thinking sociologically so3066 georg simmel 1858-1918 the fourth founding father?

Thinking Sociologically SO3066

• Georg Simmel1858-1918

The Fourth Founding Father?


• Simmel’s Biography

• Simmel’s Career & ‘Intellectual Community’

• The ‘Outsider’

• Simmel’s Sociology:

• Intellectual Roots:

• Hegel: Dialectics (‘alienation’)

• Kant and Categories of Thought

• ‘Natur’ & ‘Kultur’



• Hegel’s Influence: Individual and Society as a Dialectical Process

Thesis

(Autonomy)

Antithesis

(Conformity)Synthesis

(The Social Individual)

‘[Social Man] is not partially social and partially individual; rather, his existence is shaped by a fundamental unity, which cannot be accounted for in any other way than through the synthesis or coincidence of two logically contradictory determinations: man is both social link and being for himself, both product of society and life from an autonomous centre’ (Simmel, 1908).

‘The individual is determined at the same time as he is determining; he is acted upon at the same time as he is self-actuating’ (Coser, 1977).


• Kant – Making Sense of Experience

Noumena Phenomena

When we look at the world we experience it through our senses, as phenomena. We impose ‘form’ on our phenomenal experience - through categories that are assimilated from our culture.

Noumena: Things as they are in themselves.

Phenomena: Things as they appear to us.


• ‘Society is merely the name for a number of individuals connected by interaction’


• Conversely?

• ‘Sociology asks what happens to men and by what rules they behave, not insofar as they unfold their individual existences in their totalities, but insofar as they form groups and are determined by their group existence because of interaction’


• Formal Sociology:

The Focus of Sociology is neither ‘social facts’ nor ‘social action’ but social Interaction or ‘sociation’.

• Forms: Patterns of interaction that are apparent across a broad range of varying social and historical situations.

• Social relationships either neither determined by external constraints nor are they utterly haphazard and unique to specific situations. Recurrent forms emerge from the process of interaction itself.


• Forms

• Superordination and Subordination

• Conflict and Cooperation


• Forms

• Centralisation and Decentralisation

• Intimacy and Distance



• Social ‘Types’ – ‘The type becomes what he is through his relations with others who assign him a particular position and expect him to behave in specific ways. His characteristics are seen as attributes of the social structure’ (Coser, 1977).

• The Adventurer: One who ‘breaks the continuity of everyday life’

• The Renegade: One who disrupts the social group

• The (Man) in the Middle: The person who stands half way between leader and subordinate within the social group.

Thinking Sociologically SO3066• Social ‘Types’

• The Mediator: The person who may act impartially to resolve disputes or, alternatively, who may manipulate disputes between other group members for advantage.

• The Poor: The person at the bottom of society, defined by his or her dependence on other’s welfare and benevolence.

• The Stranger: The person who is present, but always distant from the group (Simmel?). The Stranger is a permanent member (geographically close), but always retains a critical (psychological, emotional and cultural) distance from the other members.


• Social Differentiation

• The Significance of ‘Numbers’

• Dyads: Two person group with no independent structure – individuality not challenged by the group.

• Tryads: With a three person group a stratification system becomes possible. There is an expansion of potential social roles and relationships.


• ‘The Web of Group Affiliations’

Sub Group 2

Sub Group 1

The Individual

‘Concentric’ (see Traditional Society)


Group 1

Group 2Group 3

The Individual

‘Multiple and across diverse groups’ (see Modern Urban Society)

More Social Differentiation = Less ‘concentric’ and more ‘multiple’


• Individual & Society

• Subjective Culture : Culture as it appears to each individual

• Objective Culture : The external manifestation of culture


Simmel’s ‘Process Sociology’:

Externalisation: We apply meaning to experience that guides our actions within forms of sociation (interaction)

Internalisation: We internalise the recurrent beliefs and activities that emerge from forms of sociation

Institutionalisation: Recurrent forms become crystallised

Contents (Interests): Institutionalised forms shape our interests, values & emotions.


• Simmel

Modernity, The Works & The Legacy


• Simmel & the Modern City

• Traditional Life: Individuals are bound closely to the group, but by very few formal ties.

• Urban Way of Life: Individuals have more loose

affiliations and personal freedoms, but are more dependent on, and more constrained by, the formal relationships and organisation of society as a whole.


• The Metropolis and Mental Life (1902)

• ‘The deeper problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces…’ (Simmel, 1902).

• Entering the City (An explosion of forms?):

• ‘Nervous Exhaustion’ : The multitude of sights, sounds and experiences in the city overwhelms the senses.



The ‘Blasé Attitude’: Screening off the unnecessary and potentially overwhelming

Rational Calculation: Greater reflexivity applied to interaction with strangers

Managing the dialectic of the self – autonomy & conformity; anonymity & isolation

• Fashion (1904) :

• Fashion becomes important as a vehicle for managing identity in a highly populated urban society where appearances become the principal form of identification.

• Fashion reflects the delicate dialectical relationship between distinctiveness and conformity in urban society.

• Means of standing out from the urban crowd (individualism), but also the shared symbolism of fashion (conformity) allows others to identify your status, role etc.


• For Simmel "... fashion represents nothing more than one of the many forms of life by the aid of which we seek to combine in uniform spheres of activity the tendency towards social equalization with the desire for individual differentiation and change." (F, p. 133) In each social relation there are two forces at work: one pushing us to bind ourselves to others through imitation, and another pushing us to unbind ourselves from others, to undo the social network, through distinction. But social life changes in so far as the balance between the socialising force and the de-socialising force is always unstable and provisional. Fashion is an example of the way in which actual social life always includes in some way its own opposite, an asocial life (Benvenuto, 2000).



• The Philosophy of Money (1900)

• Distance : Money allows human beings to interact in a more impersonal manner- provides a medium of exchange whilst removing the need for interpersonal bargaining and reciprocity. This removes restrictions on exchange.

• Money & Value : The value of numerous objects and activities is made objective through being measured in monetary terms rather than subjective desire.

• The Philosophy of Money (1900)

• Calculation: Money renders many relationships and exchanges open to calculation.

• Rationalization: Interactions and relationships become more rational (due to the calculability afforded by money).

• Reification: Money becomes both an end in itself and a major feature of the ‘objective culture’ that limits human freedom.



• ‘The Tragedy of Culture’

• The differentiation and diffusion that holds the potential for individual freedom is countered by the weight of the reified culture of urban society.


Durkheim

Marx

Weber

Simmel

&

The Relationship between Individual & Society


• Simmel’ Legacy:

• Symbolic Interactionism (Chicago School)

• Urban Sociology (Chicago School)

• Schutz - B&L ‘The Social Construction of Reality’

• Elias & ‘Figurations’

• Giddens & ‘Structuration’

thinking sociologically so3066 georg simmel 1858-1918 the fourth founding father?

Documents

so3066 slide

so3066 group

social group

interaction slide

so3066 society

so3066 social differentiation

so3066 social types

social individual social