Transcript Georg Simmel - SOC 331: Foundations of Sociological Theory

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GEORG SIMMEL
Georg Simmel (1858-1918)
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Born in 1858 in Berlin, son of successful
businessman who died when GS was an infant
Historical context: Berlin at the time was a
crossroads of Europe, of western civilization
even, a cosmopolitan center
GS was the quintessential Berlin intellectual tied into intellectual circles, café culture
Marginalized from academic life, due to
eclectic nature of work and institutional antisemitism, as Simmel was Jewish
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GS was unable to secure a professorship until
the end of his life, at (mediocre) Strasbourg
GS’s marginalized position led to appreciation
of social position and its importance in society
Intellectual influences & core ideas
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Simmel’s sociology went against two prominent currents of European
thought:
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Historicism emphasizes fundamental differences b/w natural and social
worlds
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Historicsm and Organicism
natural sciences seen as the proper domain of Objectivity
social sciences, if science at all, require interpretive methods, Subjectivity
Organicism sees natural & social realities as continuous and models
social processes on biological processes
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employs organic metaphors, sees world as one chain of being from more
simple natural phenomena to the most complex social patterns
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archetypal figures: Durkheim, Spencer, Comte
Simmel rejected historicism b/c it precluded scientific and generalizing
approach to social life and rejected organicism for its reification of
social facts, its vision of life as a thing
Society
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GS defined society as a “number of individuals connected by
interaction….It is not a ‘substance,’ nothing concrete, but an event: It is the
function of receiving and affecting the fate and development of one
individual by another”
 “Society is merely the name for a number of individuals connected by
interaction”
Society and the individuals that compose it constitute an interdependent
duality – the existence of one presupposes the other
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One’s individuality is created out of a synthesis of two seemingly contradictory
forces: one is simultaneously an autonomous human being with a unique
disposition and history, and a product of society
GS prefers term “sociation,” with its processual tone, over “society”
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“Society” is a reification, “sociation” is not
Sociation emphasizes Relation and Process
Insofar as we speak of Society, we do so only in shorthand…
Sociology
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Sociology’s goal is description and analysis of particular forms of
interaction and their crystallization in group characteristics
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Proper subject matter for sociology is the formal aspects of social life,
not the particular content
Content refers to the drives, purposes, interests, or inclinations that
individuals have for interacting with one another
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Such motivations, in themselves, are not social but rather are isolated
psychological or biological impulses
Actions in concert with others to fulfill drives or realize interests are social
 a geometry of social life: specifying regularities in diverse content
Emphasizes social interaction at the individual & small group level
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Microsociology of Simmel much different from “grand theory” of the
classical writers, especially Marx and Durkheim
Sociology: against reification
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Reification simply means “thingification,” making something that is a
process or a concept, something abstract, into a thing, e.g.
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Relationship: when two people become romantically involved, they
have a ‘relationship,’ it becomes a thing, tangible force – but really
it’s a process of relating
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Nation: we assume there’s some “essence,” “Americanness,” but it’s
really a way of relating
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America, Americans, are constructed through interaction
What America ‘is’ isn’t an unchanging substance, but an ongoing process
Organization: we treat it as a thing rather than a process, a set of
relations among people
Other things that might be reified: class, race, gender
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gender is more tricky b/c there seems to be some kind of biological
component, so there might be some “thingness,” some “essence,” to gender
Sociology: against categories
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“Sociology asks what happens to men and by what rules do
they behave not insofar as they form groups and are
determined by their group existence in their totalities but
insofar as they form groups and are determined by the
group existence because of interaction”
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It’s not the individual attributes that are of interest, it’s how
they’re instanciated (come into being) through action
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Usual tendency is to reduce people to categorical memberships:
e.g., I am women, I’m white, a sociologist…
The concepts are only realized via interaction
Categorical identities do not determine action, they only
exist through action/interaction
The individual in modern society
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Society and the individuals that compose it constitute an
interdependent duality, the existence of one presupposing
the other
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Urban societies allow individuals to cultivate unique
talents and interests but also leads to a tragic “leveling”
of the human spirit
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duality: being twofold; dichotomy; a classification into two
opposed parts or subclasses
Weber observed a similar tendency in bureaucracies
Tragedy of culture: objective culture - the ideas and
products of human creativity - comes to dominate
individual will and self-development or subjective culture
Toward a formal sociology
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Diverse social phenomena – content & contexts - can be
understood in terms of formal similarities
Analyze all different kings in terms of kingship
 Analyze kings and presidents in terms of leadership
Forms of interaction among members of different groups (varied content)
are importantly shaped by the structural similarities of those groups
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Focus on formal characteristics of social processes allows GS to
preserve historicist emphasis on uniqueness of different moments,
events and places, while nonetheless seeing underlying uniformities
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In other words seeing a structural similarity b/w kingship & presidency
is not same as saying all kings and presidents are the same…it allows
you to abstract some dimension without losing the content
Quantitative features of social life
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GS divides the social world into 3 basic forms:
 Solitary
individual
 Dyad (two persons)
 each
individual can present themselves to the other in a way that
maintains their identity
 either party can end the relationship by withdrawing from it
 Triad
(3 or more people)
 enables
strategies that lead to competition, alliances, or mediation
 often develops a group structure independent of the individuals in
it, whereas this is less likely in the dyad
Social types
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Simmel constructed a gallery of social types to complement
inventory of social forms
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Fine-grained descriptions of such diverse types as "the mediator," "the
poor," "the adventurer," "the man in the middle," and "the renegade"
Each social type is cast by the specifiable reactions and
expectations of others
Types form through relations: people assign the ‘other’ a
particular position and expect him/her to behave in specific ways
Types’ characteristics are seen as attributes of the social structure
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based on social position rather than categorical memberships
determined by individual attributes
each social type is transposable to wide array of settings
“Sociability” (1910)
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sociability: the “play-form of association,” driven by,
"amicability, breeding, cordiality and attractiveness of
all kinds"
 interacting
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with others for the sake of the connection itself
Sociable conversations have no significance or ulterior
motive, talking is an end in itself
 for
pure pleasure of association
 not that all serious topics must be avoided, but point is that
sociability finds its justification, its place, and its purpose only in
the functional play of conversation as such
Resolving the solitariness of the individual
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Every play or artistic activity has a common element:
“a feeling for, or a satisfaction in associating with
others, resolving the solitariness of the individual into
togetherness, union with others”
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on “good form,” interaction of the elements
through which a unity is made
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“Since sociability in its pure form has no ulterior end, no
content, and no result outside itself, it is oriented
completely about personalities.” (297)
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“But personalities must not emphasize themselves too
individually…or with too much abandon and aggressiveness”
The “superficial” nature of sociability
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To the extent that it’s a form of interaction free of the
tensions of “real” life, sociability establishes an
“artificial” world, a world without friction or conflict
“Inasmuch as sociability is the abstraction of association
– an abstraction of the character of art or of play – it
demands the purest, most engaging kind of interaction –
that among equals….It is game in which one ‘acts’ as
though all were equal.” (294)
Coquetry
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Coquetry or flirtation: a kind of sociability or erotic
play in which an actor continuously alternates between
denial and consent
 Idea
is to lead the other on “without letting matters come to
a decision, to rebuff him without making him lose all hope”
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“Coquetry is the teasing or even ironic play with which
eroticism has distilled the pure essence of its interaction
out from its substantive or individual content”
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not individual behavior, it’s interaction