The Blase and the Adventure - Seachange Through Simmel

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to not engage thoroughly with the Australian movement that has been loosely termed as Seachange, but rather, it is to critically engage with data emerging from this phenomenon using social theoretical perspective from Georg Simmel. The reason for proceeding with this analysis is to provide further credence to the already well acknowledged brilliance of Simmel’s social theory. Furthermore, by doing so, we will be see that this author’s work is more than useful for examining the movements of post/late/high modernity. This is perhaps largely due to the ability of Simmel’s theory to transcend boundaries between disciplines and provide a ‘variety of theoretical perspectives’ (Featherstone, 1991, p2). However, further to this, Simmel’s sociology appears to have an uncanny ability to correspond with much of what is being written on the subject of the aesthetic postmodern culture in contemporary times. Such comparison advocated Simmel’s title as a ‘postmodernist in advance of the discourse’ (Weinstein and Weinstein, 1991, p152). It is not the case of this paper to engage deeply in such a discourse, rather, the simple purpose is to illustrate effectively the deepness of Simmel’s analysis which provides him with the aforementioned title. By using interview data collected by the author himself and through another project run by Dowling (2004), it will be shown that Simmel’s work in the area of the metropolis and leisure, provides sufficient and engaging analysis of Seachange.