All posts by admin
The Elemental Forms of Social Life
A draft is available upon request.
The Elemental Forms of Social Life
Abstract. The notion of elemental reality is parsed here as instrumental to a renewal of the understanding of social formations, orders, processes, events, and, more generally, social life. In an attempt to analyze how an elemental reality can be said to be at play, the category of ‘the visible’ is considered, so as to evince some of its constitutive dimensions, properties, and moments.
Keywords: social theory; medium theory; social environment; elemental reality; the visible
Zone
…
Tu es seul le matin va venir
Les laitiers font tinter leurs bidons dans les rues
La nuit s’eloigne ainsi qu’une belle Métive
C’est Ferdine la fausse ou Léa 1′attentive
Et tu bois cet alcool brulant comme ta vie
Ta vie que tu bois comme une eau-de-vie
Tu marches vers Auteuil tu veux aller chez toi à pied
Dormir parmi tes fetiches d’Océanie et de Guinée
ils sont des Christ d’une autre forme et d’une autre croyance
Ce sont les Christ inférieurs des obscures ésperances
Adieu Adieu
Soleil cou coupé
Apollinaire, Alcools (1913)
Ethnography and Fiction: What is the difference?
Now out in Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa
…as a rope and a branch…
The womb accepts the seed which has fallen into it and protects it as it takes root – for first the navel grows in the womb, as Democritus says, as an anchorage against rolling and drifting, as a rope and a branch for the fruit which is being generated and coming to be.
Plutarch
La vita delle folle: ieri e oggi
Activated. Towards a Sociology of Reaction (with Lorenzo Sabetta)
Out now in European Journal of Social Theory – https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/13684310241230167
Abstract
The reactive complexion of social relations, though empirically pervasive, is analytically neglected. Yet, reaction seems a surprisingly useful category to make sense of the extensive environmental links of behavior/action lying at the very junction of social phenomenology (the here-and-now) and social ecology (the elsewhere-at-other-times). To advance a deeper theorization of this category, we start by mobilizing Mauss’s notion of ‘counter-gift’, elaborating on three interactionist properties (investments, rhythms, and the psyche-society nexus) which make the moment of reaction pivotal. Next, we show how reactions are less deterministic than usually assumed, by examining a series of counterintuitive configurations where the action-reaction link is nonlinear and circuitous. Since receptions and consequent responses to others’ acts are determined by factors of speed and intensity, we then address both dromological and morphogenetic aspects of reaction processes. The last part of this article looks into war as a large-scale reactive formation, proposing that social interaction gets ‘activated’ mainly through mutual (and, not infrequently, adverse) replies among actors.
Keywords
Theories of social action; interactionism; structuralism; behaviorism; exchange theory; action and reaction; political conflict; war.
Of generation and corruption
A seminar with Sabina Andron
Seeing in Verticality: From ‘Vertical Gaze’ to ‘Figuring Out’ (with Andrea Pavoni)
Now out in Gary Bratchford, Dennis Zuev (Eds) Vision and Verticality. A Multidisciplinary Approach. Berlin: Springer. ISBN: 9783031398834.
https://link.springer.com/book/9783031398834
Adventure
The adventurer, in a word, treats the incalculable element in life in the way we ordinarily treat only what we think is by definition calculable. (For this reason, the philosopher is the adventurer of the spirit. He makes the hopeless, but not therefore meaningless, attempt to form into conceptual knowledge an attitude of the soul, its mood toward itself, the world, God. He treats this insoluble problem as if it were soluble.)
Georg Simmel
Hybrid interstices: conceptualising suburbanism in Alpine valleys (with Cristina Mattiucci)
Now published in
The Elgar Companion to Valleys. Social Science Perspectives
https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/the-elgar-companion-to-valleys-9781789906950.html
Rest in Peace Benjamin Zephaniah
“The problem with elections is that no matter who you vote for, the government gets in!”
Zephaniah
[ + Find a loving portrait of the man here : https://vimeo.com/274377665 ]
Public Space and the Study of Urban Territories
An online seminar to be given on Thursday 07 December 2023 Time: 12:30-13:30 (UTC+00:00 – Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London.)
Abstract:
In this lecture, Professor Brighenti seeks to introduce territoriology as a research approach and a sensitivity that can be applied to the study of public space. He explores the intersection between social theory, ethnography, human geography and design as helpful to study territorial productions in the making. Each territory is shaped by imaginational and figurational forces of social life as they get incorporated into a set of materials. Starting from this assumption, he would like to illustrate a few cases and possible applications in the field of urban studies.
To get the Zoom link, pls contact ARCHI Research <ARCHI-research@cardiff.ac.uk>
The Aesthetics and Politics of Urban Atmospheres
Goffman Back in Town – Lecture
A lecture based on my paper co-authored with Andrea Pavoni
The Social Logic of Leadership
A reading of Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness through Fascist and Aberrant Leadership
Abstract. In this piece, we puzzle about the social logic of leadership through the lens of the movie Triangle of Sadness (2022), directed by the Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund. We flesh out a distinction between two modes of leadership, which we call, respectively, fascist and aberrant, and elaborate on how these are seen at work in the film. Phenomena of leadership, we suggest, illustrate the workings of social logic ex vivo, and offer exquisite examples of how intensities intervene in social interaction, giving rise to the tensive states in which the local protagonists of interaction are caught.
Keywords: social theory, social interaction, social logic, social intensities, leadership
–> Contact me if interested in reading the draft!
Measuring Up Graffiti. How Urban Visual Artifacts are Categorized, and Evaluated (w/ Cecilia Brazioli)
Bielefeld University, 13–14 July 2023
Metaphors of Resistance and Creation in Elias Canetti
Territoriology and the study of public place – a short intro (w/ Mattias)
Microbial Misalignments Playlist
New Playlist for the Invisible
tipping tripping point -+- New Playlist ! >>> Tribute to Joseph Beuys <<<
Death in Pocket
I Have Death in my Pocket.
Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti
…that we are alone
“It is at the frontiers that the companions desert us—that the girl returns to the old country
that we are alone.”
Archibald MacLeish, “Definition of the Frontiers”. From Collected Poems 1917-1982.
Silent Spring tribute