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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184 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL The system of concentric circles was a transitional form between the participation of the individual in one narrow exclusive corporation absorbing the whole of his personality and the modern form of participation in a great number of intersecting social circles. The old cor- poration demanded from the individual his exclusive loyal- ty. The new association touches only a certain aspect of his personality and leaves him free to enter into innumer- able other associations. The transitional form of concen- tric circles, although not permitting that full sociological freedom which the individual has obtained since the inven- tion of the purposive association, enabled him none the less to participate in a greater number of social circles and in a wider area of social life than had been possible up to that Hme.l Social Differentiation and Sociological Determination From the foregoing observations it becomes evident that there is an immediate correlation between the extent of social differentiation and the extent of sociological de- termination. That is, the more different social classes and groupings there are, the more is the individual sociologi- cally determined by his membership in these classes. The groups or circles to which an individual belongs form a sys- tem of sociological co-ordinates. Each new circle added to the ones in which he participates determines more fully his place in the sociological structure. The more associations he participates in, the less chance there is that there exists for another individual a fully identical system of co-ordi- nates. This sociological determination will, of course, be more definite in the case of overlapping and intersecting circles than in the case of concentric circles. If he merely partici- ' Soz., pp. 403-12.

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