Friends of Relational Sociology? The Relational Current as a Space of Hospitality

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Olli Pyyhtinen
Tampere University

The text considers the writings of François Dépelteau from the framework of hospitality, as an invitation for scholars to participate in specifying the key ideas and practices of the relational sociology movement. Thereby, instead of searching for cues where he would speak about hospitality, the text explores his thinking as hospitality. It examines how his writings performatively try out and expand the possibilities of creating hospitality within the relational sociology movement. The article suggests that the antinomy between what Jacques Derrida has called unconditional and conditional hospitality proves helpful when trying to explicate Dépelteau’s views on keeping relational sociology alive as a project or intellectual movement. The difficulty of the community building, it will be maintained, comes down to finding a balance between embracing difference and protecting identity.

Keywords
community, friendship, hospitality, invitation, relational sociology

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Pyyhtinen, Olli. “Friends of Relational Sociology? The Relational Current as a Space of Hospitality”. Digithum, no. 26, doi:10.7238/d.v0i26.3199.
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(c) Olli Pyyhtinen, 2020


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Author Biography

Olli Pyyhtinen, Tampere University

Olli Pyyhtinen is Associate Professor at the New Social Research programme at Tampere University, Finland. His research intersects social theory, philosophy, science and technology studies, economic sociology, and the study of art, and he is the author of for example The Simmelian Legacy (2018), More-than-Human Sociology (2015), The Gift and its Paradoxes (2014), and Simmel and the Social (2010), and co-author of Disruptive Tourism and its Untidy Guests (2014).

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