Olli Pyyhtinen

"Tervetuloa jäteyhteiskuntaan!" on kirja jätteen yhteiskunnallisesta merkityksestä ja sen sosiologisesta tutkimisesta. Jäte on laajalti tunnustettu yhdeksi merkittävimmistä ympäristöllisistä ja sosiaalisista ongelmista nyky-yhteiskunnassa. Jäte on keskeinen osa jokapäiväistä elämää, taloutta, työtä ja infrastruktuureita. Sitä tuotetaan, lajitellaan, vältellään, kierrätetään, kuljetetaan, hallinnoidaan, myydään, verotetaan, levitetään ja työstetään. Teos kysyy, miten yhteiskunta järjestyy suhteessa jätteeseen. Jäteyhteiskunta-kirjan teesi on, että jätteetön yhteiskunta on pelkkä teknokraattinen utopia. Jätteen haltuunotto ja hyötykäyttö jäävät välttämättä epätäydellisiksi: ylijäämää syntyy aina. Siksi jätettä ei tulekaan ymmärtää pelkäksi teknishallinnolliseksi ongelmaksi, vaan se on osa sosiaalista elämää ja kulutusyhteiskunnan toimintalogiikkaa. Kirjoittajat ehdottavat, että kulutusyhteiskunnan sijasta olisi osuvampaa puhua jäteyhteiskunnasta. Kysymys on siitä, kuinka löytää tapoja ja käytäntöjä elää sovussa jätteen kanssa. Kirja soveltuu niin oppikirjaksi yliopistoihin ja muihin oppilaitoksiin kuin tutkijoiden, poliittisten päättäjien ja yhteiskunnallisista kysymyksistä kiinnostuneiden lukijoiden käyttöön.

While Georg Simmel is widely known, the impact of his work has been far from straightforward, with the ways in which his ideas have been taken up by later thinkers as complex and diverse as the ideas themselves. The Simmelian Legacy is a comprehensive study of the work of this influential sociologist and philosopher and its reception in the Anglophone, German, and French intellectual worlds.By returning to Simmel and his legacy, this text gives voice to a corpus of vast significance and great potential that has lived too much in the shadows. It examines how his relational mode of thought transforms the landscape of sociological problems to subvert conventional conceptions of Simmel’s oeuvre as well as of sociology’s history. It not only rediscovers key dimensions of Simmel’s thought, but also explores its gradual and uneven re-emergence within subsequent scholarship.This is an engaging and lucid, intellectually illuminating and thoroughly accessible overview of the thought of one of sociology’s key thinkers that will be essential reading for both scholars and students of sociology and social theory.

While Georg Simmel is widely known, the impact of his work has been far from straightforward, with the ways in which his ideas have been taken up by later thinkers as complex and diverse as the ideas themselves. The Simmelian Legacy is a comprehensive study of the work of this influential sociologist and philosopher and its reception in the Anglophone, German, and French intellectual worlds.By returning to Simmel and his legacy, this text gives voice to a corpus of vast significance and great potential that has lived too much in the shadows. It examines how his relational mode of thought transforms the landscape of sociological problems to subvert conventional conceptions of Simmel’s oeuvre as well as of sociology’s history. It not only rediscovers key dimensions of Simmel’s thought, but also explores its gradual and uneven re-emergence within subsequent scholarship.This is an engaging and lucid, intellectually illuminating and thoroughly accessible overview of the thought of one of sociology’s key thinkers that will be essential reading for both scholars and students of sociology and social theory.

Bringing social theory and philosophy to bear on popular movies, novels, myths, and fairy tales, The Gift and its Paradoxes explores the ambiguity of the gift: it is at once both a relation and a thing, alienable and inalienable, present and poison. Challenging the nature of giving as reciprocal, the book engages critically with the work of Mauss and develops a new theory of the gift according to which the gift cannot be reduced to a model of exchange, but must instead entail a loss or sacrifice. Ultimately, the gift is examined in the book as the impossible occurrence of gratuitous giving. In addition to exploring the conditions of possibility and impossibility of the gift, the book draws on the thought of figures such as Derrida, Serres, Simmel, Cixous, Irigaray and Heidegger to argue for the relevance of the phenomenon of the gift to broader issues in contemporary social sciences. It takes up questions concerning the constitution of community and the processes by which people are included in or excluded from it, gender relations, materiality, the economy, and the possibility that death itself could be a gift, in the form of euthanasia or self-sacrifice. A rigorous yet accessible examination of the phenomenon of the gift in relation to a range of contemporary concerns, The Gift and its Paradoxes will appeal to scholars and students within sociology, philosophy, anthropology, political theory and film and literature studies.

This book invokes the radical potentialities of 'untidiness' to envision alternative arrangements of social life and hospitality. Instead of trying to manage sustainability or tidy up tourist situations, the authors embrace the messiness of human relations and argue for more creative, embodied and ethical ontologies of tourism and mobility.

Bringing social theory and philosophy to bear on popular movies, novels, myths, and fairy tales, The Gift and its Paradoxes explores the ambiguity of the gift: it is at once both a relation and a thing, alienable and inalienable, present and poison. Challenging the nature of giving as reciprocal, the book engages critically with the work of Mauss and develops a new theory of the gift according to which the gift cannot be reduced to a model of exchange, but must instead entail a loss or sacrifice. Ultimately, the gift is examined in the book as the impossible occurrence of gratuitous giving. In addition to exploring the conditions of possibility and impossibility of the gift, the book draws on the thought of figures such as Derrida, Serres, Simmel, Cixous, Irigaray and Heidegger to argue for the relevance of the phenomenon of the gift to broader issues in contemporary social sciences. It takes up questions concerning the constitution of community and the processes by which people are included in or excluded from it, gender relations, materiality, the economy, and the possibility that death itself could be a gift, in the form of euthanasia or self-sacrifice. A rigorous yet accessible examination of the phenomenon of the gift in relation to a range of contemporary concerns, The Gift and its Paradoxes will appeal to scholars and students within sociology, philosophy, anthropology, political theory and film and literature studies.

This book invokes the radical potentialities of 'untidiness' to envision alternative arrangements of social life and hospitality. Instead of trying to manage sustainability or tidy up tourist situations, the authors embrace the messiness of human relations and argue for more creative, embodied and ethical ontologies of tourism and mobility.