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From Value to Consumption. A Social- theoretical Perspective on

Simmel's Philosophie des Geldes
Roberta Sassatelli
Acta Sociologica 2000; 43; 207
DOI: 10.1177/000169930004300302

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From Value to Consumption. A Social-
theoretical Perspective on Simmels Philosophie
des Geldes

Roberta Sassatelli
University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

ABSTRACT
Re-interpreting Simmels work on money as an attempt to develop a critical sociology of
consumption from a relativist theory of value, this paper illustrates the extent to which
it may be seen as something more, and different than, sociological impressionism. The
modern social space of valuation is chiefly defined by the development of money
economy within metropolitan settings. This allows for the public commensurability of
values and pushes for their private incompatibility. Subjectivism is heightened in so far
as individuals capacity to sustain difference is vital to social, objective exchange.
Contrary to neo-classical economics, the appreciation of individual choice entails for
Simmel a critical appraisal of the social conditions of its existence which results in a
discussion of the risks associated with the pressure to perform as autonomous choosers.
The paper concludes with a view on what may be a Simmelian sociology of
consumption, one which enriches the classical focus on social distinction with a critical
concern for the modern conditions of valuation and self-constitution. Fashion and style

may be conceived of as techniques of consumption that, embodying particular

combinations of difference and indifference, help govern the modern world of goods. In
this view, these mundane practices have the potential to function as a balancing
practice of self-constitution, taking place between the indifference of the market which
allows individualization, and the risk that the individuality thus constituted remains
empty, a reproducer of commensurability unable to bestow value on things.

Roberta Sassatelli, School of Economic and Social Studies, UEA Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK.
E-mail. (R. Snssntelli@uea.ac. uk)
© Scandinavian Sociological Association 2000

1. Introduction appraisal of Simmels work is at odds with his

aestheticizing reduction of Simmel to a socio-
According to Lukacs ( 1918:145-146), Simmel logical flaneur. Aimed at drawing out the
was the genuine philosopher of impressionism. significance of the interaction between Simmelss
a dazzling stimulator who never brought sociological and aesthetic concerns (Frisby
matters to a close. Even some recent works 1992a:169) along much beaten routes, Frisbys
such as David Frisbys influential Sociological wealth of documentary material could have
1
Impressionism ( 1981 ), which has initiated a brought him to no where else.
revival of interest in Simmels writings, have In this paper I start from the consideration
reinforced such a picture. Frisby envisages his that to conceive of Simmer perspectivism as
own volume as a monograph on Sinunels social sociological impressionism is to foreclose any
theory. However, his call for a social-theoretical possibility of tracing some substantive theore-
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208
tical unity in his writings. Simmels insistence
on the ambivalence of any observation or social
arrangement may, for example, become at once
a deficiency of resolution and an excess of
malleability. His writings are thereby easily
reducible to a prophetic pastiche, celebrated or
dismissed as an anti-litteram postmodernist
commentary on multifaceted urban commodi-
fication. Such a reading would be particularly
inappropriate for Simmels masterpiece Philoso-
phie des Geldes ([1907] 1990). This work is
increasingly considered central to Simmels
entire opus (Rammstedt 1992; Tenbruck
1958). After a century, we cannot dismiss its
theoretical relevance. My aim. therefore, is to
offer a social-theoretical perspective, however
partial it may be, on how to make systematic
use of an innovative author. In particular, I
will argue that Simmels book on money
may be seen as the first attempt to build a
sociology of consumption founded on a theory
of valued2
To proceed in this direction I will avoid
splitting Simmel in two: the philosopher and the
sociologist. Especially in the Anglo-American
world there has been a tendency to play down
the former. I would like to take his spirit whole,
on the understanding that only so will we not
forget one of the most important lessons he had
to teach. The systematical task I have set for
myself will probably appear foreign to Simmels
style. Yet, taking the Plrilosophie as the first and
founding piece of a puzzle, and drawing on the
other various ramifications of his opus to
proceed with the design, a rather coherent
picture will slowly emerge. _
2. Perpectivism and the subject/object
relationship
Perspectivism entails the notion that knowledge
is always an outlook from a perspective. In
Simmel, this goes with the idea that the concept
of truth is meaningful and access
possible,not in spite of truth but
being relative,
because it is relative. Such a stands as
concern
the foundation of Simmels relativist theory of
value. In order to consider his theory of value as
linked to what could now be named a sociology
of consumption, we need to recognize his
epistemological position. It is Simmels episte-
mology which gave way to a relativist theory of
value and which, in turn, amounted to a
sociological analysis of the socio-cultural con-
ditions of subjective valuation in commercial
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modernity. Thereby, instead of understanding
Simmels perspectivism as merely the sign of the
nrnour de [art poiii- [art or as the result of a blase
detachment, my interpretation takes him at his
word.
Rather than being grounded in some kind
of absolute foundation - i.e. use value or labour
-
the process of valuation is for Simmel a
continuous regressus in infitiitmn unfolding
across social interaction (Simmel 1898, in
Gassen and Landmann 1958:94; see also
Boudon 1989: Cavalli 1989: Kaern 1990:
Levine 1985: Lichtblau 1991; Oakes 1985).
Simmel could thereby only turn to what
appeared as typical of the modern social space
of valuation, namely the development of a
money economy within metropolitan settings.
We may consider that it is to provide the
necessary sociological horizon to his theory of
value that even his famous essay on the
metropolis was written. Simmel was indeed
well aware that his interest in the metropolitan
embeddedness of modern commercial culture
was tied to his experience as a Berliner in a
period of formidable cultural and economic
change (Gassen and Landmann 1958). All the
same, his observations suggest something in
more theoretical terms about the social con-
struction of value. Berlin offered the pretext and
the context for Simmel to speculate on the fact
that, when every single property may become
an object for sale, the value of property itself
changes. It also helped him in figuring out that,
when money exchange replaces personal obli-
gations with impersonal networks of functions.
peoples values change.
In many passages of Die Grossstadte und
das Geistsle~~en ([1903]1971) concern for the
changing conditions of valuation clearly
emerges. The metropolis is depicted by Simmel
as a catalyst of money economy. Metropolitan
commercial culture entails an extension of
subjective meanings and wants beyond the
immediate spatial and temporal networking of
to truth is the subject. Just as individual life in the
metropolis is extended in a wave-like motion
over a broader national and international area,
so production for the market means produc-
tion for entirely unknown purchasers who
never appear in the actual field of vision of the
producers themselves ( Simmel [19 3] 1971:
3 3 5. 327). Simmel considers that such trans-
formations are not confined to the superficial
level, i.e. to the growth of de-personalized
modalities of social relations like commercial or
polite encounters governed by discretion. On the
distribution.

