Different Classical Sociological Theorists and Sociological Frameworks Essay Dear Intro to Sociology People: The past two weeks we talked about different

Different Classical Sociological Theorists and Sociological Frameworks Essay Dear Intro to Sociology People:

The past two weeks we talked about different classical sociological theorists and sociological frameworks.

Based on course readings and material covered during lecture, you will have a choice of two possible essay topics. Choose only one of the following options (and clearly indicate which option, #1 or #2, you are writing about):

Option 1 (500-600 words): Whose Table do you Join?

I want you to consider the following scenario: Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Georg Simmel walk into a cafeteria. They each sit at separate tables.

Whose table do you join? Why?

That is what I want you to write about this week. Which theorist’s table do you join, and why?

This essay must be between 500-600 words. Reading materials has been posted. Please add word count and work cited in the essay. Chapter 1
The Metropolis and Mental Life
Georg Simmel
The deepest problems of modern life flow
from the attempt of the individual to maintain the independence and individuality of
his existence against the sovereign powers
of society, against the weight of the historical heritage and the external culture and
technique of life. This antagonism represents the most modern form of the conflict
which primitive man must carry on with
nature for his own bodily existence. The
eighteenth century may have called for liberation from all the ties which grew up
historically in politics, in religion, in morality and in economics in order to permit
the original natural virtue of man, which is
equal in everyone, to develop without inhibition; the nineteenth century may have
sought to promote, in addition to man’s
freedom, his individuality (which is connected with the division of labour) and his
achievements which make him unique and
indispensable but which at the same time
make him so much the more dependent on
the complementary activity of others;
Nietzsche may have seen the relentless
struggle of the individual as the prerequisite
for his full development, while socialism
found the same thing in the suppression of
all competition ± but in each of these the
same fundamental motive was at work,
namely the resistance of the individual to
being levelled, swallowed up in the socialtechnological mechanism. When one inquires about the products of the specifically
modern aspects of contemporary life with
reference to their inner meaning ± when, so
to speak, one examines the body of culture
with reference to the soul, as I am to do
concerning the metropolis today ± the
answer will require the investigation of
the relationship which such a social structure promotes between the individual
aspects of life and those which transcend
the existence of single individuals. It will
require the investigation of the adaptations
made by the personality in its adjustment to
the forces that lie outside of it.
The psychological foundation, upon
which the metropolitan individuality is
erected, is the intensification of emotional
life due to the swift and continuous shift of
external and internal stimuli. Man is a creature whose existence is dependent on differences, i.e. his mind is stimulated by the
difference between present impressions
and those which have preceded. Lasting
impressions, the slightness in their differences, the habituated regularity of their
course and contrasts between them, consume, so to speak, less mental energy than
the rapid telescoping of changing images,
pronounced differences within what is
grasped at a single glance, and the unexpectedness of violent stimuli. To the extent
that the metropolis creates these psychological conditions ± with every crossing
of the street, with the tempo and multiplicity of economic, occupational and social
12
GEORG SIMMEL
life ± it creates in the sensory foundations of
mental life, and in the degree of awareness
necessitated by our organization as creatures dependent on differences, a deep contrast with the slower, more habitual, more
smoothly flowing rhythm of the sensorymental phase of small town and rural existence. Thereby the essentially intellectualistic character of the mental life of the
metropolis becomes intelligible as over
against that of the small town which rests
more on feelings and emotional relationships. These latter are rooted in the unconscious levels of the mind and develop most
readily in the steady equilibrium of unbroken customs. The locus of reason, on
the other hand, is in the lucid, conscious
upper strata of the mind and it is the most
adaptable of our inner forces. In order to
adjust itself to the shifts and contradictions
in events, it does not require the disturbances and inner upheavals which are the
only means whereby more conservative
personalities are able to adapt themselves
to the same rhythm of events. Thus the
metropolitan type ± which naturally takes
on a thousand individual modifications ±
creates a protective organ for itself against
the profound disruption with which the
fluctuations and discontinuities of the external milieu threaten it. Instead of reacting
emotionally, the metropolitan type reacts
primarily in a rational manner, thus creating a mental predominance through the
intensification of consciousness, which in
turn is caused by it. Thus the reaction of
the metropolitan person to those events is
moved to a sphere of mental activity which
is least sensitive and which is furthest removed from the depths of the personality.
This intellectualistic quality which is
thus recognized as a protection of the
inner life against the domination of the
metropolis, becomes ramified into numerous specific phenomena. The metropolis
has always been the seat of money economy
because the many-sidedness and concentration of commercial activity have given the
medium of exchange an importance which
it could not have acquired in the commercial aspects of rural life. But money econ-
omy and the domination of the intellect
stand in the closest relationship to one another. They have in common a purely
matter-of-fact attitude in the treatment
of persons and things in which a formal
justice is often combined with an unrelenting hardness. The purely intellectualistic
