George Simmel - German Sociologist

        George Simmel, a first generation German sociologist, was well known for his creation of social theories and the development of structuralist approaches to studying society. During the 1800’s, Simmel was most famous for his foundations for sociological anitpositivism asking the question ‘What is society?’ Simmel is also considered to be a structural theorist who focused on urban life and forms of metropolis. His most famous theory includes four basic interests: structure, institution, interaction and psychology. Simmel was most interested in the effect that culture has on individuals.

        Simmel is best known for his contributions to the understanding of the diverse forms and patterns of social interaction. Simmel was more concerned about the form of interaction rather than the social content. He created a social geometry for social relations. The difference between a two person group (dyad) and a three person group (triad) is that the three person group presents a greater threat to the individuality of persons in the group. According to Simmel, in a larger society an individual is most likely to become involved with a different number of groups. Each of these different groups controls a small portion of the individual’s personality. Distance is also a factor that determines the forms of social interaction. Simmel uses the example that “the value of an object is a function of its distance from an individual”. The range of social forms include conflict, prostitution, sociability and exchange.

        The main focus of Simmel’s philosophical sociology is the cultural level in social reality, which he calls objective culture. In his view, people are the ones to produce culture, and the social and cultural world have lives of their own and are dominate of the individuals who created each world. Components of Simmel’s objective culture include transportation, technology, tools, language, conventional wisdom, intellectual sphere, legal systems, moral codes, philosophical solutions, religions and ideals. He explains how the size of objective culture increases with the effects of modernization. Simmel’s biggest worry was the threat of individual culture was posed by the growth of the objective culture. The connection and tensions between the society and the individual was a well stressed concept by Simmel. In his opinion, the individual is a product of society but also a link to the social processes that takes place in the society. The relationship between the individual and society produces a dual nature. An individual not only exists for him or herself, but for society as well.

        In Simmel’s study of society, he made attempts to understand a range of social types including the mediator, the stranger and the poor. He explains that a social type becomes a type based on the relations the individual has with others and gives them a specific position with certain expectations. In his famous writing The Stranger, Simmel describes the stranger as a person who “comes today and stays tomorrow”. This stranger is a person who has a specific place in society and the social groups they have entered. The strangers social position is determined by the simple concept that the person does not belong to this social group since the beginning. The role of the stranger is determined by their status, in which helps to determine the persons new role in their social group. Being a stranger, the person is both distant to one and near to one as well.         

Simmel’s famous writing In The Philosophy of Money, he argues that people are the ones to create value by making objects, separating the objects from themselves, and then seeking to overcome the difficulties and obstacles from the objects. In his writing, Simmel addresses the impact of the money economy on the objective culture. Money was seem to be linked with different social phenomena’s such as ownership, individual freedom, greed and value of personality. The concept of money serves as a way to both create distance from these objects and ways to overcome them. Simmel explains that money provides the means in which the economy and society acquire lives of their own. As money became more increasingly important in society, Simmel saw the decline of the significance of the individuals of society. Societies in which money becomes an end for itself causes the individuals in the society to become more pessimistic. The struggle of the tragedy of culture, was demonstrated by the relationship between money and people.