The social Theory of Georg Simmel

Bibliographic data

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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SOCIAL DIFFERENTIATION 181 social life of the individual during the latter part of the Middle Ages. Originally the individual was bound up in his village community. The feudal period created a new basis for union, namely, subservience to the same lord. But these two bonds of union were both of an external character. They were determined by factors which lay outside the will of the individual. Only with the rise of free associations did the individual become a more or less free and active participant in the social life. Motives for association lying within the individual came to replace or to co-operate with the external accidental factors which up to that time had alone determined his place in the social structure. In modern times there exists a vast superstructure of such social circles above the more natural and primary groupings and intersecting the latter at different angles. The family group is no longer an all-inclusive association fully closed, independent, and self-sufficient, but it is inter- sected by the numerous associations to which the individ- ual members belong. And these associations intersect not only the family group, but all other primary groupings, such as the local community and the nation. These new social circles are of a very different kind from the original primary groups. They are purposive associations, associations for specific factual purposes. The individuals do not co-operate in these associations with the whole of their personality, as was characteristic of medieval corporations. They do not become entirely absorbed in these associations, but merely co-operate by means of definite factual contributions conducive to the specific factual purpose. This gives the new type of asso- ciation a much more rational character than that of the primary groupings. They may be associations based on emotional interests, like religious sects, or on economic,

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