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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SPATIAL RELATIONS OF SOCIAL FORMS 155 n- cS 28S Pou HE en C- mn a= (P= ly ne ad y- 1S. ly he st ral he ly ser S. 1g ‘O- l= 2 (CS cy ce of the central administration. The history of the Ger- manic tribes is full of illustrations of this type of develop- ment. The Spartans solved the antinomy between the agra- rian character of their state, which predisposed it toward an aristocratic, decentralized type of structure, and the centralization which was required by their military organ- ization in an interesting fashion. They left their agricul- tural estates in the hands of managers and lived in spatial proximity in the city. Something similar occurred, al- though in a different form, among the French nobility under the ancient régime. As long as the nobles had lived on the land, they had been practically autonomous on their own estates. The increasing centralization of the ancient régime robbed them on the one hand of their judicial and administrative independence, but, on the other hand, it drew them to Paris. The correlation is therefore between spatial proximity or local compactness and centralization on the one hand, and local dispersion and decentralized autonomy on the other hand. It is a correlation that can be found in groups with democratic tendencies as well as in groups with aristo- cratic tendencies, and is therefore an illustration of a de- termination of sociological forms by purely spatial rela- tions.t Movement of Groups and Group Elements The correlations so far referred to have been correla- tions between social forms and fixed spatial relations. The next question is: What forms of organization do we find in wandering groups, and what kinds of formation result if not the group as a whole, but only certain elements, lead a wandering existence? . Ibid., pp. 668-70.

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