contrary, they reach the depths of the soul,
being bound with the meaning and the style of
life ([1903] 1971:328). Everyday life has been
filled with weighing, calculating, enumerating
and the reduction of qualitative values to
quantitative terms; relationships can now
defined with unprecedented degree of pre-
an
cision, certainty in the definition of the
equalities and inequalities and unambiguous-
ness in agreements and arrangements ( [ 190 3]
1971:328). An image of the objectivity of these
relations emerges alongside the necessity for the
individual to make sense and govern such
objectivity. Accordingly, the inhabitants of the
large, commercial metropolis of modernity are
becoming more and more calculating. Unable to
realize an utopia of perfect calculability, com-
mercial modernity still implies a process of
intellectualization: city-dwellers develop a capa-
city to think of remote ends and of ever more
3
complex chains of means.3
Placing a greater emphasis on their
ambivalent nature, Simmel develops these
themes in his Philosophie des Geldes. Emile
Durkheim (1901:145) defined this work as
spurious speculation mainly for methodologi-
cal reasons and for what may now appear an
asset. The Plzilosophie is, in fact, an example of
the most perilous interdisciplinary pursuit
within modern episteme, namely a conscious
and outspoken attempt to bridge philosophy and
sociology. In particular, Simmel wanted to
survey both the epistemological and the social
preconditions of economic organization. He
maintains that the fact that two people
exchange their products is by no means simply
an economic fact. Such fact - that is, one whose
content would be exhausted in the image that
economics presents of it - does not exist
(Simmel [1907] 1990:55). Like any other
science, including the natural sciences, eco-
nomics does not reproduce reality. It rather
offers a perspective on it (Simmel 1892). Simmel
thus sets out to develop a broader picture
pursuing two complementary viewpoints. On
the one hand, he addresses the epistemological
prerequisites of our perception of reality as
economy, the preconditions that, situated in
mental states, in social relations and in the
logical structure of reality and values, give
money its meaning and its practical position;
on the other hand. he considers the social
circumstances which are both the product and
the effect of the historical phenomenon of
money influencing subjective experience, the
inner world of the subjects, their vitality. the
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209
linking of their fates, their culture (Simmel
[1907] 1990:54).
In the Philosophie, market exchange cir-
cuits are seen as defining, from the institutional
objective point of view, the modern relation
be between subjects and objects. A focus on the
subject/object relationship is crucial for Sim-
mels argumentation. This is so for at least two
reasons. Firstly, it offers a framework for
spinning epistemological and sociological con-
cerns together. By shaping the subject/object
relation, money exchange casts the value of
specific objects, contributes to the constitution
of personal identity and moulds knowledge. It is
in this sense that Simmel described his Philoso-
phie as a book in which I seek to exhibit the
spiritual bases and the spiritual significance of
economic life, trying to show the relationships
between the forms of the economy and the
forms of subjectivity or the spheres of interest
making up internal life (Simmel [1900b]
1993:62). Secondly, such focus allows Simmel
to study material culture as such, in its taken-
for-grantedness. It is through material culture,
through the objects that people have defined in
previous interactions via the entire spectrum of
economic action - exchange, consumption and
production - that the social process takes place.
The peculiarity of material culture in commer-
cial modernity may thus be addressed in its own
terms, rather than being reduced to produc-
tionist concerns as Karl Marx ( [ 1867] 19928) did
and, with very different emphasis, even Max
Weber ([1904] 1976) was tempted to do.
3. Money economy
Value and valuation
To follow this path through we need to consider
in some detail Simmels theory of value.
Revealing his Kantian roots, Simmel conceives
value and reality as two mutually independent
categories. Our mind is not simply a passive
mirror of reality, it lives in a world of values
which arranges the contents of reality in an
autonomous order (Simmel [1907] 1990:60~.
Kantian and neo-Kantian tradition in particular
conceived the subject as the creator of the
meaning and value of objects. Simmel regarded
value not as a characteristic of things, but as a
relational concept, a judgement on objects
which rests in the subject. He thus clearly
departed from sensationalism, running from
John Locke through Adam Smith and up to
Marx. with its postulate that objects not merely
distribution.
210
offer occasions for valuation but
sensational cause of it.
