Chapter1: Introduction: Sociological Theory

Dialectical Thinking

Simmel's way of dealing with the interrelationships among three basic levels of social reality (leaving out his fourth, metaphysical, level) gave his sociology a dialectical character reminiscent of Marx's sociology (Levine, 1991b: 109). A dialectical approach, as we saw earlier, is multicausal and multidirectional, integrates fact and value, rejects the idea that there are hard-and-fast dividing lines between social phenomena, focuses on social relations (B. Turner, 1986), looks not only at the present but also at the past and the future, and is deeply concerned with both conflicts and contradictions.

In spite of the similarities between Marx and Simmel in their use of a dialectical approach, there are important differences between them. Of greatest importance is the fact that they focused on very different aspects of the social world and offered very different images of the future of the world. Instead of Marx's revolutionary optimism, Simmel had a view of the future closer to Weber's image of an "iron cage" from which there is no escape (for more on the intellectual relationship between Simmel and Weber. See Scarf, 1989:121 151).

Simmel manifested his commitment to the dialectic in various ways (Featherstone, 1991:7). For one thing, Simmel's sociology was always concerned with relationships (Lichtblau and Ritter, 1991), especially interaction (association). More generally, Simmel was a "methodological relationist" (Ritzer and Gindoff, 1992) operating with the "principle that everything interacts in some way with everything else" (Simmel, cited in Frisby. 1992:9). Overall he was ever attuned to dualisms, conflicts, and contradictions in whatever realm of the social world be happened to be working on (Sellerberg, 1994).Donald Levine states that this perspective reflects Simmel’s belief that "the world can best be understood in terms of conflicts and contrasts between opposed categories"(1971:xxxv). Rather than try to deal with this mode of thinking throughout Simmel's work, let us illustrate it from his work on one of his forms of interaction--fashion. Simmell used a similar mode of dialectical thinking in most of his essays on social forms and social types, but this discussion of fashion amply illustrates his method of dealing with these phenomena. We will also deal with the dialectic in Simmel's thoughts on subjective-objective culture and the concepts of”'more-life"and "more-than-life."

Fashion In one of his typically fascinating and dualistic essays, Simmel (1904/1971; Gronow, 1997; Nedelmaim, 1990) illustrated the contradictions in fashion in a variety of ways. On the one hand, fashion is a form of social relationship that allows those who wish to conform to the demands of the group to do so. On the other hand,fashion also provides the norm from which those who wish to be individualistic can deviate. Fashion involves a historical process as well: at the initial stage, everyone accepts what is fashionable; inevitably, individuals deviate from this; and finally, in the process of deviation, they may adopt a whole new view of what is in fashion. Fashion is also dialectical in the sense that the success and spread of any given fashion lead to its eventual failure. That is. the distinctiveness of something leads to its being considered fashionable; however, as large numbers of people come to accept it, it ceases to be distinctive and hence it loses its attractiveness. Still another duality involves the role of the leader of a fashion movement. Such a person leads the group, paradoxically, by following the fashion better than anyone else. that is, by adopting it more determinedly, Finally, Simmel argued that not only does following what is in fashion involve dualities, so does the effort on the part of some people to be out of fashion. Unfashionable people view those who follow a fashion as being imitators and themselves as mavericks, but Simmel argued that the latter are simply engaging in an inverse form of imitation. Individuals may avoid what is hi fashion because they are afraid that they, like their peers, will lose their individuality, but in Simmel's view, such a fear is hardly a sign of great personal strength and independence. In sum, Simmel noted that in fashion "all... leading antithetical tendencies.., are represented in one way or another" (1904/1971:317).

Simmel's dialectical thinking can be seen at a more general level as well. As we will see throughout this chapter, he was most interested in die conflicts and contradictions that exist between the individual and the larger social and cultural structures that individuals construct. These structures ultimately come to have a life of their own, over which the individual can exert little or no control.

Individual (Subjective) Culture and Objective Culture People are influenced,and hi Simmel's view threatened, by social structures and, more important for Simmel,by their cultural products. Simmel distinguished between individual culture and objective culture. Objective culture refers to those things that people produce (art, science,philosophy, and so on). individual (subjective) culture is the capacity of the actor to produce, absorb, and control die elements of objective culture. In an ideal sense, individual culture shapes, and is shaped by, objective culture. The problem is dial objective culture comes to have a life of its own. As Simmel put it, 'They [die elements of culture] acquire fixed identities, a logic and lawfulness of their own; this new rigidity inevitably places diem at a distance from the spiritual dynamic which created diem and which makes them independent" ( 1921/1968: I 1 ). The existence of these cultural products creates a contradiction with the actors who created them because it is an example of

the deep estrangement or animosity which exists between organic and creative processes of the soul and its contents and products: the vibrating, restless life of the creative soul; which develop toward the infinite contrasts with its fixed and ideally unchanging product and its uncanny feedback effect, Which arises and indeed rigidities this liveliness, Frequently it appears as if creative movement of the soul was dying from its own product.

(Simmel, 1921/1968:42)

AS K. Peter Etakorn said, "In Simmel's dialectic, mall is always in danger of being slain by those objects of his own creation which have lost their organic human coefficient"(1968:2).

More.Life and More-Than-Life Anther area of Simmel's thinking, his philosophical sociology, is an even more general manifestation of iris dialectical thinking. In discussing die emergence of social and cultural structures, Simmel took a position very similar to some of Marx's ideas. Marx used the concept of the fetishism of commodities to illustrate the separation between people arid their products. For Marx, this separation reached its apex in capitalism, could be overcome only in die future socialist society, and thus was a specific historical phenomenon. But for Simmel this separation is inherent in the nature of human life. In philosophical terms, there is art inherent and inevitable contradiction between "more-life" and "more-than-fife" (Oakes, 1984;6;Walngartner, 1959).

