a result. Simmel’s theory of value
delineates a feed-back contiguration: value as
valuation is subjective and allows for the
reproduction of the objectivity of values as
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211
cultural classification. On the one hand, the
phenomenon of valuation is trans-historical.
being rooted in the cognitive and practical
separation between object and subject and
revealing itself in the efforts and sacrifices
needed to overcome ’distance, obstacles and
difficulties’ (Simmel [1907] 1990:F,6). On the
other hand. values themselves are socially and
culturally constructed through social interaction (Wecllselwirkll11g)’. Still Simmel arrived at
the conclusion that relativity is socially
entrenched, i.e. that values are socially constructed. but they are not arbitrary. Culture is
precisely the crystallization of interactions, a
frame of values which exists independently of
the feelings and verdicts of each single individual, and yet emerges from their intersection
([1907] 1990:101).
The
public/private divide
Nothing shows this process of entrenchment
remains fundamental for
the market mechanism (Accarino 1982; Blumenberg 19 7h 1. For its very viability, the money
economy demands of subjects that they be able
to make sense, furnish judgement and bestow
value on an ever increasing variety of objects.
All in all, the duality of money - its objective
relativity - entails a duality of experience. It is
certainly true that the subject learns that things
have an objective value (Boudon 1989). Yet this
value is subjectively upheld.
Such a duality may seem quite abstract.
Yet, it shall become of sociological relevance if
we recall that, when discussing it, Simmel hints
at the cultural dynamics of the mutual construction of private and public spheres. Simmel
was convinced that the abstraction from intinitesimal exchanges into the institutional objectivity of money entailed that exchange had
become ’something other than a private process
between two individuals confined to individual
actions’ ([1907] 199():177). This helps us in
considering the market as a public sphere.
against all erroneous impressions that it be
otherwise.8 Indeed, if we follow through the
correlation between the modern private/public
divide with the duality of modern value formation, we get a compelling picture of the market.
In this light, market exchange makes for the
institutional establishment of objective equivalents among goods which are (and must be)
jective signitication
better than money. The money economy seems
to have a twofold task in Simmel’s theory. It is
both a metaphor which perfectly illustrates feedback and entrenchment, and the fundamental
social phenomenon which defines the modern
conditions of valuation.
Simmel starts from the observation that
the significance of money lies in its relativity,
thus ’not in itself but rather in its transformation into other values’ ([[ 077] 1990: S S 1. Yet.
when the super-individual character of money subjectively non-equivalent. Private spheres
exchange is guaranteed by a whole set of nurture incompatibilities which feed on the
institutions, money embodies an objective rela- market as a public domain of values and provide
tivity. Money exchange fixes values which are the materials to be equalized within it. The
perceived as the products of the networks of extreme objectivity of social relationships susobjects they refer to. Money signals a ’mutual tains and is sustained by the extreme subjectirelationship’ which appears as a ’reciprocal vism of individual valuation.
determination of value by the objects’ ([1907]
This view is supported by the way Simmel
199():751. Proceeding in the sociological direc- denotes the objectivity of market exchange. Such
tion Simmel also explores to what extent a
objectivity is not to be understood as substantivization. On the contrary, it remains an emermature money economy influences how social
actors grasp and fabricate value. In commercial
gent property of social interaction and it is best
understood under the category of indifference
are
confronted
with
the
modernity, people
objectivity of value insofar as they are pushed (Vergleichgultigzmg) ( [ 1907] 199l): 1 19-1 30,
to express in monetary terms their relationships
15 9-16 1. 2 2 1-2 3 7).9 In public spaces such as
with things and even with people. Even in the market, individuals do not arrive at ’associaroutine
transactions, objects reciprocally tions into which earlier man entered in his
express their value through a common denomi- totality and individuality and which, for this
reason,
nator, and thus economic exchange value
required reciprocal knowledge far
becomes autonomous. Yet the specific value beyond the immediate, objective content of the
attributed to a good falls within the subjective relationship’ (Simmel [1908a] 1950:318, see
category of valuation. As ephemeral as it might also [1907] 1990: 34 3-3 541. Money is ’indifferbe, it is a Si1mgelJll11fJ: literally, an action of ence itself’ ([1907] 1990:55) and given the
bestowing meaning which the subject is asked ’sheer objectivity’ of monetary relations. ’the
and free to accomplish. The capacity of sub- personality of those involved appears wholly
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212
indifferent in spite of mutual dependency’
(Simmel 1900b:65). Public relationships are
typically based on ’goal-specific associations’
(Zweckverband) concerning a well-defined content ’neatly factored out of the whole relation’, so
that ’members are anonymous’ as they only need
to know of each other that they are actually
upholding the specific relationship ([1908a]
1950:317-318, translation amended).