Marx is an explicit target for Simmels
Plzilosopllie. Marx operated within an epistemo-
logical grammar which conceived the deep
value of a commodity as use value, which is
conditioned by the physical properties of the
commodity and has no existence apart from the
latter < [ 1 8 6 7 ] 1928:126). As with Smith,
objects act prior to subjects, value is generated
from them and the notion of value actually
employed is constantly drawn back to the
contribution of labour ( Dumont 1977: Rubin
1972; Shapiro 1993). We may, therefore,
contemplate that the value of objects derives
from their material relationship with the
human body and that it is through human
productivity that these values can be enhanced.
All in all, utility is an objective property of
things and is objectively realized by labour. The
subjectivity involved in Marxs labour theory of
value is not one which produces value through
perspective. It is the subjectivity involved in
making objects materially available for oneself
in an economic way (Shapiro 1993:62).
Labour is the source of value both as its concrete
measure and as its normative foundation. On
the one hand, moulded by the economic
conditions of production normal for a given
society and with the average degree of skill and
intensity of labour prevalent in that society
(Marx [1867]] 19? 8:129 ), it directly quantifies
the value of each commodity. The greater the
productivity of labour, the less the labour-time
required to produce an article, the less the mass
of labour crystallized in that article, and the less
its value ([1867]] 1928:131). On the other
hand, as the universal condition for the
metabolic interaction between man and nature
([1867] 1928:290), labour ought to testify to
the determination of man as a man, his talents
and his striving for self-realization.
Hence, it is only partly true that Simmel did
not intend to pursue a substantive critique of
historical materialism (Cavalli 1989). His epis-
temology naturally yields to substantive argu-
ments. For example, he repeatedly stresses the
cultural embeddedness of commercial capital-
ism. Economy and culture are in such close
integration that no one is able to say whether it
was the former that affected the latter or vice
versa (Simmel [1903]1971:327). More to the
point, Simmels relativism implies not only a
critique of teleology, but also a refusal to
indicate an absolute goal inherent in the
determination of mankind. He does not postu-
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are the late some moral characteristics as unavoidable
human endowment. He rather sees human
beings as cognitive and affective operators.
This marks the gap with Marx. In Marxs
analysis it is the primacy assigned to mans
labour as universal and objective foundation of
values which opens the theoretical space for a
notion of alienation. Only what is essentially
proper to mankind can itself and then
estrange
alienate itself from people. This essential
element is chiefly defined by production and.
as the creative transformation of the world, it is
an end in itself amounting to the absolute
working-out of (human)creative potentiality
(Marx [1857] 1973:488). Postulating a certain
notion of what is - and ought to be - a human
being, the labour theory of value ultimately
yields to the warning that modern people are
alienated from their humanity. Modern value
construction within money exchange circuits
thereby results in abominations of personality.
In opposition to Marxs normativism.
Simmels relativist theory of value aims to
show that an absolute is not required as the
conceptual counterpart to the relativity of
things ([1907] 1990:104). Just as each
description depends on aprioristic assumptions
working as to make description possible, so
values have no universal, objective foundation.
For Simmel, the specific value of a thing rests on
subjective judgement. Value as valuation con-
cerns a wanted item and remains inherent in
S
the subject ([1907] 1990:63). Subjective
valuation is a condition of the possibility of
values as cultural classification. To be sure,
valuation is correlated to the individual being
the locus of incompatible wants. Still, such
anthropological considerations are far from
normative, even if they may occasionally
amount to a sort of vitalism. Unlike neo-Kantian
gnoseological normativisni, Simmel does not
believe in the possibility of grounding subjective
valuation on the basis of a systematic founda-
tion of objective criteria (Boudon 1989, Helle
1988, Oakes 1985). The gnoseological a priori
that he conceives at the roots of every form of
knowledge are not universal or a-temporal, but
variable in time and space. Furthermore they
are not reducible to a finite bundle of categories,
their complexity complete computa-
impeding
tion and description (Simmel [1907] 1990 :60-
65).
As a result. Simmels theory of value
delineates a feed-back contiguration: value as
valuation is subjective and allows for the
reproduction of the objectivity of values as
distribution.
 211