The issue of more-life and more-than-life is central in Simmel's essay "The Transcendent Character of Life" (191811971). As the title suggests and as Simmel makes clear, "Transcendence is immanent in life" (1918/197l:361). People possess a doubly transcendent capability. First, because of their restless, creative capacities (more life), people are able to transcend themselves. Second, this transcendent, creative ability makes it possible for people to constantly produce sets of objects that transcend them.The objective existence of these phenomena (more-than-tile) comes to stand in irreconcilable opposition to the creative forces (more-life) that produced the objects in the first place. In other words, social life "creates and sets flee from itself something that is not life but 'which has its own significance and follows its own law'" (Weingartner, citing Simmel, 1959:53). Life is found in the unity, and the conflict, between the two. As Simmel concludes, "Life finds its essence, its process, in being more life and more-than-life" (1918/197 I:374).

Thus, because of his metaphysical conceptions, Simmel came to an image of the world far closer to Weber's than to Marx's. Simmel, like Weber, saw the world as be coming an iron cage of objective culture from which people have progressively less chance of escape. We will have more to say about a number of these issues in the following sections, which deal with Simmel's thoughts on the major components of social reality.

SOCIAL INTERACTION ("ASSOCIATION")

Georg Simmel is best known in contemporary sociology for his contributions to our understanding of the patterns, or forms, of social interaction. He expressed his interest in this level of social reality in this way:

We are dealing here with microscopic molecular processes within human material, so to speak. These processes are the actual occurrences that are concatenated or hypostatized into those macrocosmic, solid units and systems. That people look at one another and are jealous of one another; that they exchange letters or have dinner together; that apart from all tangible interests they strike one another as pleasant or unpleasant; that gratitude for altruistic acts makes for inseparable union; that one asks another to point out a certain street; that people dress and adorn themselves for each other--these are a few casualty chosen illustrations from the whole range of relations that play between one person and another. They may be momentary or permanent, conscious or unconscious, ephemeral or of grave consequence, but they incessantly tie men together. At each moment such threads ~ spun, dropped, taken up again, displaced by others, interwoven with others. These interactions among the atoms of society are accessible only to psychological microscopy.

(Simmel. 1908/1959b:327-328)

Simmel made clear here that one of his primary interests was interaction (association) among conscious actors and that his intent was to look at a wide range of interactions that may seem trivial at some times but crucially important at others. His was not a Durkheimian expression of interest in social facts but a declaration of a smaller-scale focus for sociology.

Because Simmel sometimes took an exaggerated position on the importance of interaction in his sociology, many have lost sight of his insights into the larger-scale aspects of social reality. At times, for example, he equated society with interaction:"Society... is only the synthesis or the general term for the totality of these specific interactions 'Society' is identical with the sum total of these relations" (Simmel, 1907/1978:175). Such statements may be taken as a reaffirmation of his interest in interaction, but as we will see, in his general and philosophical sociologies, Simmel held a much larger scale conception of society as well as culture.

Interaction; Forms and Types

One of Simmel's dominant concerns was the form rather than the content of social interaction. This concern stemmed from Simmel's identification with the Kantian tradition in philosophy, in which much is made of the difference between form and content. Simmel's position here, however, was quite simple. From Simmel's point of view, the real world is composed of innumerable events, actions, interactions, and so forth. To cope with this maze of reality (the "contents"), people order it by imposing patterns, or forms,on it. Thus, instead of a bewildering array of specific events, the actor is confronted with a limited number of forms. In Simmel's view, the sociologist's task is to do precisely what the layperson does, that is, impose a limited number of forms on social reality, on interaction in particular, so that it may be better analyzed. This methodology generally involves extracting commonalities that are found in a wide array of specific interactions. For example, the superordination and subordination forms of interaction are found in awide range of settings, "in the state as well as in a religious community, in a band of conspirators as in an economic association, in art school as in a family" (Simmel, 1908/1959b:317). Donald Levine, one of Simmel's foremost contemporary analysts, describes Simmel's method of doing formal interactional sociology in this way: "His method is to select some bounded, finite phenomenon from the world of flux; to examine the multiplicity of elements which compose it; and to ascertain the cause of their coherence by disclosing its form. Secondarily, he investigates the origins of this form and its structural implications" (1971:xxxI). More specifically, Levine points out that "forms are the patterns exhibited by the associations" of people (198 lb:65).

Simmel's interest in the forms of social interaction has been subjected to various criticisms. For example, he has been accused of imposing order where there is none and of producing a series of unrelated studies that in the end really impose no better order on the complexities of social reality than does the layperson. Some of these criticisms are valid only if we focus on Simmel's concern with forms of interaction, his formal sociology, and ignore the other types of sociology he practiced.

However, there are a number of ways to defend Simmel's approach to formal sociology. First, it is close to reality, as reflected by the innumerable real-life examples employed by Simmel. Second, it does not impose arbitrary and rigid categories on social reality but tries instead to allow the forms to flow from social reality. Third, Simmel's approach does not employ a general theoretical schema into which all aspects of the social world are forced. He thus avoided the reification of a theoretical schema that plagues a theorist like Talcott Parsons. Finally, formal sociology militates against the poorly conceptualized empiricism that is characteristic of much of sociology. Simmel certainly used empirical "data," but they are subordinated to his effort to impose some order on the bewildering world of social reality.

