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Book No. – 25 (Sociology)
Book Name – Masters of Sociological Thought
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1. THE WORK
1.1. FORMAL SOCIOLOGY
1.2. SOCIAL TYPES
1.3. THE DIALECTICAL METHOD IN SIMMEL’S SOCIOLOGY
1.4. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF NUMBERS FOR SOCIAL LIFE
1.5. SIMMEL’S AMBIVALENT VIEW OF MODERN CULTURE
1.6. A NOTE ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF MONEY
2. THE MAN
2.1. THE ACADEMIC OUTSIDER
2.2. A VIRTUOSO ON THE PLATFORM
2.3. SIMMEL’S WRITING CAREER
3. THE INTELLECTUAL CONTEXT
3.1. IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF DARWIN AND SPENCER
3.2. THE KANTIAN INFLUENCE
3.3. THE FINAL PHASE: VITALISTIC PHILOSOPHY
4. THE SOCIAL CONTEXT
4.1. THE GENERAL SCENE
4.2. SIMMEL’S TWIN AUDIENCES
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LANGUAGE
Georg Simmel
Chapter – 5
Table of Contents
THE WORK
- Simmel’s approach to sociology rejected the organicist theories of Comte, Spencer, and the historical description of unique events prominent in Germany.
- He advanced the idea that society is a web of patterned interactions, and sociology should study the forms of these interactions across diverse historical periods and cultural settings.
- The organicist approach viewed society as similar to biological processes, suggesting that social processes were like natural phenomena, and sociology could discover universal laws of social development.
- This view was opposed by the German idealistic philosophy which distinguished between Naturwissenschaft(natural science) and Geisteswissenschaft (human science), arguing that human culture represented freedom and could not be studied by natural laws.
- The German tradition believed sociology had no real object of study, with society being just a label, as the study of individual actions and unique historical events should be the focus.
- Proponents of this tradition argued that human freedom and the uniqueness of historical events made a science of sociology unfeasible, suggesting sociology was not a science at all.
- Simmel rejected both organicist and idealist schools, seeing society not as an organism or just a label, but as an intricate web of interactions between individuals.
- He defined society as the interaction between individuals, and larger structures like state, family, or trade unions were crystallizations of these interactions, sometimes attaining autonomy.
- The focus of sociology should be on sociation, the patterns and forms in which people interact, rather than grand, totalistic claims about human life.
- Simmel criticized the idea of sociology as the master science, stating that trying to embrace all human phenomena under one umbrella was self-defeating: “Qui trop emhrasse, mal etreint.”
- Sociology should not attempt to cover everything but instead study specific dimensions or aspects of phenomena, such as particular forms of human interaction and group characteristics.
- Sociology asks how individuals behave in groups and how their behavior is determined by group affiliations and the constraints of interaction.
- While Simmel acknowledged the legitimacy of studying larger institutionalized structures, he focused on microsociology, studying the basic patterns of interaction between individuals.
- He advocated for focusing on the limited forms of interaction that underlie larger social formations.
FORMAL SOCIOLOGY
- Simmel’s sociology did not aim to replace economics, ethics, psychology, or historiography but focused on the forms of interaction underlying political, economic, religious, and sexual behavior.
- He believed that various distinct human phenomena could be understood by reference to the same formal concept, despite the differences in their concrete subject matter.
- For example, warfare and marriage may seem different but share similar interactive forms in terms of conflict dynamics.
- The behavior at Louis XIV’s court and in an American corporation may differ, but both involve patterns of subordination and superordination.
- Early psychoanalytic and Communist movements might seem unrelated, but both share structural features of a sect, characterized by a belief in exclusive, esoteric knowledge and withdrawal from the “outside” world.
- Simmel’s insistence on studying forms of interaction was a response to historians and humanists who denied sociology’s ability to deal with the novelty and uniqueness of historical events.
- While historical events like the murder of Caesar or the defeat of Napoleon are unique, sociology looks at the underlying uniformities of such events.
- Simmel emphasized that sociology is not concerned with the individual actions of specific historical figures but with how institutions like kingship constrain their actions.
- On a more abstract level, sociology focuses on the processes of conflict, cooperation, subordination, and superordination that form the foundation of larger social structures.
- He sought to develop a geometry of social life, where the focus is on the spatial forms of interaction rather than the concrete content of events.
- Simmel’s approach is often referred to as formal sociology, which isolates the form of social phenomena from their diverse content.
- Formal sociology shows that despite diverse interests, the social forms in which these interests are realized may be identical, such as cooperation in both war and profit-making.
- Identical interests may crystallize into different forms, like economic interests being realized through both competition and cooperation, or aggressive drives being expressed in various forms of conflict.
- In formal analysis, certain features of concrete phenomena are extracted to compare seemingly different phenomena that share similar structural arrangements, such as leader-follower relations in both deviant juvenile gangs and conformist scout troops.
- Simmel did not view forms as existing independently from their content but as inherent in it. He rejected a Platonicview of essences.
- He believed that studying the limited number of forms in social interaction could provide insights into social life that were missed by those focused solely on describing concrete phenomena.
- The term form used by Simmel may not have been the best choice due to its philosophical baggage, which may have deterred some modern sociologists from adopting his ideas.
- Had Simmel used the term social structure, which is similar to his concept of form, it might have been more readily accepted.
- Modern sociological terms like status, role, norms, and expectations align with Simmel’s use of form in conceptualizing social structures.
- Much of modern sociological theory builds on Simmel’s perspective of focusing on the forms of interaction within social reality.
- For example, Merton and Rossi reanalyzed data from The American Soldier and explained the behavior of newcomers(like immigrants or freshmen) in relation to preexisting groups by abstracting from the concrete content of specific social contexts.
- By abstracting from specific social content, Simmel’s approach allows for the creation of general theories about social behavior.
- According to Simmel, the forms found in social reality are never pure; every social phenomenon contains a mix of formal elements like cooperation, conflict, subordination, superordination, intimacy, and distance.
- In concrete phenomena, the presence of multiple forms leads to interference between them, preventing any of them from being realized in their purest form.
- There is no such thing as pure conflict or pure cooperation in social life; “pure” forms are ideal types or constructs that exaggerate certain aspects to highlight underlying configurations in social reality.
- Simmel’s forms are not generalizations about reality but are used to highlight relationships that may not be fully realized in actual social situations.
- Just as an art historian may describe gothic or baroque styles, even though no real work exhibits these styles perfectly, Simmel’s forms help in conceptualizing social phenomena that may not exist in pure form in the real world.
- A Simmelian form can be used as a measuring rod, similar to Weber’s ideal-type, to evaluate how a concrete phenomenon aligns with the ideal form.
- For example, the relation of “the stranger” to the surrounding world may be studied in terms of nearness and distance to gauge the degree of “strangerness” in specific historical situations, such as the experience of ghetto Jews or pariah peoples.