cultural classification. On the one hand, the
phenomenon of valuation is trans-historical.
being rooted in the cognitive and practical
separation between object and subject and
revealing itself in the efforts and sacrifices
needed to overcome distance, obstacles and
difficulties (Simmel [1907] 1990:F,6). On the
other hand. values themselves are socially and
culturally constructed through social interac-
tion (Wecllselwirkll11g). Still Simmel arrived at
the conclusion that relativity is socially
entrenched, i.e. that values are socially con-
structed. but they are not arbitrary. Culture is
precisely the crystallization of interactions, a
frame of values which exists independently of
the feelings and verdicts of each single indivi-
dual, and yet emerges from their intersection
jective signitication remains fundamental for
the market mechanism (Accarino 1982; Blu-
menberg 19 7h 1. For its very viability, the money
economy demands of subjects that they be able
to make sense, furnish judgement and bestow
value on an ever increasing variety of objects.
All in all, the duality of money - its objective
relativity - entails a duality of experience. It is
certainly true that the subject learns that things
have an objective value (Boudon 1989). Yet this
value is subjectively upheld.
Such a duality may seem quite abstract.
Yet, it shall become of sociological relevance if
we recall that, when discussing it, Simmel hints
at the cultural dynamics of the mutual con-
struction of private and public spheres. Simmel
was convinced that the abstraction from intini-

