Simmel's Forms of Experiencing

The Adventure as Symbolic Work

Bibliographic Data

ID2480904
AuthorsJules J Wanderer (University of Colorado System, corresponding author)
Year1987
Volume10
Issue1
Pages21-28
Publication date1987-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSymbolic Interaction (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0195-6086 • E-ISSN: 1533-8665
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1525/si.1987.10.1.21
OpenAlexW2013193154
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited14

Simmel says the content of experience does not make the adventure, the form does! To help clarify this remark, the Simmelian adventurer here is recast, following leads from Mead, Burke, and the pragmatists, as an ephemeral role incumbent engaged in symbolic work. The adventure is presented in terms of symbolic conversions of the content of life's experiences-physical things, social things, events, and persons-into objects of adventure. The form of experiencing engages the adventurer in symbolic work in which she or he symbolically synthesizes, antagonizes, and compromises Simmel's fundamental categories of life: certainty-uncertainty, chance-necessity, and passivity-activity

Adventure · Adventure Education · Aesthetics · Art · Certainty · Computer security · Ephemeral key · Epistemology · Pragmatism · Psychoanalysis · Social science · Sociology · Symbolic interactionism · The Symbolic · Computer Science · Engineering · Management and Organizational Studies · Philosophy · Psychology · Social and Cultural Dynamics · Social Psychology · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory · Artificial Intelligence