%0 Journal Article
%T The Spatial Sense of Empire: Encountering Strangers with Simmel, Tocqueville and Martineau
%A Thomas M. Kemple
%J O£¿ati Socio-Legal Series
%D 2012
%I 
%X This essay takes Georg Simmel¡¯s conceptualization of space as a form of sociation (Vergesellschaftung) in his 1908 masterpiece, Sociology, as a framework for critically re-reading two 19th century classics in the sociology of empire. Alexis de Tocqueville¡¯s Democracy in America (1835/1940) is shown to illustrate Simmel¡¯s understanding of social-spatial boundaries by portraying the cultural and historical geography of America as an ¡®optic space¡¯ of racial (in)equality. Similarly, Harriett Martineau¡¯s study of morals and manners in Society in America (1837) exemplifies Simmel¡¯s ideas on social-spatial sensibilities with its attention to how everyday settings serve as a kind of ¡®acoustic space¡¯ of gendered (un)freedom. Drawing on related arguments by recent thinkers and critics, and rectifying the relative neglect of how socio-spatial dynamics are addressed in the texts of classical sociology, the essay examines a description in each work of a particular personal encounter with strangers which exemplifies how the spatial sense of empire disrupts assumptions that new-world democracy has superseded old-world colonialism. Considered as illustrations of Simmel¡¯s thesis concerning the spatial orders of society, the ¡®traveling and anecdotal theories¡¯ of Martineau and Tocqueville provide ¡®sociological allegories¡¯ designed to instruct reading publics on how law, empire, and social mores constitute bounded fields of struggle within the contact zones of modern empire. Este art¨ªculo toma la conceptualizaci¨®n del espacio como una forma de asociaci¨®n (Vergesellschaftung) de Georg Simmel, en su obra maestra de 1908, Sociology, como un marco en el que hacer un an¨¢lisis cr¨ªtico de dos cl¨¢sicos del siglo XIX de la sociolog¨ªa del imperio. Se toma la obra de Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835/1940), para ilustrar el concepto que Simmel ten¨ªa de los l¨ªmites socio-espaciales, retratando la geograf¨ªa cultural e hist¨®rica de Am¨¦rica, como un ¡°espacio ¨®ptico¡± de (des)igualdad racial. De forma similar, el estudio que Harriett Martineau realiza de la moral y las costumbres en Society in America (1837), ejemplifica las ideas de Simmel sobre las sensibilidades socio-espaciales, con su teor¨ªa sobre c¨®mo los escenarios cotidianos son una especie de ¡°espacio ac¨²stico¡± de (falta de) libertad de g¨¦nero. A partir de argumentos relacionados de pensadores y cr¨ªticos recientes, y rectificando la negligencia relativa sobre c¨®mo se abordan las din¨¢micas socio-espaciales en los textos cl¨¢sicos de sociolog¨ªa, este art¨ªculo analiza en cada obra una descripci¨®n de un encuentro person
%K Space
%K Gender
%K Race
%K Class
%K espacio
%K g¨¦nero
%K raza
%K clase
%U http://ssrn.com/abstract=2004301