lo Squaderno (Mar 2016)

Drifting through Space. An Epistemology

  • Jeff Ferrell

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 39
pp. 21 – 26

Abstract

Read online

Almost a century ago, the American sociologist Robert Park (1928: 882, 887-8) published an essay on migration and marginality. In it, Park argued that: Migration as a social phenomenon … may be envisaged in its subjective aspects as manifested in the changed type of personality which it produces …. Energies that were formerly controlled by custom and tradition are released. The individual is free for new adventures, but he [sic] is more or less without direction and control … The emancipated individual invariably becomes in a certain sense and to a certain degree a cosmopolitan. He [sic] learns to look upon the world in which he was born and bred with something of the detachment of the stranger.

Keywords