These spheres of indifference are constructed in opposition to spheres of life where
difference is, indeed, sustained. If ’what is public
becomes ever more public’, ’what is private
becomes ever more private’ ([1908a] 1950:
337). The specialization of public relationships.
their indifference to the whole of the personality,
leaves ’secret’, private spaces for the individual.
spaces for ’being-for-oneself’. It is these private
regions which constitute domains of difference
that are called upon when the subject bestows
value on things. It is these spaces of and for
individuality which are necessary for the
functioning of the market mechanism: they
constitute domains which as ’secrets’ can be
revealed in individual choices. The value of
money is
guaranteed by
its institutionalization,
whereas the value of the value of money is
guaranteed by the process of subjective valuation of commodities which in turn relies on the
construction of discretion and privacy.
Seen in this light. Simmel’s theory of value
is relativist, but not nihilist. His perspective is
opposed to the notion that the growth of market
objectivity goes hand in hand with the dissolution of the individual and with the fall of his or
her signification space. On the contrary, subjectivism is heightened insofar as individuals’
capacities to sustain difference is vital to social,
objective exchange. Still, Simmel offers a critical
viewpoint for analysing the ambivalence of
commercial modernity. In particular, as I shall
show, Simmel considered that the capacity of
subjective valuation be overplayed. With a focus
on subjective valuation, he could both appreciate the obvious appeal of an emphasis on
individual preferences and question the conditions which made such emphasis possible and
the problems it might generate.
4. Material culture
Difference and indifference
beyond a supposed essential or normautility, or which are serviceable to capital
accumulation (Marx [1857] 1973; [1867]
that go
tive
1928). On the contrary,
are
offered the
of
both empowerment and entrapment.
According to Sinunel, the development of
money economy pushes for the growth and
multiplication of material culture. Indeed he
indicates the peculiarity of contemporary culture in the fact that ’our everyday life is
surrounded more and more by objects’: we
have to face a phenomenal growth of ’objective
culture’ (or ’culture of things’), as well as a
continuous acceleration of such growth (Simmel [1907] 1990:448~49).1~’ The growth of
material culture corresponds to a reciprocity of
distance and closeness, withdrawal and
approach in our relationship with things.
Things multiply and therefore they depart
from us, yet they must remain close enough
’in order that the distance should be experienced at all’ ( [ 1907] 1990:76). As a result
’modern man’ has to act in a different way than
’primitive man’: ’the distance between him and
the objects of his endeavours is much greater
and much more difficult obstacles stand in his
way. but on the other hand he acquires a
greater quantity of objects’ ([1907] 1990:76).
The subject is not only faced with more objects.
but also with objects of a larger variety: a
’widening of the circle of interests’ is implicit in
such a peculiar combination of distance and
closeness. Already in the essay Uber soziale
Diffcrenzienmg ( 1890) Simmel had shown that
the possession of money may be seen as a ’latent
differentiation’. Only ’the abundance of intertwining interests, the wealth of different activities has made possible the development of this
means of exchange which is, so to speak, sniper
partes’ and whose ’effect for the individual’ is the
’possibility of whatever economic differentiation’ (1890:171). The growth of material
culture is therefore not accompanied by its
massification as the Frankfurt School would
have it. On the contrary, such growth entails a
progressive specialization which has to be
actively sustained by individuals.
