The Sociology Book

105

See also: Karl Marx 28–31 ■ Ferdinand Tönnies 32–33 ■ Émile Durkheim 34–37 ■ Max Weber 38–45 ■
Zygmunt Bauman 136–43 ■ Thorstein Veblen 214–19 ■ Erving Goffman 264–69 ■ Michel Foucault 270–77

MODERN LIVING

working in an urban environment
profoundly affected relationships
between people. He set out his
findings in The Metropolis and
Mental Life. Whereas in pre-modern
society people would be intimately
familiar with those around them,
in the modern urban environment
individuals are largely unknown to
those who surround them. Simmel
believed that the increase in social
activity and anonymity brought
about a change in consciousness.
The rapid tempo of life in a city
was such that people needed a
“protective organ” to insulate them
from the external and internal
stimuli. According to Simmel, the
metropolitan “reacts with his head
instead of his heart”; he erects
a rational barrier of cultivated
indifference—a “blasé attitude.”
The change in consciousness also
leads to people becoming reserved
and aloof. This estrangement from
traditional and accepted norms of
behavior is further undermined
by the money culture of cities,
which reduces everything in the
metropolis to a financial exchange.

Simmel says that the attitude of

the metropolitan can be understood

as a social-survival technique to

cope with the mental disturbance

created by immersion in city life—

an approach that enables people to

focus their energies on those who

matter to them. It also results in

them becoming more tolerant of

difference and more sophisticated.

Space in the metropolis

Degrees of proximity and distance

among individuals and groups were

central to Simmel’s understanding

of living in a metropolis, and ideas

about social space influenced one

of his best-known concepts: the

social role of “the stranger,” which

is set out in an essay in Sociology.

In the past, he says, strangers

were encountered only rarely and

fleetingly; but urbanite strangers are

not drifters—they are “potential

wanderers.” Simmel says that the

stranger (such as a trader), or the

stranger group (his example is

“European Jews”), is connected to

the community spatially but not

socially; he or she is characterized by

both “nearness and remoteness”—in

the community but not of it.

The stranger was one of many

social types described by Simmel,

each becoming what they are

through their relations with others;

an idea that has influenced many

sociologists, including Zygmunt

Bauman. Erving Goffman’s concept

of “civil inattention,” whereby

people minimize social interaction

in public—by avoiding eye contact,

for instance—is also informed

by one of Simmel’s insights: his

notion of the “blasé attitude.” ■

Georg Simmel Born in Berlin in 1858 to a

prosperous Jewish family, Georg

Simmel is one of the lesser-known

founders of sociology. He studied

philosophy and history at the

University of Berlin and received

his doctorate in 1881. Despite the

popularity of his work with the

German intellectual elite, notably

Ferdinand Tönnies and Max

Weber, he remained an outsider

and only gained his professorship

at Strasbourg in 1914.

He developed what is known

as formal sociology, which derives

from his belief that we can

understand distinct human

phenomena by concentrating

not on the content of

interactions but on the forms

that underlie behavior. But it

is his study of life in a metropolis

that remains his most influential

work, as it was the precursor

to the development of urban

sociology by the so-called

Chicago School in the 1920s.

Key works

1900 The Philosophy of Money

1903 The Metropolis and

Mental Life

1908 Sociology

Through this anonymity...

each party acquires an

unmerciful matter-of-factness.

Georg Simmel