Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World

Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World by Hartmut Rosa, Polity 2019

Hartmut Rosa’s books have in recent years attracted great global interest in and far beyond academic contexts. Resonance is his penultimate book and here he tackles the acceleration that has seemingly only increased over the past century. Rosa defines resonance as a kind of antithesis to alienation: a cognitive and sensual relationship to values created through affect and emotion, inherent interest and perceived self-efficacy, where the subject and the world are mutually affected and changed. In the book, he defines and discusses three types of resonance axes; one horizontal (family, friends and the political), one diagonal (work, educational institutions, sports and consumption) and one diagonal (religion, nature, art and history). For a religious scholar, Rosa’s concept of resonance is a fascinating frame of reference. For example, he notes that rituals create sociocultural resonance axes along which three different types of resonant relationships can be experienced: vertical (e.g. to the gods, the cosmos, time or eternity), horizontal (within one’s own social community) and diagonal (in relation to things). To be written by a theoretically driven sociologist, and despite its scope (just over 450 pages in addition to notes), the book is easy to read and captivating.

Kim Groop