Georg Simmel

1. 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: 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 anti-semitism, as Simmel was Jewish • 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

3. Intellectual influences & core ideas • Simmel’s sociology went againsttwo prominent currents of European thought: • Historicsm and Organicism • Historicismemphasizes fundamental differences b/w natural and social worlds • natural sciences seen as the proper domain of Objectivity • social sciences, if science at all, require interpretive methods, Subjectivity • Organicismsees natural & social realities as continuous and models social processes on biological processes • employs organic metaphors, sees world as one chain of being from more 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 • 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 • 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” • “Society” is a reification, “sociation” is not • Sociation emphasizes Relation and Process • Insofar as we speak of Society, we do so only in shorthand…

5. 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 • Emphasizes social interaction at the individual &small group level • Microsociology of Simmel much different from “grand theory” of the classical writers, especially Marx and Durkheim

6. Sociology: against reification • Reificationsimply 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 • Nation: we assume there’s some “essence,” “Americanness,” but it’s really a way of relating • 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 • 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

7. Sociology: against categories • “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” • Usual tendency is to reduce people to categorical memberships: e.g., I am women, I’m white, a sociologist… • It’s not the individual attributes that are of interest, it’s how they’re instanciated(come into being) through action • The concepts are only realized via interaction • Categorical identities do not determine action, they only exist through action/interaction

8. 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 • Urban societies allow individuals to cultivate unique talents and interests but also leads to a tragic “leveling” of the human spirit • 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

9. Toward a formal sociology • 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 • Focus on formal characteristics of social processes allows GS to preserve historicistemphasis on uniqueness of different moments, events and places, while nonetheless seeing underlying uniformities • 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

10. 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

11. Social types • Simmel constructed a gallery of social types to complement inventory of social forms • 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 • based on social position rather than categorical memberships determined by individual attributes • each social type is transposable to wide array of settings

12. “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

13. 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”

14. 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)

15. 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