Social Geometry In Simmel's formal sociology, one sees most clearly his effort to develop a "geometry" of social relations. Two of the geometric coefficients that interested him are numbers and distance (others are position, valence, self-involvement, and symmetry [Levine, 1981b]).

Numbers Simmel's interest in the impact of numbers of people on the quality of interaction can be seen in his discussion of the difference between a dyed and a triad.

Dyad and Triad. For Simmel (1950) there was a crucial difference between the dyad (two-person group) and the triad (three-person group). The addition of a third person causes a radical and fundamental change. Increasing the membership beyond three has nowhere near the same impact as does adding a third member. Unlike all other groups, the dyed does not achieve a meaning beyond the two individuals involved. There is no independent group structure in a dyed; there is nothing more to the group than the two separable individuals. Thus, each member of a dyed retains a high level of individuality. The individual is not lowered to the level of the group. This is not the case in a triad. A triad does have the possibility of obtaining a meaning beyond the individuals involved. There is likely to be more to a triad than the individuals involved. It is likely to develop an independent group structure. As a result, there is a greater threat to the individuality of the members. A triad can have a general leveling effect on the members.

With the addition of a third party to the group, a number of new social roles become possible. For example, the third party can take the role of arbitrator or mediator in disputes within the group. Then the third party can use disputes between the other two for his or her own gain or become an object of competition between the other two parties. The third member also can intentionally foster conflict between the other two parties in order to gain superiority (divide and rule). A stratification system and an authority structure then can emerge. The movement from dyad to triad is essential to the development of social structures thin can become separate from, and dominant over, individuals. Such a possibility does not exist in a dyad.

The process that is begun in the transition from a dyed to a tried continues as larger and larger groups and, ultimately, societies emerge. In these large social structures, the individual, increasingly separated from the structure of society, grows more and more alone, isolated, and segmented. This results finally in a dialectical relationship between individuals and social structures: "According to Simmel, the socialized individual always remains in a dual relation toward society: he is incorporated within it and yet stands against it.... The individual is determined, yet determining; acted upon, yet selfactuating" (Coser, 1965:11). The contradiction here is that "society allows the emergence of individuality and autonomy, but it also impedes it" (Coser, 1965:11 ).

Group Size. At a more general level, there is Simmel's ( 1908/1971 a) ambivalent attitude toward the impact of group size. On the one hand, he took the position that the increase in the size of a group or society increases individual freedom. A small group or society is likely to control the individual completely. However, in a larger society, the individual is likely to be involved in a number of groups, each of winch controls only a small portion of his or her total personality. In other words, "lndividuality in being and action generally increases to the degree that the social circle encompassing the individual expands" (Simmel, 190811971 a:252). However, Simmel took the view that large societies create a set of problems that ultimately threaten individual freedom For example, he saw the masses as likely to be dominated by one idea, the simplest idea. The physical proximity of a mass makes people suggestible and more likely to follow simplistic ideas, to engage in mindless, emotional actions.

Perhaps most important, in terms of Simmel's interest in forms of interaction, is that increasing size and differentiation tend to loosen the bonds between individuals and leave in their place much more distant, impersonal, and segmental relationships. Paradoxically, the large group that frees the individual simultaneously threatens that individuality. Also paradoxical is Simmers belief that one way for individuals to cope with the threat of the mass society is to immerse themselves in small groups such as the family.

Distance Another of Simmel's concerns in social geometry was distance. Levine offers a good summation of Simmel's views on the role of distance in social relationships: "The properties of forms and the meanings of things are a function of the relative distances between individuals and other individuals or things" (1971 :xxxiv). This concern with distance is manifest in various places in Simmlel's work. We will discuss it in two different contexts--in Simmel's massive The Philosophy of Money and in one of his cleverest essays, 'The Stranger."

In The Philosophy of Money (1907/1978), Simmel enunciated some general principles about value and about what makes things valuable---that served as the basis for his analysis of money. Because we deal with this work in detail later in tiffs chapter, we discuss this issue only briefly here. The essential point is that the value of something is determined by its distance from the actor. It is not valuable if it is either too close and too easy to obtain or too distant and too difficult to obtain. Objects that are attainable, but only with great effort, are the most valuable.

Distance also plays a central role in Simmel's "The Stranger" (1908/1971b; Tabboni,1995), an essay on a type of actor who is neither too close nor too far. If he (or she) were too close, he would no longer be a stranger, but if he were too far, he would cease to have any contact with die group. The interaction that the stranger engages in with the group members involves a combination of closeness and distance. The peculiar distance of die stronger from the group allows him to have a series of unusual interaction patterns with the members. For example, the stranger can be more objective in its relationships with the group members. Because he is a stranger, other group members feel more comfortable expressing confidences to him. In these and other ways, a pattern of coordination and consistent interaction emerges between the stranger and the other group members. The stranger becomes an organic member of the group. But Simmel not only considered the stranger a social type, he considered strangeness a form of social interaction. A degree of strangeness, involving a combination of newness and remoteness, enters into all social relationships, even the most intimate. Thus we can examine a wide range of specific into actions in order to discover the degree of strangeness found in each.

Although geometric dimensions enter a number of Simmel's types and forms, there is much more to them than simply geometry. The types and forms are constructs that Simmel used to gain a greater understanding of a wide range of interaction patterns.

Social Types We have already encountered one of Simmel's types, the stranger; others include the miser, the spendthrift, the adventurer, and the nobleman. To illustrate its mode of thinking in this area, we will focus on one of his types, the poor.

