Abstract:
This paper aims at drawing attention to Georg Simmel’s agenda for studying and diagnosing social inequalities, an agenda that up to now has been explicitly taken into consideration only occasionally and in a few detached aspects. The aim is to advance arguments for the purposefulness of a more detailed scrutiny of that agenda without which neither the empirical research of Chicago School, nor Pierre Bourdieu’s analyses and studies of social inequalities would have been possible, including latter’s research work constituting the focal point of the discussion made by the papers in this volume. Thus the contribution has rather the status of a study project, than of presentation of final research results. First, the chief fragments of Simmel’s sociology of inequality are analyzed in order to outline the contours of his theoretical program. A second step discusses the notions of research strategy and attitude, underlying the fragments, within the perspective of diagnosing social inequalities.