The overall result of the growth and
specialization of material culture mirrors the
duality of money and of modern value formation. Objects face the subject as a relatively
autonomous system. Still, Simmel himself
noticed that in commercial modernity highly
specialized forms of consumer differentiation
as
interpretation, Simmel’s theory of value
promises not to dismiss as alienation or
consumer practices
commodity fetishism those
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at Birkbeck College Library on February 21, 2007
In my
we
exploring the ambivalence of
consumption, looking at commercial modernity
possibility
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distribution.
213
fostered: ’the most adequate realization and
effectiveness of every individual complication’
and the ’complete freedom for individual
reorganization’ become possible ( [ 1907] 1990:
319 ). The bulk of differentiated objects produces
are
an enormous
specificity
in
so
far
as
it is
ever
difficult to find two people who have
selected the same set of objects from material
culture. This places emphasis on the creation of
individual styles as well as on the multiplication
of lifestyles.
Simmel repeatedly stressed that with the
advent of commercial modernity, the subject
moves from a situation where his or her life
choices and identity are, so to speak, imposed by
the things he or she possesses, to a situation of
’absolute potentiality’. In a mature monetary
economy the subject is freed from the structural
links with goods that ’enslave’ him or her:
’possessions are no longer classified according to
the category of a specific life-content, that inner
bond ... in no way develops which, though it
restricts the personality, nonetheless gives support and content to it’ ([1907] 1990:403). The
subject cannot melt and coincide with goods: all
objects remain in his or her hands only for a
limited period and they are predisposed toward
conversion into money. The immediate consequence of this is the neutralization of the
pervasive power of goods. The ’absolute dominion over things’ and ’the potentiality of doing’
are nevertheless ambivalent phenomena. The
freedom that money confers paves the way to
indeterminacy. It is a freedom ’without any
directive, without any definite and determining
content. Such freedom favours that emptiness
and instability that allows one to give full rein to
every accidental, whimsical and tempting
impulse’ ([1907] 1990:402). A similar process
does not simply imply an intensification of
power relations, though. On the contrary, it
brings with itself the triumph of ’negative
liberty’. Tensions derive precisely from the fact
that it does not furnish ’positive liberty’ and
does not provide indications for the constitution
of individual identities consistent through time
([1907] 1990:2H3-354). Thus the lengthening
of the ’teleological series’ allowing for a broadening of interests makes for the impossibility of
knowing the finality of one’s own actions.
Similarly. the specificity allowed to the individual is paid for by the indeterminacy of the
consumer practices available.
Expressed in wider social-theoretical terms,
we may say that in contemporary consumer
practices the subject has to come to terms with
more
both difference and indifference. What Erving
Goffman (1961) described as ’bureaucratization
of the spirit’ - the fragmentary condition of the
subject who has to enter and exit a number of
different roles - may be observed from a new
perspective. Contemporary
tend
consumer
practices
allow for a maximum of individual
specificity which corresponds to the multifaceted and highly specific combination of
roles that each individual has to perform in
everyday life. However, consumer practices with
their necessary plasticity do not secure determined and ultimate support for individual selfconstitution. Modern material culture testifies
to the relativity of value embodying what Max
Weber ([1922]1978) identified as the code of
modernity, the separation of different ’value
spheres’. Material culture no longer bestows a
difference on the individual. The multiplication
and differentiation of objects and their separation into different hierarchies make global logics
of social distinction more blurred and less
efficient. Conceived as a whole, material culture
corresponds to a public domain of indifference
which becomes meaningful only in the difference made by subjective valuation.
to
Techniques of consumption
Still, in contemporary consumer culture we find
techniques that help individuals to come to
terms with difference and indifference. Techniques of consumption may be conceived as
institutionalized guidelines for personal consumption embedded both in discourses and
organizations. In this light, fashion and style
can be described as techniques that. embodying
particular combinations of difference and indifference, help govern the modern world of goods.
They respond to what Simmel described as an
enduring ’practical necessity’, the constitution
of oneself through goods. Modern fashion
circulation may thus be appreciated from a
perspective which places emphasis on strategy
rather than function, something which Durkheim might well have felt as alien to the
sociological enterprise. However, this perspective does not do without the social dimension.
