Social Avalanche: Crowds, Cities and Financial Markets

Description

Individuality and collectivity are central concepts in sociological inquiry. Incorporating cultural history, social theory, urban and economic sociology, Borch proposes an innovative rethinking of these key terms and their interconnections via the concept of the social avalanche. Drawing on classical sociology, he argues that while individuality embodies a tension between the collective and individual autonomy, certain situations, such as crowds and other moments of group behaviour, can subsume the individual entirely within the collective. These events, or social avalanches, produce an experience of being swept away suddenly and losing one's sense of self. Cities are often on the verge of social avalanches, their urban inhabitants torn between de-individualising external pressure and autonomous self-presentation. Similarly, Borch argues that present-day financial markets, dominated by computerised trading, abound with social avalanches and the tensional interplay of mimesis and autonomous decision-making. Borch argues that it is no longer humans but fully automated algorithms that avalanche in these markets. Cover Half-title Title page Copyright information Dedication Contents List of Figures Acknowledgements Frontispiece Introduction: Reimagining Collective Life A Modern Affair? Or Getting at the Roots of the Social? Reassessing Crowd Theory Outline of the Book A Montage Approach 1 Fin-de-siècle Landslides From Slow Past to Fast Past International Politics and Law Scientific Advances Technological Innovations Crowds Everywhere: Capturing the Experience of De-Individualisation Individuality as a Matter of Mimetic and Anti-Mimetic Inter-Relations 2 Tensional Individuality Returning to the Durkheim–Tarde Debate Challenging the Supposed Antagonism between Durkheim and Tarde The Tardean Individual: Tensional Individuality The Intra-Cerebral Constitution of the Individual The Inter-Cerebral Constitution of the Individual: The Role of Hypnotic Suggestion Tensional Individuality beyond Tarde Modernist Reflections: Nietzsche Sociological Reflections: Simmel and Mead US Psychological Reflections: Sidis Twentieth-Century Psychological Reflections Reviving the Notion of Tensional Individuality 3 Social Avalanches Crowds and the Social: A Principle of Extension Avalanching Metaphors-Turned-Concepts via Generalisation and Respecification From Piles of Sand to Piles of People Social Action Reconsidered 4 Cities Contagious City Spaces Tensional Individuality in the City Bridging Contagion, Capitalism and Cities Constant Flicker The Plan A Tangible World: On Objects and Avalanching 5 Financial Markets Crowded Trading Towards a Computerisation of Markets Algorithmic Finance Sub-Perceptual Finance The Flash Crash: A Window into High-Frequency Trading Flash Crash Avalanching The Sociality of Algorithms The Tensional Individuality of Algorithms Conclusion Future Research References Index