Georg Simmel as unrecognized media ecologist
This article considers Georg Simmel’s contributions to media ecology. By examining various dialectics of subjectivity and cultural form (especially how valuation relates to money) and also by delineating how humanity takes its structure from resistances and boundaries which in
their turn need to be transcended, Simmel’s work outlines both the basic dynamics of cultural process and the tragedy of culture itself: people can grow themselves only by fashioning and cultivating the world, and yet, as civilization grows, people increasingly shape themselves by beginning
their worldly pursuits in the trails that others have left behind. An unfortunate consequence is that many cultural forms and practices quite easily become understood as wholly ends in themselves rather than as they were originally understood, means to an end.
Keywords: Simmel; culture; dialectic; form; money; transcendence
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: Grand Valley State University
Publication date: 01 December 2013
- EME explores the relationships between media, technology, symbolic form, communication, consciousness, and culture. Its scope is interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary. Media ecology provides a rich philosophical, historical and practical context for studying our increasingly technological and mediated society and culture with an emphasis on historical context.
Media ecology scholarship emphasizes a humanistic approach to understanding media, communication, and technology, with special emphasis on the ways in which we have been and continue to be shaped and influenced by our inventions and innovation. The Media ecology approach is predicated on understanding that media, symbols, and technologies play a leading role in human affairs, and function as largely invisible environments affecting the way we think, feel, act, and organize ourselves collectively. - Editorial Board
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