On the contrary it looks at consumer practices
as strategies enacted tlzrollglz the socio-cultural
framework, rather than inside it. Furthermore, it
opens up the possibility of considering how
techniques of consumption may be linked to
forms of subjectivity and self-constitution,
something which an exclusive emphasis on
social distinction usually misses.
Such perspective directly derives from
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© 2000 Scandinavian Sociological Association. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized
distribution.
214
Simmel’s observations on fashion and style.
Simmel focused on how these phenomena were
experienced, shaping individuality while being
an instrument of it. To be sure, Simmel saw
fashion also as social distinction. 1 Yet, unlike
Kant he never used a moralizing tone (Gronow
1993), and unlike Veblen (1899) he avoided
envy and other highly stigmatized passions as
explanatory devices. In the context of the
contemporary sociology of consumption, Simmel’s most interesting claim is that fashion and
style are social forms which offer a ’veil’
through which the modern subject can allude
to his or her deep individuality. They also
provide a provisional social ’counterweight’ for
any ensuing excess of subjectivism.
Firstly, this view delivers a fuller picture of
the modern longing for novelty, a phenomenon
which is obviously lost to our eyes when we
consider it as coterminous with trans-historical
issues of social distinction. In particular, Simmel
suggested that fashion heeds the taste for
novelty as such. As a finality, novelty may take
on the quality of what, in Kantian terms, is a
pure aesthetic pleasure (Gronow 1993). Yet if
so, this is because it satisfies the modern anxiety
of continuous renewal and allows for the
conception of such renewal as unlimited,
diffusing the perception that ’what is absolutely
unnatural may at least exist in the form of
fashion’ (Simmel [1895] 1971:322, translation
amended). Fashion therefore also promotes
novelty as transitory. It is analogous to the
modern ’impatient time’ which implies not only
the desire for rapid change, but also the
’attraction of limitation, the attraction of a
simultaneous beginning and end, the charm of
novelty coupled to that of transitoriness’
([1895] 1971:302). Fashion allows the individual to be up to time. Yet, as ephemeral and
doomed to disappear, fashion also appears as a
semblance which alludes to other, deeper and
firmer features of the individual.
Secondly, in this view fashion illustrates
how people may experience and construct
themselves as individuals facing the indifference
of modern material culture. Fashion is a social
form through which the ’negative liberty’ of the
modern subject and the correlative search for
identity are both controlled and nurtured. It is a
departure from custom made customary and it
gives a feeling of both safety and adventure. In
other words, fashion offers a space of difference,
which nevertheless is expressed in terms of a
relative indifference because of both its transiency and its public availability. For a moment
it yields to a strong sense of self: and, as
indifference, it brings the subject to continu-
ously re-establish
a distance and a space of
difference for him or herself in the pursuit of
such heightened individuality.
In the Philosophie, when discussing modern
individual experience as shaped by the way
money economy produces and defeats distance,
Simmel refers to style in a similar vein: ’as the
manifestation of our inner feelings’, style
’indicates that these feelings no longer immediately gush out but take on a disguise the
moment they are revealed’ ([1907] 1990:
473). In his later essay on style Simmel
([1908b] 1991:68) developed this suggestion:
with the ’universalistic formalization’ offered by
style, we are freed from the ’absolute responsibility’ to ourselves and we can express ourselves
indirectly, without having to balance ’on the
narrowness of mere individuality’. At the same
time, the juxtaposition of different styles that
characterizes the environment of the modern
subject proposes again a space for individuality.
allowing for objects to ’receive a new centre
which is not located in any of them alone’([1908b] 1991:69), but coincides with the
unitary combination contrived by the subject.
Appreciating a particular item of style as ours,
we shelter ourselves in a common denominator,
while being allowed to indicate that it does not
contain us, that there is an elusive part of
ourselves which lies in the capacity to neutralize
the indifference of any style by means of our
own different, subjective combination.