The Poor As is typical of types in Simmel's work, the poor were defined in terms of social relationships, as being aided by other people or at least having die right to that aid. Here Simmel quite clearly did not hold the view that poverty is defined by a quantity, or rather a lack of quantity, of money.

Although Simmel focused on the poor in terms of characteristic relationships and interaction patterns, he also used the occasion of his essay "The Poor" (1908/197 It) to develop a wide range of interesting insights into the poor and poverty. It was characteristic of Simmel to offer a profusion of insights in every essay. Indeed, this is one of his great claims to fame. For example, Simmel argued that a reciprocal set of rights and obligations defines the relationship between the needy and the givers. The needy have the right to receive aid, and this fight makes receiving aid less painful. Conversely, the giver has the obligation to give to the needy. Simmel also took the functionalist position that aid to die poor by society helps support the system. Society requires aid to the poor "so that the poor will not become active and dangerous enemies of society, so as to make their reduced energies more productive, and so as to prevent the degeneration of their progeny" (Simmel, 1908/1971c: 154). Thus aid to the poor is for the sake of society, not so much for the poor per se. The state plays a key role here, and, as Simmel saw it, the treatment of the poor grows increasingly impersonal as the mechanism for giving aid becomes more bureaucratized.

Simmel also had a relativistic view of poverty; that is, the poor are not simply those who stand at die bottom of society. From his point of view, poverty is found in all social strata. This concept foreshadowed the later sociological concept of relative deprivation. If people who are members of the upper classes have less than their peers do, they are likely to feel poor in comparison to them. Therefore, government programs aimed at eradicating poverty can never succeed. Even if those at the bottom are elevated, many people throughout the stratification system will still feel poor in comparison to their peers.

Social Forms As with socinl types, Simmel looked at a wide range of social forms, including exchange, conflict prostitution, and sociability. We can illustrate Simmel's (190811971d) work on social forms through his discussion of domination, that is, superordination and subordination.

Superordination and Subordination Superordination and subordination have a reciprocal relationship. The leader does not want to determine completely the thoughts and actions of others. Rather, the leader expects the subordinate to react either positively or negatively. Neither this nor any other form of interaction can exist without mutual relationships. Even in the most oppressive form of domination, subordinates have at least some degree of personal freedom.

To most people, superordination involves an effort to eliminate completely the independence of subordinates, but Simmel argued that a social relationship would cease to exist if this were the case.

Simmel asserted that one can be subordinated to an individual, a group, or an objective force. Leadership by a single individual generally leads to a tightly knit group either in support of or in opposition to the leader. Even when opposition arises in such a group, discord can be resolved more easily when the parties stand under the same higher power. Subordination under a plurality can have very uneven effects. On the one hand, the objectivity of rule by a plurality may make for greater unity in the group than does the more arbitrary rule of an individual. On the other hand, hostility is likely to be engendered among subordinates if they do not get the personal attention of a leader.

Simmel found subordination under an objective principle to be most offensive, perhaps because human relationships and social interactions are eliminated. People feel they are determined by an impersonal law that they have no ability to affect. Simmel saw subordination to an individual as freer and more spontaneous: "Subordination under a person has an element of freedom and dignity in comparison with which all obedience to laws has something mechanical and passive" (1908/1971d:I 15). Even worse is subordination to objects (for example, icons), which Simmel found a "humiliatingly harsh and unconditional kind of subordination" ( 1908/I 971 d: I 15 ). Because the individual is dominated by a thing, "he himself psychologically sinks to the category of mere thing" (Simmel, 1908/1971d:117).

Social Forms and Simmel's Larger Problematic Guy Oakes (1984) linked Simmel's discussion of forms to his basic problematic, the growing gap between objective and subjective culture. He begins with the position that in "Simmel's view, the discovery of objectivity-the independence of things from the condition of their subjective or psychological genesis--was the greatest achievement in the cultural history of the West" (Oakes, 1984:3). One of the ways in which Simmel addresses this objectivity is in his discussion of forms, but although such formalization and objectification are necessary and desirable, they can come to be quite undesirable:

On the one hand, forms ale necessary conditions for the expression and the realization of the energies and interests of life. On the other hand, these forms become increasingly detached and remote from life. When this happens, a conflict develops between the process of life and the configuration in which it is expressed. Ultimately, this conflict threatens to nullify the relationship between life and form, and thus to destroy the conditions under which the process of life can be realized in autonomous structures.

(Oakes, 1984:4)

SOCIAL STRUCTURES

Simmel said relatively little directly about the large-scale structures of society. In fact, at times, given his focus on patterns of interaction, he denied the existence of that level of social reality. A good example of this is found in his effort to define society, where he rejected the realist position exemplified by Emile Durkheim that society is a real, material entity. Lewis Coser notes, "He did not see society as a thing or an organism"(1965:5). Simmel was also uncomfortable with the nominalist conception that society is nothing more than a collection of isolated individuals. He adopted an intermediate position, conceiving of society as a set of interactions (Spykman, 1925/I 966:88). "Society is merely the name for a number of individuals connected by 'interaction'" (Simmel, cited in Coser, 1965:5).

Although Simmel enunciated this interactionist position, in much of ins work he operated as a realist, as if society were a real material structure. There is, then, a basic contradiction in Simmel's work on the social-structural level. Simmel noted, "Society transcends the individual and lives its own life which follows its own laws. It, too, confronts the individual with a historical, imperative firmness" (1908/1950a:258). Coser catches the essence of this aspect of Simme’s thought: "The larger superindividual structures--the state, the clan, the family, the city, or the trade union--turn out to be hut crystallizations of this interaction, even though they may attain autonomy and permanency and confront the individual as if they were alien powers" (1965:5). Rudolph Heberle makes essentially the same point: "One can scarcely escape the impression that Simmel views society as an interplay of structural factors, in which the human beings appear as passive objects rather than as live and willing actors" (1965:117).

