The social Theory of Georg Simmel

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1024612627

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-166627

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Spykman, Nicholas J. http://d-nb.info/gnd/124229867

Title:: The social Theory of Georg Simmel

Place of publication:: Chicago

Publisher:: Univ. of Chicago Press.

Year of publication:: 1925

Scope:: XXIX, 297 S

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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CHAPTER II OPPOSITION CONFLICT AND STRUGGLE! EFERENCE has already been made to the fact that R the unity of groups is not due solely to the conver- gence of interests and the harmonious co-ordination of elements. Societies require a certain proportion of at- traction and repulsion, harmony and disharmony, asso- ~iation and dissociation, integration and differentiation, co-operation and competition among their elements to ob- tain a definite organization. Groups which are entirely harmonious, and which are composed of elements which have centripetal tendencies only, would not only be impos- sible empirically, but they would have no life-process and no structure. The acceptance of leadership and the subor- dination to authority are therefore not the only forms of interaction that make for social unity. The conflicts and oppositions between the elements fulfil that same function. They, too, contribute to the total process of socialization and must therefore be investigated with reference to that function. That conflicts have sociological significance, inasmuch as they either produce or modify communities of interest, unifications, and organizations, has in principle never been contested. But apart from this sociological significance which accrues to conflict through its consequences and ac- companiments, it has a sociological significance in and for itself owing to the fact that it is a positive form of inter- 1 Adapted from Soz.. chap. iv, pp. 247-336. 119

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