Fashion and style not only illustrate how
modernity tries to provide social answers to its
peculiar problem, i.e. for the individual to
belong in a totality without loosing individuality ; they also correspond to the ’rhythm’
dictated by modern material culture. In effect,
fashion as well as style embody our capacity and
necessity of bringing ’us closer to things by
placing them at a distance from us’ (Simmel
[1907] 1990:473). Such distance seems to offer
a space for subjective valuation which does not
deny values and which, on the contrary, feeds
on cultural classifications re-configuring them.
5.
Concluding remarks
to offer a social-theoretical
Simmel’s Philosophie, I have
tried to show that it may be seen as something
more than, and different from, sociological
impressionism. I have re-interpreted Simmel’s
In
setting
perspective
out
on
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© 2000 Scandinavian Sociological Association. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized
distribution.
215
work on money as a potent attempt to develop a
critical sociology of consumption from a relativist theory of value. On this basis, I have started
to delineate the traits of a Simmelian sociology
of consumption which presents itself as alternative to the more traditional focus on social
distinctions (i.e. Bourdieu 1979; Douglas and
Isherwood 1979; Veblen 1889).
As I have hinted throughout this paper,
such sociology offers at least two advantages.
Firstly, we may retain a space for agency by
looking at how fashion and style are experienced. Simmel’s observations do not amount to
a study of the social functions of goods: they
rather try and show how fashion and style forge
individuality while being their instrument. I
have interpreted this as an attempt to look at
fashion and style as techniques of consumption,
and I have shown how they are responsive to
the sustenance of well-governed subjective
difference and vital to objective exchange.
Such a perspective is pivotal for a sociology of
consumption which struggles with the necessity
of accounting for both agency and structure
(see Campbell 1987; Featherstone 1991; Miller
tradition, commercial society is understood
as
neither
paradise nor hell. Within it risks do not
disappear, they change. What is defined as
’subjectivism’ is in fact a deeply ambivalent
phenomenon. In a situation where goods are no
longer capable of imposing their rhythm on the
subject, the subject may not be able to impose
his or her rhythm on goods. Facing the
overwhelming development of specialized material culture, paralysis is a probable risk (Nedelmann
1991).
Likewise, the indifference of the public
sphere of commercial modernity
but also
is not
only
a
risk for the individual’s
sense of specificity. On the one hand, indifference may become part of the individual. Indeed,
the development of a blase attitude is a wideresource,
spread subjective
a
answer,
whereby people keep
themselves forever at a distance from things and
experience ’all things as being of an equally dull
and grey hue’ ([1907] 1990:256). On the other
hand, difference may become a goal in itself.
Eccentricity thus develops as an attempt to
As opposed to the
overcome indifference.
indifference of the market, the individual’s
search for specificity reinforced by the structural
1995).
a
Simmelian
of
connecessity of subjective valuation may generate a
Secondly,
sociology
sumption helps us ponder the appeals and the formal and empty difference. Its meaning may
risks of commercial modernity with a minimum no longer ’be found in the content of such
of normative assumptions. The focus on valua- activity itself but rather in its being a form of
tion and on its social conditions allowed Simmel
&dquo;being different&dquo; - of making oneself noticeable’
to consider that subjectivity constitution in
(Simmel [1903] 1971:336). In both ways - as
commercial modernity is an active and yet blasé or eccentric - the individual looses him or
inconclusive process, at least so far as a time- herself as the source of valuation. In the one
consistent unitary identity is pursued. It is
case, valuation is no longer sought after and the
precisely thanks to this inconclusiveness that individual has lost the feeling for value differconsumption tends to be characterized as ence. In the other, as things are valued for their
creative and dynamic, as a process of contindifference, difference is not established by
uous
emancipation from the conditioning valuation.
By describing these risks, Simmel also
implicit in the possession of any particular
is
of
the
modern
The
subject
implies that there is a path which we may
good.
heteronomy
follow in order to confront, if not overcome, the
to be traced back to the fact that he or she is
pushed to self-construction. If we are hetero- predicament of commercial modernity. Such a
nomous, this is so, not because ’we live the
path - possibly elitarian, certainly individualismaintic - may be portrayed as ethical equilibrism: a
Baudrillard
of
as
(1970)
rhythm objects’
tained, but because, having freed ourselves from balancing practice taking place between the
them, we are obliged to live our own rhythm. indifference of the market which allows indivibecause we are faced with the task of producing dualization, and the risk that the individuality
thus constituted remains empty, incapable of
ourselves.