([1907] 1990:101). tesimal exchanges into the institutional objec-

tivity of money entailed that exchange had
The public/private divide become something other than a private process
Nothing shows this process of entrenchment between two individuals confined to individual
better than money. The money economy seems actions ([1907] 199():177). This helps us in
to have a twofold task in Simmels theory. It is considering the market as a public sphere.
both a metaphor which perfectly illustrates feed- against all erroneous impressions that it be
back and entrenchment, and the fundamental otherwise.8 Indeed, if we follow through the
social phenomenon which defines the modern correlation between the modern private/public
conditions of valuation. divide with the duality of modern value forma-
Simmel starts from the observation that tion, we get a compelling picture of the market.
the significance of money lies in its relativity, In this light, market exchange makes for the
thus not in itself but rather in its transforma- institutional establishment of objective equiva-
tion into other values ([[ 077] 1990: S S 1. Yet. lents among goods which are (and must be)
when the super-individual character of money subjectively non-equivalent. Private spheres
exchange is guaranteed by a whole set of nurture incompatibilities which feed on the
institutions, money embodies an objective rela- market as a public domain of values and provide
tivity. Money exchange fixes values which are the materials to be equalized within it. The
perceived as the products of the networks of extreme objectivity of social relationships sus-
objects they refer to. Money signals a mutual tains and is sustained by the extreme subjecti-
relationship which appears as a reciprocal vism of individual valuation.
determination of value by the objects ([1907] This view is supported by the way Simmel
199():751. Proceeding in the sociological direc- denotes the objectivity of market exchange. Such
tion Simmel also explores to what extent a objectivity is not to be understood as substanti-
mature money economy influences how social vization. On the contrary, it remains an emer-
actors grasp and fabricate value. In commercial gent property of social interaction and it is best
modernity, people are confronted with the understood under the category of indifference
objectivity of value insofar as they are pushed (Vergleichgultigzmg) ( [ 1907] 199l): 1 19-1 30,
to express in monetary terms their relationships 15 9-16 1. 2 2 1-2 3 7).9 In public spaces such as
with things and even with people. Even in the market, individuals do not arrive at associa-
routine transactions, objects reciprocally tions into which earlier man entered in his
express their value through a common denomi- totality and individuality and which, for this
nator, and thus economic exchange value reason, required reciprocal knowledge far
becomes autonomous. Yet the specific value beyond the immediate, objective content of the
attributed to a good falls within the subjective relationship (Simmel [1908a] 1950:318, see
category of valuation. As ephemeral as it might also [1907] 1990: 34 3-3 541. Money is indiffer-
be, it is a Si1mgelJll11fJ: literally, an action of ence itself ([1907] 1990:55) and given the
bestowing meaning which the subject is asked sheer objectivity of monetary relations. the
and free to accomplish. The capacity of sub- personality of those involved appears wholly
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212
indifferent in spite of mutual dependency
(Simmel 1900b:65). Public relationships are
typically based on goal-specific associations
(Zweckverband) concerning a well-defined con-
tent neatly factored out of the whole relation, so
that members are anonymous as they only need
to know of each other that they are actually
upholding the specific relationship ([1908a]
1950:317-318, translation amended).
These spheres of indifference are con-
structed in opposition to spheres of life where
difference is, indeed, sustained. If what is public
becomes ever more public, what is private
becomes ever more private ([1908a] 1950:
337). The specialization of public relationships.
their indifference to the whole of the personality,
leaves secret, private spaces for the individual.
spaces for being-for-oneself. It is these private
regions which constitute domains of difference
that are called upon when the subject bestows
value on things. It is these spaces of and for
individuality which are necessary for the
functioning of the market mechanism: they
constitute domains which as secrets can be
revealed in individual choices. The value of
money is guaranteed by its institutionalization,
whereas the value of the value of money is
guaranteed by the process of subjective valua-
tion of commodities which in turn relies on the
construction of discretion and privacy.
Seen in this light. Simmels theory of value
is relativist, but not nihilist. His perspective is
opposed to the notion that the growth of market
objectivity goes hand in hand with the dissolu-
tion of the individual and with the fall of his or
her signification space. On the contrary, sub-
jectivism is heightened insofar as individuals
capacities to sustain difference is vital to social,
objective exchange. Still, Simmel offers a critical
viewpoint for analysing the ambivalence of
commercial modernity. In particular, as I shall
show, Simmel considered that the capacity of
subjective valuation be overplayed. With a focus
on subjective valuation, he could both appreci-
ate the obvious appeal of an emphasis on
individual preferences and question the condi-
tions which made such emphasis possible and
the problems it might generate.
4. Material culture
Difference and indifference
In my interpretation, Simmels theory of value
promises not to dismiss as alienation or
commodity fetishism those consumer practices
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distribution.
that go beyond a supposed essential or norma-
tiveutility, or which are serviceable to capital
accumulation (Marx [1857] 1973; [1867]
1928). On the contrary, we are offered the
possibility of
exploring the ambivalence of
consumption, looking at commercial modernity
as both empowerment and entrapment.
According to Sinunel, the development of
money economy pushes for the growth and
multiplication of material culture. Indeed he
indicates the peculiarity of contemporary cul-
ture in the fact that our everyday life is
surrounded more and more by objects: we
have to face a phenomenal growth of objective
culture (or culture of things), as well as a
continuous acceleration of such growth (Sim-
mel [1907] 1990:448~49).1~ The growth of
material culture corresponds to a reciprocity of
distance and closeness, withdrawal and
approach in our relationship with things.
Things multiply and therefore they depart
from us, yet they must remain close enough
in order that the distance should be experi-
enced at all ( [ 1907] 1990:76). As a result
modern man has to act in a different way than
primitive man: the distance between him and
the objects of his endeavours is much greater
and much more difficult obstacles stand in his
way. but on the other hand he acquires a
greater quantity of objects ([1907] 1990:76).
The subject is not only faced with more objects.
but also with objects of a larger variety: a
widening of the circle of interests is implicit in
such a peculiar combination of distance and
closeness. Already in the essay Uber soziale
Diffcrenzienmg ( 1890) Simmel had shown that
the possession of money may be seen as a latent
differentiation. Only the abundance of inter-
twining interests, the wealth of different activi-
ties has made possible the development of this
means of exchange which is, so to speak, sniper
partes and whose effect for the individual is the
possibility of whatever economic differentia-
tion (1890:171). The growth of material
culture is therefore not accompanied by its
massification as the Frankfurt School would
have it. On the contrary, such growth entails a
progressive specialization which has to be
actively sustained by individuals.
The overall result of the growth and
specialization of material culture mirrors the
duality of money and of modern value forma-
tion. Objects face the subject as a relatively
autonomous system. Still, Simmel himself
noticed that in commercial modernity highly
specialized forms of consumer differentiation

