Event dynamics

pp. 68-88

in: Olli Pyyhtinen, Simmel and "the social", Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010

Abstract

In its tendency towards desubstantialization, relationality implies a shift from substantial reality to event. In any dynamic network of relations, as Cooper (2005, pp. 1699) points out, entities do not appear as separate, static substances but as events: if an entity is defined by its relations, then by definition a change in any relation produces a change in the entity too. Thus, relational entities "happen" rather than exist in their own right in themselves (ibid., p. 1707). They are shaped by series and flow of events.