All in all, the critical perspective which is bestowing value on things, a mere reproducer of
offered by a Simmelian sociology of consump- commensurability. It is in the search of this
tion implies that the indifference of the market narrow and changeable line of equilibrium which may on occasion be offered even by
opens a space for individuality without guaranteeing that the subject be the master of such mundane phenomena such as fashion and style
that the individual can construct him or
space, that he or she holds on him or herself the
herself
as a reflexive and inward-directed source
source of valuation. Like in the best sociological
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-
© 2000 Scandinavian Sociological Association. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized
distribution.
216
A
of valuation.l2 And it is through such a neverending search that indifference may become
meaningful, allowing for the appreciation and
expression of differences which
make
a
may
yet again
difference.
First version received
Final version
September
accepted November
1999
1999
Acknowledgements
This paper elaborates two earlier works prepared for the annual
meetings of the ESA Network on Consumption, presented in
199h and 1997 at the Universities of Tallinn and Essex. My
thoughts have also been sharpened in the Interdisciplinary
Seminars on Simmel organized in the autumn of 1997 at the
University of East Angha. Thanks are owed to all participants on
these occasions as well as to Gianfranco Poggi, Errulio Santoro,
Alan Scott and Pekka Sulkunen for reading and commenting on
early drafts. A particular thank you goes to the late Martm Hollis
for his inspiring comments.
Notes
1
Implicit
and explicit critiques of these views have been
forward both by scholars who place Simmel
within classical sociological theory (Landmann 1967; Levine
1985:103-112; Nedelmann 1991), and by scholars who
consider him closer to postmodernist concerns (Weinstein and
Weinstein 1993:5-28)
2
David Frisby has documented Simmel’s concerns with a
theory of value epitomized by various letters, notably to
Heinrich Rickert (Fnsby 1981; 1992b:80-97). and by the
deviations of the second edition of the Philosophie ([1907] 1990)
from the 1900 version being concentrated mainly in the first
chapter on value (for the original see Simmel 1900a; see also
Cavalli 1984 and Frisby 1990). However, Frisby focuses mainly
on the economic aspects of Simmel’s theory of value and plays
down its epistemological import for social and cultural theory.
The relevance of epistemological concerns for Simmel’s theory of
culture is instead grasped, but not explored by Daniel Miller
(1987:70-72) who nevertheless considers them as within an
Hegelian rather than a neo-Kantian framework.
3
See also Simmel (1890:160-172: [1907] 1990:228238). Note the striking analogy with Norbert Elias’s observations on the pacified social spaces of modernity where we
witness a lengthening of the series of actions’ on which ’the
individual and his actions constantly depend’ so that ’the habit
of foresight over longer chains grows’ (Elias 1939:273).
4
Despite his appreciation of the predicament of the idea of
human nature contained in the critique of Feuerbach, Marx
retains the assumption of a determination of mankind as
striving towards an ideal of fraternal self-realization in diverse,
productive labour whereby human talents can be truly
(Geras 1983; Lohman 1993).
expressed
5
The emerging neo-marginalist economic thought, Carl
Menger’s theory of needs in particular, have developed on
similar premises (Schumpeter 1955:411 ff). The similarity with
neo-marginalist thought and the Austrian School has not to be
overplayed though. Once recognized that it is the interpretive
status of the objects that confers them value (i.e. not that useful
things are desired but that desired things are useful), neomarginalist economists have departed from Simmel’s emphasis
on the construction of valuation conditions and subjectivity
persuasively put
typically leave out preference formation and
interdependence, forgetting that the economy is inextricably
bound to subjective and cultural circumstances of interpretation. For an informative account of Simmel’s Philosophie
economic premises as related to development of fin de siecle
economics see Alessandro Cavalli (1984). David Frisby
(1992b:80-97) and Jeffrey Shad (1990).