are fostered: the most adequate realization and
effectiveness of every individual complication
and the complete freedom for individual
reorganization become possible ( [ 1907] 1990:
319 ). The bulk of differentiated objects produces
an enormous specificity in so far as
more difficult to find two people who have
selected the same set of objects from material
culture. This places emphasis on the creation of
individual styles as well as on the multiplication
of lifestyles.
Simmel repeatedly stressed that with the
advent of commercial modernity, the subject
moves from a situation where his or her life
choices and identity are, so to speak, imposed by
the things he or she possesses, to a situation of
absolute potentiality. In a mature monetary
economy the subject is freed from the structural
links with goods that enslave him or her:
possessions are no longer classified according to
the category of a specific life-content, that inner
bond ... in no way develops which, though it
restricts the personality, nonetheless gives sup-
port and content to it ([1907] 1990:403). The
subject cannot melt and coincide with goods: all
objects remain in his or her hands only for a
limited period and they are predisposed toward
conversion into money. The immediate conse-
quence of this is the neutralization of the
pervasive power of goods. The absolute domin-
ion over things and the potentiality of doing
are nevertheless ambivalent phenomena. The
freedom that money confers paves the way to
indeterminacy. It is a freedom without any
directive, without any definite and determining
content. Such freedom favours that emptiness
and instability that allows one to give full rein to
every accidental, whimsical and tempting
impulse ([1907] 1990:402). A similar process
does not simply imply an intensification of
power relations, though. On the contrary, it
brings with itself the triumph of negative
liberty. Tensions derive precisely from the fact
that it does not furnish positive liberty and
does not provide indications for the constitution
of individual identities consistent through time
([1907] 1990:2H3-354). Thus the lengthening
of the teleological series allowing for a broad-
ening of interests makes for the impossibility of
knowing the finality of ones own actions.
Similarly. the specificity allowed to the indivi-
dual is paid for by the indeterminacy of the
consumer practices available.
Expressed in wider social-theoretical terms,
we may say that in contemporary consumer
practices the subject has to come to terms with
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2000 Scandinavian Sociological Association. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized
213
both difference and indifference. What Erving
Goffman (1961) described as bureaucratization
of the spirit - the fragmentary condition of the
subject who has to enter and exit a number of
different roles - may be observed from a new
it is ever perspective. Contemporary consumer practices
tend allow for a maximum of individual
to
specificity which corresponds to the multi-
faceted and highly specific combination of
roles that each individual has to perform in
everyday life. However, consumer practices with
their necessary plasticity do not secure deter-
mined and ultimate support for individual self-
constitution. Modern material culture testifies
to the relativity of value embodying what Max
Weber ([1922]1978) identified as the code of
modernity, the separation of different value
spheres. Material culture no longer bestows a
difference on the individual. The multiplication
and differentiation of objects and their separa-
tion into different hierarchies make global logics
of social distinction more blurred and less
efficient. Conceived as a whole, material culture
corresponds to a public domain of indifference
which becomes meaningful only in the differ-
ence made by subjective valuation.
Techniques of consumption
Still, in contemporary consumer culture we find
techniques that help individuals to come to
terms with difference and indifference. Techni-
ques of consumption may be conceived as
institutionalized guidelines for personal con-
sumption embedded both in discourses and
organizations. In this light, fashion and style
can be described as techniques that. embodying
particular combinations of difference and indif-
ference, help govern the modern world of goods.
They respond to what Simmel described as an
enduring practical necessity, the constitution
of oneself through goods. Modern fashion
circulation may thus be appreciated from a
perspective which places emphasis on strategy
rather than function, something which Durk-
heim might well have felt as alien to the
sociological enterprise. However, this perspec-
tive does not do without the social dimension.
On the contrary it looks at consumer practices
as strategies enacted tlzrollglz the socio-cultural
framework, rather than inside it. Furthermore, it
opens up the possibility of considering how
techniques of consumption may be linked to
forms of subjectivity and self-constitution,
something which an exclusive emphasis on
social distinction usually misses.
Such perspective directly derives from
distribution.
214
Simmels observations on fashion and style.
Simmel focused on how these phenomena were
experienced, shaping individuality while being
an instrument of it. To be sure, Simmel saw
fashion also as social distinction. 1 Yet, unlike
Kant he never used a moralizing tone (Gronow
1993), and unlike Veblen (1899) he avoided
envy and other highly stigmatized passions as
explanatory devices. In the context of the
contemporary sociology of consumption, Sim-
mels most interesting claim is that fashion and
style are social forms which offer a veil
through which the modern subject can allude
to his or her deep individuality. They also
provide a provisional social counterweight for
any ensuing excess of subjectivism.
Firstly, this view delivers a fuller picture of
the modern longing for novelty, a phenomenon
which is obviously lost to our eyes when we
consider it as coterminous with trans-historical
issues of social distinction. In particular, Simmel
suggested that fashion heeds the taste for
novelty as such. As a finality, novelty may take
on the quality of what, in Kantian terms, is a
pure aesthetic pleasure (Gronow 1993). Yet if
so, this is because it satisfies the modern anxiety
of continuous renewal and allows for the
conception of such renewal as unlimited,
diffusing the perception that what is absolutely
unnatural may at least exist in the form of
fashion (Simmel [1895] 1971:322, translation
amended). Fashion therefore also promotes
novelty as transitory. It is analogous to the
modern impatient time which implies not only
the desire for rapid change, but also the
attraction of limitation, the attraction of a
simultaneous beginning and end, the charm of
novelty coupled to that of transitoriness
([1895] 1971:302). Fashion allows the indivi-
dual to be up to time. Yet, as ephemeral and
doomed to disappear, fashion also appears as a
semblance which alludes to other, deeper and
firmer features of the individual.
Secondly, in this view fashion illustrates
how people may experience and construct
themselves as individuals facing the indifference
of modern material culture. Fashion is a social
form through which the negative liberty of the
modern subject and the correlative search for
identity are both controlled and nurtured. It is a
departure from custom made customary and it
gives a feeling of both safety and adventure. In
other words, fashion offers a space of difference,
which nevertheless is expressed in terms of a
relative indifference because of both its tran-
siency and its public availability. For a moment
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2000 Scandinavian Sociological Association. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized
distribution.
it yields to a strong sense of self: and, as
indifference, it brings the subject to continu-
ously re-establish a distance and a space of
difference for him or herself in the pursuit of
such heightened individuality.
In the Philosophie, when discussing modern
individual experience as shaped by the way
money economy produces and defeats distance,
Simmel refers to style in a similar vein: as the
manifestation of our inner feelings, style
indicates that these feelings no longer immedi-
ately gush out but take on a disguise the
moment they are revealed ([1907] 1990:
473). In his later essay on style Simmel
([1908b] 1991:68) developed this suggestion:
with the universalistic formalization offered by
style, we are freed from the absolute responsi-
bility to ourselves and we can express ourselves
indirectly, without having to balance on the
narrowness of mere individuality. At the same
time, the juxtaposition of different styles that
characterizes the environment of the modern
subject proposes again a space for individuality.
allowing for objects to receive a new centre
which is not located in any of them alo-
ne([1908b] 1991:69), but coincides with the
unitary combination contrived by the subject.
Appreciating a particular item of style as ours,
we shelter ourselves in a common denominator,
while being allowed to indicate that it does not
contain us, that there is an elusive part of
ourselves which lies in the capacity to neutralize
the indifference of any style by means of our
own different, subjective combination.
Fashion and style not only illustrate how
modernity tries to provide social answers to its
peculiar problem, i.e. for the individual to
belong in a totality without loosing individual-
ity ; they also correspond to the rhythm
dictated by modern material culture. In effect,
fashion as well as style embody our capacity and
necessity of bringing us closer to things by
placing them at a distance from us (Simmel
[1907] 1990:473). Such distance seems to offer
a space for subjective valuation which does not
deny values and which, on the contrary, feeds
on cultural classifications re-configuring them.
5. Concluding remarks
In setting to offer a social-theoretical
out
perspective Simmels Philosophie, I have
on
tried to show that it may be seen as something
more than, and different from, sociological
impressionism. I have re-interpreted Simmels
 215