The resolution of this paradox lies in the difference between Simmel's formal sociology, in which he tended to adhere to an interactionist view of society, and ins historical and philosophical sociologies, in winch he was much more inclined to see society as an independent, coercive social structure. In the latter sociologies, he saw society as part of the broader process of the development of objective culture, which worried him. Although objective culture is best seen as part of the cultural realm, Simmel included the growth of large-scale social structures as part of rigs process. That Simmel related the growth of social structures to the spread of objective culture is clear in this statement: 'The increasing objectification of our culture, whose phenomena consist more and more of impersonal elements and less and less absorb the subjective totality of the individual . also involves sociological structures" (1908/1950b:318). In addition to clarifying the relationship between society and objective culture, tiffs statement leads to Simmers thoughts on the cultural level of social reality.

OBJECTIVE CULTURE

One of the main focuses of Simmel's~ historical and philosophical sociology is the cultural level of social reality, or what he called the "objective culture." In Simmel's view, people produce culture, but because of their ability to reify social reality, die cultural world and the social world come to have lives of their own, lives that come increasingly to dominate the actors who created, and daily recreate, them. '`The cultural objects become more and more linked to each other in a self-contained world winch has increasingly fewer contacts with the [individual] subjective psyche and its desires and sensibilities" (Coser. 1965:22). Although people always retain the capacity to create and recreate culture, the long-term trend of history is for culture to exert a more and more coercive force on the actor.

The preponderance of objective over [individual] subjective culture that developed during the nineteenth century.., this discrepancy seems to widen steadily. Every day and from all sides, the wealth of objective culture increases, but the individual mind can enrich die forms and content of its own development only by distancing itself still further from that culture and developing its own at a much slower pace.

(Simmel. 1907/1978:449)

In various places in his work, Simmel identified a number of components of the objective culture, for example, tools, means of transport, products of science, technology, arts, language, die intellectual sphere, conventional wisdom, religious dogma, philosophical systems, legal systems, moral codes, and ideals (for example, the "fatherland"). The objective culture grows and expands in various ways. First, its absolute size grows with increasing modernization. This can be seen most obviously in the case of scientific knowledge, winch is expanding exponentially, although this is just as true of most other aspects of the cultural realm. Second. the number of different components of the cultural realm also grows. Finally. and perhaps most important, the various dements of the cultural world become more and more intertwined in an ever more powerful, self-contained world that is increasingly beyond the control of the actors (Oakes, 1984:12). Simmel not only was interested in describing die ~growth of objective culture but also was greatly

disturbed by it: "Simmel was impressed if not depressed by the bewildering number and variety of human products which in the contemporary world surround and unceasingly impinge upon die individual" (Weingartner, 1959:33).

What worried Simmel most was the threat to individual culture posed by the growth of objective culture. Simmel's personal sympathies were with a world dominated by individual culture, but he saw the possibility of such a world as more and more unlikely.It is this that Simmel described as the "tragedy of culture." (We will comment on tins in detail in the discussion of The Philosophy of Money.) Simmel’s specific analysis of the growth of objective culture over individual subjective culture is simply one example of a general principle that dominates all of life: '~The total value of something increases to the same extent as the value of its individual parts declines" (1907/1978:199).

We can relate Simmel's general argument about objective culture to his more basic analysis of forms of interaction. In one of ins best-known essays, 'The Metropolis and Mental Life" (1903/197l), Simmel analyzed the forms of interaction that take place in die modern city (Vidler, 1991). He saw the modern metropolis as the "genuine arena" of the growth of objective culture and the decline of individual culture. 1! is the scene of the predominance of the money economy, and money, as Simmel often made clear, has a profound effect on the nature of human relationships. The widespread use of money leads to an emphasis on calculability and rationality in all spheres of life. Thus genuine human relationships decline, and social relationships tend to be dominated by a blasé and reserved attitude. Whereas the small town was characterized by greater feeling and emotionality, the modem city is characterized by a shallow intellectuality that matches the calculability needed by a money economy. The city is also the center of the division of labor, and as we have seen, specialization plays a central role in the production of an ever-expanding objective culture, with a corresponding decline in individual culture. The city is a "frightful leveler," in which virtually everyone is reduced to emphasizing unfeeling calculability. It is more and more difficult to maintain individuality in the face of the expansion of objective culture (Lohmann and Wilkes, 1996).

It should be pointed out that in his essay on the city (as well as in many other places in his work) Simmel also discussed the liberating effect of this modem development. For example, he emphasized the fact that people are freer in the modem city than in the tight social confines of the small town. We will have more to say about Simmel's thoughts on the liberating impact of modernity at/he close of the following section, devoted to Simmel's book The Philosophy of Money.

Before we get to that work, it is necessary to indicate that one of the many ironies of Simmel's influence on the development of sociology is that his micro-analytic work is used, but its broader implications are ignored almost totally. Take the example of Simmel's work on exchange relationships. He saw exchange as the "purest and most developed kind" of interaction (Simmel, 1907/1978:82). Although all forms of interaction involve some sacrifice, it occurs most clearly in exchange relationships. Simmel thought of all social exchanges as involving "profit and loss." Such an orientation was crucial to Simmel's microsociological work and specifically to the development of his largely micro-oriented exchange theory. However, his thoughts on exchange are also expressed in his broader work on money. To Simmel, money is the purest form of exchange. In contrast to a barter economy, where the cycle ends when one object has been exchanged for another, an economy based on money allows for an endless series of exchanges. This possibility is crucial for Simmel because it provides the basis for the widespread development of social structures and objective culture. Consequently, money as a form of exchange represented for Simmel one of the root causes of the alienation of people in a modern reified social structure.