6
As with Weber’s critique of causal explanation in social
forms. Their models
sciences,
Simmel’s relativism
is
correlated to the finiteness of the
subject facing the complexity of reality, to the impossibility of
embracing social networks in all their causal intricacy (Simmel
1892:73-115). However, being more of a philosopher than his
younger compatriot, Simmel is able to step
in
and
out
of
sociological perspective. He acknowledged that sociological
methodology is not exhaustive (Deroche-Gurcel 1988: Ramstedt
1992). Indeed, he conceived of it as a field of knowledge itself
dependent on social processes, money rationalization in
particular (Simmel [1907] 1990:101-118). Nonetheless, Simmel was preoccupied with maintaining a critical thrust for his
relativist perspective. As he declared, he
opposed to ’the
1898, in Gassen
and Landmann 1958:9; see also Simmel 1892:176-200). Some
have thereby recognized a blend of pragmatism in Simmel’s
epistemology (Boudon 1989: Helle 1988). This may be seen in
the idea that although our intellect can perceive reality only as a
limitation of the field of application of concepts, these are
’legitimate’, ’even if they depart from reality, insofar as they offer
a service for its interpretation’ (Simmel [1907] 1990:248; see
also Simmel 1892 10-12)
7
This concept (lit. reciprocal action). is not only central to
Simmel’s sociology but also to his epistemology, conceptualizing
the complexity of a world where everything is in interaction
with everything else (Cavalli 1989: Kaern 1990; Lichtblau
1991).
8
Simmel ([1907] 1990:175ff) was adamant that money
feeds on the State as a guarantee of its value. Again, different
from Marx’s notion that money ’masks’ an underlying reality,
Simmel views money as itself a social relation, one that like
credit creates a liabdity rather than liquidating it. The obligation
of the creditor is assumed by the public, thus monetary
transactions between individuals may appear as private affairs,
purely economic and interest-driven. On these issues, and more
in general on the sociology of money, see Geoffrey Ingham
(1998).
9
On this notion (lit. process of becoming indifferent), see in
particular the work of Georg Lohmann (1993).
10
Simmel’s notion of ’objective culture’ has attracted a
considerable amount of scholarship. If the once popular view
that it would entail a blend of Hegelism has been variously
qualified and criticized (Helle 1988; Kohnke 1992; Schnabel
1984), new interpretations have been put forward. In particular, in their attempt to postmodernize Simmel, Deena and
Michael Weinstein (1993) consider that his views on objective
culture imply the ’triumph of objectified culture’ over life. I have
elsewhere criticized this perspective which draws Simmel’s
theory of culture very close to Baudrillard’s notion of ’implosion’
and to the postmodernist subversion of the modern manculture relation (Sassatelli 1997)
11
Social distinction and trickle-down dynamics are prevalent in the social sciences’ understanding of fashion and
consumer practices in general. In the shape of Veblen,
Bandwagon and Snob effects they have been the back-door
through which preference interdependence has got some access
to neo-classical economics (Hargreaves Heap 1989). Some
refined version of this - where immediate desires for imitation or
differentiation are mediated by an embodied disposition, habitus
,
inclining agents towards goods that reflect their social standing
was
sceptical loosening of all footholds’ (Simmel
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© 2000 Scandinavian Sociological Association. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized
distribution.
s
- also inspires Bourdieu’s (1979) work
on
taste
(Sassatelli
1995).
12
Although I cannot develop these themes here, it is worth
remembering that, when proposing an explicit ethics in his
essay Das individuelle Gesetz ([1913] 1968), Simmel develops
Nietzseche’s intimation that the human being has to become
what he
Simmel’s ethics is based on difference and asks
Difference is not to be understood as distinction,
as the attempt to be different from all the others by fighting one’s
way through in the social games of inclusion and exclusion. As
’the individual is the entire man, not what is left of him when
one has taken away what he shares with others’, to recognize
one’s own difference is to recognize ’one’s own being peculiar
’
Eigenheit (Simmel [1913] 1968:126). For a first elaboration of
(
)
how to link Simmel’s ethics to his view of modern matenal
culture, see the work of Donald Levine (1993),
to
or
she
recognize
is.
it.
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