work on money as a potent attempt to develop a tradition, commercial society is understood as

critical sociology of consumption from a relati- neither paradise nor hell. Within it risks do not
vist theory of value. On this basis, I have started disappear, they change. What is defined as
to delineate the traits of a Simmelian sociology subjectivism is in fact a deeply ambivalent
of consumption which presents itself as alter- phenomenon. In a situation where goods are no
native to the more traditional focus on social longer capable of imposing their rhythm on the
distinctions (i.e. Bourdieu 1979; Douglas and subject, the subject may not be able to impose
Isherwood 1979; Veblen 1889). his or her rhythm on goods. Facing the
As I have hinted throughout this paper, overwhelming development of specialized mate-
such sociology offers at least two advantages. rial culture, paralysis is a probable risk (Nedel-
Firstly, we may retain a space for agency by mann 1991).
looking at how fashion and style are experi- Likewise, the indifference of the public
enced. Simmels observations do not amount to sphere of commercial modernity is not only a
a study of the social functions of goods: they resource, but also
risk for the individuals
a
rather try and show how fashion and style forge sense of specificity. On the one hand, indiffer-

individuality while being their instrument. I ence may become part of the individual. Indeed,
have interpreted this as an attempt to look at the development of a blase attitude is a wide-
fashion and style as techniques of consumption, spread subjective answer, whereby people keep
and I have shown how they are responsive to themselves forever at a distance from things and
the sustenance of well-governed subjective experience all things as being of an equally dull
difference and vital to objective exchange. and grey hue ([1907] 1990:256). On the other
Such a perspective is pivotal for a sociology of hand, difference may become a goal in itself.
consumption which struggles with the necessity Eccentricity thus develops as an attempt to
of accounting for both agency and structure overcome indifference. As opposed to the
(see Campbell 1987; Featherstone 1991; Miller indifference of the market, the individuals
1995). search for specificity reinforced by the structural
Secondly, a Simmelian sociology of con- necessity of subjective valuation may generate a
sumption helps us ponder the appeals and the formal and empty difference. Its meaning may
risks of commercial modernity with a minimum no longer be found in the content of such
of normative assumptions. The focus on valua- activity itself but rather in its being a form of
tion and on its social conditions allowed Simmel &dquo;being different&dquo; - of making oneself noticeable
to consider that subjectivity constitution in (Simmel [1903] 1971:336). In both ways - as
commercial modernity is an active and yet blas or eccentric - the individual looses him or
inconclusive process, at least so far as a time- herself as the source of valuation. In the one
consistent unitary identity is pursued. It is case, valuation is no longer sought after and the
precisely thanks to this inconclusiveness that individual has lost the feeling for value differ-
consumption tends to be characterized as ence. In the other, as things are valued for their
creative and dynamic, as a process of contin- difference, difference is not established by
uous emancipation from the conditioning valuation.
implicit in the possession of any particular By describing these risks, Simmel also
good. The heteronomy of the modern subject is implies that there is a path which we may
to be traced back to the fact that he or she is follow in order to confront, if not overcome, the
pushed to self-construction. If we are hetero- predicament of commercial modernity. Such a
nomous, this is so, not because we live the path - possibly elitarian, certainly individualis-
of
rhythm objects as Baudrillard (1970) main- tic - may be portrayed as ethical equilibrism: a
tained, but because, having freed ourselves from balancing practice taking place between the
them, we are obliged to live our own rhythm. indifference of the market which allows indivi-
because we are faced with the task of producing dualization, and the risk that the individuality
ourselves. thus constituted remains empty, incapable of
All in all, the critical perspective which is bestowing value on things, a mere reproducer of
offered by a Simmelian sociology of consump- commensurability. It is in the search of this
tion implies that the indifference of the market narrow and changeable line of equilibrium -
opens a space for individuality without guaran- which may on occasion be offered even by
teeing that the subject be the master of such mundane phenomena such as fashion and style
space, that he or she holds on him or herself the that the individual can construct him or
-

