The Detective of Modernity: Essays on the Work of David Frisby

Description

This book explores the thought of – and is dedicated to – David Frisby, one of the leading sociologists of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Presenting original examinations of his unique social theory and underlining his interdisciplinary approach to the critical interpretation of modern metropolitan society and culture, it emphasises Frisby’s legacy in highlighting the role of the social researcher as a collector, reader, observer, detective and archivist of the phenomena and ideas that exemplify the modern metropolis as society. With contributions from sociologists, cultural theorists, historians of the city, urban geographers and designers, and architectural historians and theorists, The Detective of Modernity constitutes a wide-ranging engagement with Frisby’s profound legacy in social and cultural theory. Cover Half Title Series Page Title page Copyright page Contents Editors and authors Acknowledgements Introduction PART 1: Modernity, metropolis and method 1. Critical sociology: The methodological controversy 2. Siegfried Kracauer's metaphysics of the passage and methodology of social science 3. The metropolis and emotional life: Experience, rifts and knowledge 4. The social experience of urban life: An aesthetic interpretation of places and ambiences PART 2: Fragments and faces 5. The street and the fragment: Aesthetics of experience; aesthetics of the particular in David Frisby 6. Cinematic 'fragments of modernity': Film and society revisited 7. On the face of things: Béla Balázs and Siegfried Kracauer on physiognomy and film PART 3: Cityscapes 8. Fragments of cityscapes 9. Urban aestheticization processes: Cityscape, landscape and image 10. Architecture and fashion in fin-de-siècle Vienna PART 4: Haunts 11. Flâneurs, detectives, and architects 12. Cotton and other threads 13. In search of lost streets PART 5: Figures 14. ‘Hamlet wird Detektiv’: Reflections on Kracauer, Benjamin and (neo-)noir 15. The collector's touch: The task of the cultural critic in the age of digital media 16. Unmasking the flâneur Index