In his treatment of the city and exchange, one can see the elegance of Simmel's thinking as he related small-scale sociological forms of exchange to the development of modern society in its totality. Although this link can be found in his specific essays (especially Simmel, 1991), it is clearest in The Philosophy of Money.

THE PHILOSOPHy OF MONEY

The Philosophy of Money (1907/1978) illustrates well the breadth and sophistication of Simmel's thinking. It demonstrates conclusively that Simmel deserves at least as much recognition for his general theory as for his essays on microsociology, many of which can be seen as specific manifestations of his general theory.

Although the title makes it clear that Simmel's focus is money, his interest in that phenomenon is embedded in a set of his broader theoretical and philosophical concerns. For example, as we have already seen, Simmel was interested in the broad issue of value, and money can ha seen as simply a specific form of value. At another level, Simmel was interested not in money per se but in its impact on such a wide range of phenomena as the "inner world" of actors and the objective culture as a whole. At still another level, he treated money as a specific phenomenon linked with a variety of other components of life, including "exchange, ownership, greed, extravagance, cynicism individual freedom, the style of life, culture, the value of the personality, etc." (Siegfried Kracauer, cited in Bottomore arid Frisby, 1978:7). Finally, and most generally, Simmel saw money as a specific component of life capable of helping us understand the totality of life. As Tom Bortomore and David Frisby put it, Simmel sought no less than to extract "the totality of the spirit of the age from his analysis of money" (1978:7).

The Philosophy of Money has much in common with the work of Karl Marx. Like Marx, Simmel focused on capitalism and the problems created by a money economy. Despite this common ground, however, the differences are overwhelming. For example,Simmel saw the economic problems of his time as simply a specific manifestation of a more general cultural problem, the alienation of objective from subjective culture (Poggi, 1993). To Marx these problems are specific to capitalism, but to Simmel they are part of a universal tragedy -the increasing powerlessness of the individual in the face of the growth of objective culture. Whereas Marx's analysis is historically specific, Simmel's analysis seeks to extract timeless truths from the flux of human history. As Frisby says, "In his The Philosophy of Money... .what is missing.., is a historical sociology of money relationships" (1984:58). This difference in their analyses is related to a crucial political difference between Simmel and Marx. Because Marx saw economic problems as time-bound, the product of capitalist society, he believed that eventually they could be solved. Simmel, however, saw the basic problems as inherent hi human life and held out no hope for future improvement. In fact, Simmel believed that socialism, instead of improving the situation, would heighten the kinds of problems discussed in The Philosophy of Money. Despite some substantive similarities to Marxian theory, Simmel's thought is far closer to that of Weber and his "iron cage" in terms of his image of both the modem world and its future.

The Philosophy of Money begins with a discussion of the general forms of money and value. Later the discussion moves to the impact of money oil the "inner world" of actors and on culture in general. Because the argument is so complex, we can only highlight it here.

Money and Value

One of Simmers initial concerns in the work, as we discussed briefly earlier, is the relationship between money and value (Kamolnick, 2001 ). In general, he argued that people create value by making objects, separating themselves from those objects, and then seeking to overcome the "distance, obstacles, difficulties" (Simmel, 1907/1978:66). The greater the difficulty of obtaining an object, the greater its value. However, difficulty of attainment has a "lower and an upper limit (Simmel, 1907/1978:72). The general principle is that the value of things comes from the ability of people to distance themselves properly from objects. Things that are too close, too easily obtained, are not very valuable. Some exertion is needed for something to be considered valuable. Conversely, things that are too far, too difficult, or nearly impossible to obtain are also not very valuable. Things that defy most, if not all, of our efforts to obtain them cease to be valuable to us. Those things that are most valuable are neither too distant nor too close. Among the factors involved in the distance of an object from an actor are die time it takes to obtain it, its scarcity, the difficulties involved in acquiring it, and the need to give up other things in order to acquire it. People try to place themselves at a proper distance from objects, which must be attainable, but not too easily.

In this general context of value. Simmel discussed money. In the economic realm. money serves both to create distance from objects and to provide the means to overcome it. The money value attached to object in a modem economy places them at a distance from us; we cannot obtain them without money of our own. The difficulty in obtaining the money and therefore the objects makes them valuable to us. At the same time. Once we obtain enough money, we are able to overcome the distance between ourselves and the objects. Money thus performs the interesting function of creating distance between people and objects and then providing the means to overcome that distance.

Money, Reification, and Rationalization

In the process of creating value, money also provides the basis for the development of the market, the modem economy, and ultimately modem (capitalistic) society (Poggi,1996). Money provides the means by which these entities acquire a life of their own that is external to, and coercive of, the actor. This stands in contrast to earlier societies in which barter or trade could not lead to the reified world that is the distinctive product of a money economy. Money permits this development in various ways. For example. Simmel argued that money allows for "long-range calculations, large-scale enterprises

and Iong-term credits" (190711978:125). Later. Simmel said that "money has . . .developed . . . the most objective practices, the most logical, purely mathematical norms, the absolute freedom from everything personal" (1907/1978:128). He saw this process of reification as only part of the more general process by which the mind embodies and symbolizes itself in objects. These embodiments, these symbolic structures, become reified and come to exert a controlling force on actors.