source of valuation. Like in the best sociological herself as a reflexive and inward-directed source
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2000 Scandinavian Sociological Association. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized
distribution.
216 A
of valuation.l2 And it is through such a never-
ending search that indifference may become
meaningful, allowing for the appreciation and
expression of differences which may yet again
make a difference.
First version received September 1999
Final version
accepted November 1999
Acknowledgements
This paper elaborates two earlier works prepared for the annual
meetings of the ESA Network on Consumption, presented in
199h and 1997 at the Universities of Tallinn and Essex. My
thoughts have also been sharpened in the Interdisciplinary
Seminars on Simmel organized in the autumn of 1997 at the
University of East Angha. Thanks are owed to all participants on
these occasions as well as to Gianfranco Poggi, Errulio Santoro,
Alan Scott and Pekka Sulkunen for reading and commenting on
early drafts. A particular thank you goes to the late Martm Hollis
for his inspiring comments.
Notes
1
Implicit and explicit critiques of these views have been
forward both by scholars who place Simmel
persuasively put
within classical sociological theory (Landmann 1967; Levine
1985:103-112; Nedelmann 1991), and by scholars who
consider him closer to postmodernist concerns (Weinstein and
Weinstein 1993:5-28)
2
David Frisby has documented Simmels concerns with a
theory of value epitomized by various letters, notably to
Heinrich Rickert (Fnsby 1981; 1992b:80-97). and by the
deviations of the second edition of the Philosophie ([1907] 1990)
from the 1900 version being concentrated mainly in the first
chapter on value (for the original see Simmel 1900a; see also
Cavalli 1984 and Frisby 1990). However, Frisby focuses mainly
on the economic aspects of Simmels theory of value and plays
down its epistemological import for social and cultural theory.
The relevance of epistemological concerns for Simmels theory of
culture is instead grasped, but not explored by Daniel Miller
(1987:70-72) who nevertheless considers them as within an
Hegelian rather than a neo-Kantian framework.
3 See also Simmel (1890:160-172: [1907] 1990:228-
238). Note the striking analogy with Norbert Eliass observa-
tions on the pacified social spaces of modernity where we
witness a lengthening of the series of actions on which the
individual and his actions constantly depend so that the habit
of foresight over longer chains grows (Elias 1939:273).
4 Michael Weinstein (1993) consider that his views on objective
Despite his appreciation of the predicament of the idea of
human nature contained in the critique of Feuerbach, Marx
retains the assumption of a determination of mankind as
striving towards an ideal of fraternal self-realization in diverse,
productive labour whereby human talents can be truly
(Geras 1983; Lohman 1993).
expressed
5
The emerging neo-marginalist economic thought, Carl
Mengers theory of needs in particular, have developed on
similar premises (Schumpeter 1955:411 ff). The similarity with
neo-marginalist thought and the Austrian School has not to be
overplayed though. Once recognized that it is the interpretive
status of the objects that confers them value (i.e. not that useful
things are desired but that desired things are useful), neo-
marginalist economists have departed from Simmels emphasis
on the construction of valuation conditions and subjectivity
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2000 Scandinavian Sociological Association. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized
distribution.
typically leave out preference formation and
forms. Their models
interdependence, forgetting that the economy is inextricably
bound to subjective and cultural circumstances of interpreta-
tion. For an informative account of Simmels Philosophie
economic premises as related to development of fin de siecle
economics see Alessandro Cavalli (1984). David Frisby
(1992b:80-97) and Jeffrey Shad (1990).
6
As with Webers critique of causal explanation in social
Simmels relativism correlated to the finiteness of the
sciences, is
subject facing the complexity of reality, to the impossibility of
embracing social networks in all their causal intricacy (Simmel
1892:73-115). However, being more of a philosopher than his
younger compatriot, Simmel is able to step in and out of
sociological perspective. He acknowledged that sociological
methodology is not exhaustive (Deroche-Gurcel 1988: Ramstedt
1992). Indeed, he conceived of it as a field of knowledge itself
dependent on social processes, money rationalization in
particular (Simmel [1907] 1990:101-118). Nonetheless, Sim-
mel was preoccupied with maintaining a critical thrust for his
relativist perspective. As he declared, he opposed to the
was
sceptical loosening of all footholds (Simmel 1898, in Gassen
and Landmann 1958:9; see also Simmel 1892:176-200). Some
have thereby recognized a blend of pragmatism in Simmels
epistemology (Boudon 1989: Helle 1988). This may be seen in
the idea that although our intellect can perceive reality only as a
limitation of the field of application of concepts, these are
legitimate, even if they depart from reality, insofar as they offer
a service for its interpretation (Simmel [1907] 1990:248; see
also Simmel 1892 10-12)
7
This concept (lit. reciprocal action). is not only central to
Simmels sociology but also to his epistemology, conceptualizing
the complexity of a world where everything is in interaction
with everything else (Cavalli 1989: Kaern 1990; Lichtblau
1991).
8
Simmel ([1907] 1990:175ff) was adamant that money
feeds on the State as a guarantee of its value. Again, different
from Marxs notion that money masks an underlying reality,
Simmel views money as itself a social relation, one that like
credit creates a liabdity rather than liquidating it. The obligation
of the creditor is assumed by the public, thus monetary
transactions between individuals may appear as private affairs,
purely economic and interest-driven. On these issues, and more
in general on the sociology of money, see Geoffrey Ingham
(1998).
9
On this notion (lit. process of becoming indifferent), see in
particular the work of Georg Lohmann (1993).
10
Simmels notion of objective culture has attracted a
considerable amount of scholarship. If the once popular view
that it would entail a blend of Hegelism has been variously
qualified and criticized (Helle 1988; Kohnke 1992; Schnabel
1984), new interpretations have been put forward. In parti-
cular, in their attempt to postmodernize Simmel, Deena and
culture imply the triumph of objectified culture over life. I have
elsewhere criticized this perspective which draws Simmels
theory of culture very close to Baudrillards notion of implosion
and to the postmodernist subversion of the modern man-
culture relation (Sassatelli 1997)
11
Social distinction and trickle-down dynamics are pre-
valent in the social sciences understanding of fashion and
consumer practices in general. In the shape of Veblen,
Bandwagon and Snob effects they have been the back-door
through which preference interdependence has got some access
to neo-classical economics (Hargreaves Heap 1989). Some
refined version of this - where immediate desires for imitation or
differentiation are mediated by an embodied disposition, habitus
,
inclining agents towards goods that reflect their social standing

- also inspires Bourdieus (1979) work on taste (Sassatelli
1995).
12
Although I cannot develop these themes here, it is worth
remembering that, when proposing an explicit ethics in his
essay Das individuelle Gesetz ([1913] 1968), Simmel develops
Nietzseches intimation that the human being has to become
what he or she
Simmels ethics is based on difference and asks
is.
to recognize Difference is not to be understood as distinction,
it.
as the attempt to be different from all the others by fighting ones
way through in the social games of inclusion and exclusion. As
the individual is the entire man, not what is left of him when
one has taken away what he shares with others, to recognize
ones own difference is to recognize ones own being peculiar
Eigenheit (Simmel [1913] 1968:126). For a first elaboration of
(
) Kaern. M. 1990. The World as a Human Construction. In M.
how to link Simmels ethics to his view of modern matenal
culture, see the work of Donald Levine (1993),
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