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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152 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL grate is an expression of its strength and of the security it feels about its own continuity as independent of the move- ments of its members. The local diffusion of the modern family in contrast with its centralization in the ancestral home is, on the other hand, an expression of the weakening of the family unity. The significance of this spatial expression of the rela- tions between the group and its individual members re- mains the same when the group as a whole is nomadic. Many nomadic peoples like the Arabs prohibited the per- sonal ownership of land or the building of permanent dwellings. The fixation of the individual to a definite lo- cality under such conditions of nomadic existence would also have meant a dissolution of the bonds with his group. The sociological unity of the group finds its spatial expres- sion in this case in a prohibition of fixation, just as under certain sedentary conditions it finds expression in a pre- scribed fixation. Another form of spatial fixation which is of importance for the social structure is the fixation which results from the creation of a focal point for the reciprocities within the group. The fact that the family, the club, the university, the trade union, and the religious community have a home and a definite meeting-place gives them a distinct char- acter. All associations which have a home of their own are thereby differentiated from all those other associations, like mutual-benefit societies, political parties, unions for temporary or illegal purposes, and socializations which con- sist merely in a consciousness of common aims and ideals, which lack all spatial fixation. The word “home” is used here, not in the sense of a mere piece of property, but in the sense of a locality in which the group meets and lives its social life. In that sense it is the spatial expression of the unity of its sociological energies. But this objectivation

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