Not only does money help create a reified social world, it also contributes to the increasing rationalization of that social world (Deutschmalm, 1996; B. Turner, 1986). This is another of the concerns that Simmel shared with Weber (Levine. 2000). A money economy fosters an emphasis on quantitative rather than qualitative factors. Simmel stated:

It would be easy to multiply the examples that illustrate the growing preponderance of the category of quantity over that of quality, or more precisely the tendency to dissolve quality into quantity, to remove the elements more and more from quality, to grant them only specific forms of motion and to interpret everything that is specifically, individually, and qualitatively determined as the more or less, the bigger or smaller, the wider or narrower, the more or less frequent of those colorless elements and awarenesses that ale only accessible to numerical determination---even though this tendency may never~ absolutely attain its goal by retinal means....

Thus, one of the major tendencies of the reduction of quality to quantity-achieves its higher and uniquely perfect representation in money. Here, too, money is the pinnacle of a cultural historical series of developments which unambiguously determines its direction.

(Simmel, 1907/1978:278-280)

Less obviously, money contributes to rationalization by increasing the importance of intellectuality in the modern world (B. Turner, 1986; Deutschmann. 1996). On the one hand, the development of a money economy presupposes a significant expansion of mental processes. As an example, Simmel pointed to the complicated mental processes that are required by such money transactions as covering bank notes with cash reserves. On the other hand, a money economy contributes to a considerable change in the norms and values of society; it aids in the "fundamental reorientation of culture towards intellectuality" (Simmel, 190711978:152). In part because of a money economy, intellect has come to be considered the most valuable of our mental energies.

Simmel saw the significance of the individual declining as money transactions become an increasingly important part of society and as reified structures expand. This is part of his general argument on the decline of individual subjective culture in the face of the expansion of objective culture (the "tragedy of culture"):

The rapid circulation of money induces habits of spending and acquisition; it makes a specific quantity of money psychologically less significant and valuable, while money in genial be comes increasingly important because money matters now affect the individual mole vitally than they do in a less agitated style of life. We are confronted here with a very common phenomenon; namely, that the total value of something increases to the same extent as the value of its individual parts declines. For example, the size and significance of a social group often becomes greater the less highly the lives~ and interests of its individual members are valued; the objective culture, the diversity and liveliness of its content attain their highest point through a division of labour that often condemns the individual representative and participant hi this culture to a monotonous specialization, narrowness, and stunted growth. The whole becomes more perfect and harmonious, the less the individual is a harmonious being.

(Simmel, 1907/1978:199)

Jorge Arditi (1996) has put this issue in slightly different terms. Arditi recognizes the theme of increasing rationalization in Simmel's work, but argues that it must be seen in the context of Simmel's thinking on the nonrational. "According to Simmel, the nonrational is a primary, essential element of 'life,' an integral aspect of our humanity. Its gradual eclipse in the expanses of a modem, highly rationalized world implies, then, an unquestionable impoverishment of being" (Arditi, 1996:95). One example of the nonralional is love (others are emotions and faith), and it is nonrational because, among other things, it is impractical, is the opposite of intellectual experience, does not necessarily have real value, is impulsive, nothing social or cultural intervenes between lover and beloved, and it springs "'from the completely nonrational depths of life'" (Simmel, in Arditi, 1996:96). With increasing rationalization, we begin to lose the nonrationai and with it "we lose . . . the most meaningful of our human attributes: our authenticity" (Arditi, 1996:103). This loss of authenticity, of the nonrational, is a real human tragedy.

In some senses, it may be difficult to see how money can take on the central role that it does in modem society, on the surface, it appears that money is simply a means to a variety of ends or, in Simmel's worlds, "the purest form of the tool" (1907/1978:210). However, money has come to be the most extreme example of a means that has become an end in itself:

Never has an~ object that owes its value exclusively to its quality as a means, to its convertibility into more definite values, so thoroughly and unreservedly developed into a psychological value absolute, into a completely engrossing final purpose governing our practical consciousness. This ultimate craving for money must increase to the extent that money takes on the quality of a pure means .For this implies that the range of objects made available to money grows continuously ,that things submit more and more defencelessly to the power of money ,that money itself becomes more and more lacking in quality yet thereby at the same time becomes powerful in relation to the quality of things.

(Simmel,1907/1978:232)

CRITICISMS

We have already discussed some criticisms of Simmel's particular ideas, for example that ins emphasis on forms imposes order where none exists (p. 249) and that he seems to contradict himself by viewing social structures, on the one hand, as simply a form of interaction and, on the other hand, as coercive and independent of interactions (p. 254). In addition, we have described the difference between Marx and Simmel on alienation, which suggests the primary Marxist criticism of Simmel. This criticism is that Simmel does not suggest a way out of the tragedy of culture, because he considers alienation to be inherent to the human condition. For Simmel, the disjuncture between objective and subjective culture is as much a part of our "species being" as labor is to Marx. Therefore, whereas Marx believes that alienation will be swept away with the coming of socialism, Simmel has no such political hope.

