Georg Simmel's Sociological Perspectives on Society and Sociability

1. Just as the universe needs “love and hate,” that is, attractive and repulsive forces, in order to have any form at all, so society, too, in order to attain a determinate shape, needs some quantitative ratio of harmony and disharmony, of association and competition, of favorable and unfavorable tendencies. (G. Simmel, “Conflict”) Georg Simmel

2. Georg Simmel(1858-1918) • Born in 1858 in Berlin, son of successful businessman who died when GS was an infant • Historical context: cosmopolitan Berlin • GS was the quintessential Berlin intellectual, at center of intellectual circles, café culture • Marginalized in academia, due to eclectic nature of work and anti-semitismof German university establishment

3. Intellectual influences & core ideas • Simmel’s work challenged 2 currents of European thought: • Historicismemphasizes fundamental differences b/w natural and social worlds • natural sciences seen as the proper domain of objectivity whereas social sciences, if science at all, require interpretive methods, subjectivity • Organicismsees natural & social realities as continuous and models social processes on biological ones • employs organic metaphors, sees world as one chain of being from simple, natural phenomena to the most complex social patterns • 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

4. Society • According to Simmel, “Society is merely the name for 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”

5. The individual in modern society • Society and the individuals that compose it constitute an interdependent duality, the existence of one presupposing the other • duality: being twofold; dichotomy; a classification into two opposed parts or subclasses

6. Society  Sociation • Simmelprefers the term “sociation” over “society” • “Society” is a reification, “sociation” is not • Sociation emphasizes relation and process • Insofar as we speak of “society,” we do so only in shorthand

7. Sociology • Sociology’s goal is description and analysis of particular forms of interaction and their crystallization in group characteristics • 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 • 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

8. Sociology: against reification • Reification means “thingification,” making something that is a process or a concept, something abstract, into a thing, e.g. • 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 • Organization: we treat it as a thing rather than a process, a set of relations among people • Categories like class, race, nationality, gender, etc.

9. Quantitative features of social life • 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

10. “Sociability” (1910) • sociability: the “play-form of association,” driven by, "amicability, breeding, cordiality and attractiveness of all kinds" • interacting 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

11. Resolving the solitariness of the individual • 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” • Depends on “good form,” interaction of the elements through which a unity is made • “Since sociability in its pure form has no ulterior end, no content, and no result outside itself, it is oriented completely about personalities.” (297) • “But personalities must not emphasize themselves too individually…or with too much abandon and aggressiveness”

12. The “superficial” nature of sociability • 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)

13. Coquetry • 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” • “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” • It’s not individual behavior, it’s interaction