Undoubtedly, the most frequently cited criticism of Simmel is the fragmentary nature of his work. Simmel is accused of having no coherent theoretical approach, but instead a set of fragmentary or "impressionistic" (Frisby, 1981) approaches. It certainly is true as we have argued here, that Simmel focused on forms and types of association, but that is hardly the sort of theoretical unity that we see in the other founders of sociology. Indeed, one of Simmel's most enthusiastic living supporters in American sociology, Donald Levine (1976a:814) admits that, "although literate American sociologists today could be expected to produce a coherent statement of the theoretical frameworks and principal themes of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber, few would be able to do the same for Simmel." Further, Levine (1976b: 1128) admits that it is not the obtuseness of modern interpreters, but "the character of Simmel's work itself: the scatter of topics, the failure to integrate related materials, the paucity of coherent general statements, and the cavalier attitude toward academic tradition." Although Levine attempts to present the core of Simmel's unique approach (as we have here), he must admit that, "in spite of these achievements of Simmelian scholarship, there remains for the reader the undeniable experience of Simmel as an unsystematic writer. Indeed, although many have found his work powerfully stimulating, virtually no one knows how to practice as a full-blown proponent of Simmelian social science" (Levine 1997:200).

Despite the fact that there ate few Simmelians, Simmel has often been recognized as an "innovator of ideas and theoretical lead" (Tenbruck, 1959:61). This really is exactly what Simmel intended.

I know that I shall die without spiritual heirs (and that is good). The estate I leave is like cash distributed among many heirs, each of whom puts his shoe to use in some~ trade that is compatible with his nature but which can no longer be recognized as coming from that estate.

(Simmel in Frisby, 1984:150)

Consequently, Simmel has often been regarded as a natural resource of insights to be mined for empirical hypothesis rather than as a coherent framework for theoretical analysis.

Nevertheless, we do not feel that its potential for positivistic hypothesis is a satisfactory answer to the objection that Simmel's work is fragmentary. If these are the terms by which Simmel is measured, he most certainly must be judged a failure whose ideas are only saved because of the work of his more scientific successors. This was, in fact, Durkheim's (1979:328) assessment of Simmel's work. We. however, agree more with Nisbet's ( 1959:481 ) assessment that there is, in Simmel’s work, "a larger element of irreducible humanism and. , . it will always be possible to derive something of importance from him directly that cannot be absorbed by the impersonal propositions of science."

With all of the classical theorists, it is important for the student to directly encounter their original writings, even if only in translation. The power and humor of Marx's language evaporates when we summarize Iris theories. The broad strokes of our précis obscure Durkheim's carefully detailed arguments. The optimistic faith in scholarship that lies behind Weber's pessimistic conclusions are missed. But this is most true with Simmel. There simply is no substitute for picking up one of Simmel's essays and being taught to look anew at fashion (1904/1971) or flirting (1984) or the stranger (1908/1971b) or secrecy (1906/1950).

SUMMARY

The work of Georg Simmel has been influential in American sociological theory for many years. The focus of this influence seems to be shifting from microsociology to a general sociological theory. Simmel's microsociology is embedded in a broad dialectical theory that interrelates the cultural and individual levels. We identify four basic levels of concern in Simmel's work: psychological, interactional, structural and institutional, and the ultimate metaphysics of life.

Simmel operated with a dialectical orientation, although it is not as well articulated as that of Karl Marx. We illustrate Simmel's dialectical concerns in various ways. We deal with the way they are manifested in forms of interaction specifically, fashion. Simmel also was interested in the conflicts between the individual and social structures. but his greatest concern was those conflicts that develop between individual culture and objective culture. He perceived a general process by which objective culture expands and individual culture becomes increasingly impoverished in the face of this development. Simmel saw this conflict, in turn, as part of a broader philosophical conflict between more-life and more-than-life.

The bulk of this chapter is devoted to Simmel's thoughts on each of the four levels of social reality. Although he has many useful assumptions about consciousness, he did comparatively little with them. He had much more to offer on forms of interaction and types of interactants. In this formal sociology, we see Simmel’s great interest in social geometry, for example, numbers of people. In this context, we examine Simmel's work on the crucial transition from a dyad to a triad. With the addition of one parson, we move from a dyad to a triad and with it the possibility of the development of large-scale structures that can become separate from, and dominant over, individuals. This creates

the possibility of conflict and contradiction between the individual and the larger society. In his social geometry, Simmel was also concerned with the issue of distance, as in,for example, ins essay on the "stranger," including "strangeness" in social life. Simmel’s interest in social types is illustrated in a discussion of the poor, and his thoughts on social forms are illustrated in a discussion of domination, that is, superordination and subordination.

At the macro level, Simmel had comparatively little to say about social structures. In fact, at times he seemed to manifest a disturbing tendency to reduce social structures to little more than interaction patterns. Simmel's real interest at the macro level was objective culture. He was interested in both the expansion of this culture and its destructive effects on individuals (the "tragedy of culture"). This general concern is manifest in a variety of his specific essays, for example, those on the city and exchange.

In The Philosophy of Money Simmel's discussion progressed from money to value to the problems of modem society and, ultimately, to the problems of life in general. Of particular concern is Simmel's interest in the tragedy of culture as part of a broader set of apprehensions about culture. Finally, we discussed Simme]'s work on secrecy in order to illustrate the full range of his theoretical ideas, The discussion of Simmel's work on money, as well as his ideas on secrecy, demonstrates that he has a far more elegant and sophisticated theoretical orientation than he is usually given credit for by those who are familiar with only ins thoughts on micro-level phenomena.

Chapter6： Emile Durkheim: Leader of the sociology doctrine
INTRODUCTION

SOCIAL FACTS

Material and Nonmaterial Social Facts

Types of Nonmaterial Social Facts

THE DIVISION OF LABOR IN SOCIETY

Mechanical and Organic Solidarity

Dynamic Density

Repressive and Restitutive Law

Normal and Pathological

justice

SUICIDE

The Four Types of Suicide

Suicide Rates and Social Reform