person is indifferent to all things personal
because, out of them, relationships and reactions develop which are not to be completely understood by purely rational
methods ± just as the unique element in
events never enters into the principle of
money. Money is concerned only with
what is common to all, i.e. with the exchange value which reduces all quality
and individuality to a purely quantitative
level. All emotional relationships between
persons rest on their individuality, whereas
intellectual relationships deal with persons
as with numbers, that is, as with elements
which, in themselves, are indifferent, but
which are of interest only insofar as they
offer something objectively perceivable. It
is in this very manner that the inhabitant of
the metropolis reckons with his merchant,
his customer and with his servant, and frequently with the persons with whom he is
thrown into obligatory association. These
relationships stand in distinct contrast with
the nature of the smaller circle in which
the inevitable knowledge of individual
characteristics produces, with an equal inevitability, an emotional tone in conduct, a
sphere which is beyond the mere objective
weighting of tasks performed and payments made. What is essential here as
regards the economic-psychological aspect
of the problem is that in less advanced cultures production was for the customer who
ordered the product so that the producer
and the purchaser knew one another. The
modern city, however, is supplied almost
exclusively by production for the market,
that is, for entirely unknown purchasers
who never appear in the actual field of vision of the producers themselves. Thereby,
the interests of each party acquire a relentless matter-of-factness, and its rationally
calculated economic egoism need not fear
any divergence from its set path because of
THE METROPOLIS AND MENTAL LIFE
the imponderability of personal relationships. This is all the more the case in the
money economy which dominates the
metropolis in which the last remnants of
domestic production and direct barter of
goods have been eradicated and in which
the amount of production on direct personal order is reduced daily. Furthermore,
this psychological intellectualistic attitude
and the money economy are in such close
integration that no one is able to say
whether it was the former that effected the
latter or vice versa. What is certain is only
that the form of life in the metropolis is the
soil which nourishes this interaction most
fruitfully, a point which I shall attempt to
demonstrate only with the statement of the
most outstanding English constitutional
historian to the effect that through the
entire course of English history London
has never acted as the heart of England
but often as its intellect and always as its
money bag.
In certain apparently insignificant characters or traits of the most external aspects
of life are to be found a number of characteristic mental tendencies. The modern
mind has become more and more a calculating one. The calculating exactness
of practical life which has resulted from a
money economy corresponds to the ideal of
natural science, namely that of transforming the world into an arithmetical problem
and of fixing every one of its parts in a
mathematical formula. It has been money
economy which has thus filled the daily life
of so many people with weighing, calculating, enumerating and the reduction of
qualitative values to quantitative terms. Because of the character of calculability
which money has there has come into the
relationships of the elements of life a precision and a degree of certainty in the definition of the equalities and inequalities and
an unambiguousness in agreements and arrangements, just as externally this precision
has been brought about through the general
diffusion of pocket watches. It is, however,
the conditions of the metropolis which are
cause as well as effect for this essential
characteristic. The relationships and con-
13
cerns of the typical metropolitan resident
are so manifold and complex that, especially as a result of the agglomeration of
so many persons with such differentiated
interests, their relationships and activities
intertwine with one another into a manymembered organism. In view of this fact,
the lack of the most exact punctuality in
promises and performances would cause
the whole to break down into an inextricable chaos. If all the watches in Berlin suddenly went wrong in different ways even
only as much as an hour, its entire economic
and commercial life would be derailed for
some time. Even though this may seem
more superficial in its significance, it transpires that the magnitude of distances
results in making all waiting and the breaking of appointments an ill-afforded waste
of time. For this reason the technique of
metropolitan life in general is not conceivable without all of its activities and reciprocal relationships being organized and
coordinated in the most punctual way into
a firmly fixed framework of time which
transcends all subjective elements. But
here too there emerge those conclusions
which are in general the whole task of this
discussion, namely, that every event, however restricted to this superficial level it
may appear, comes immediately into contact with the depths of the soul, and that the
most banal externalities are, in the last analysis, bound up with the final decisions
concerning the meaning and the style of
life. Punctuality, calculability and exactness, which are required by the complications and extensiveness of metropolitan
life, are not only most intimately connected
with its capitalistic and intellectualistic
character but also colour the content of
life and are conductive to the exclusion
of those irrational, instinctive, sovereign
human traits and impulses which originally
seek to determine the form of life from
within instead of receiving it from the outside in a general, schematically precise
form. Even though those lives which are
autonomous and characterized by these
vital impulses are not entirely impossible
in the city, they are, none the less, opposed
14
GEORG SIMMEL
to it in abstracto. It is in the light of this that
we can explain the passionate hatred of
personalities like Ruskin and Nietzsche
for the metropolis ± personalities who
found the value of life only in unschematized individual expressions which cannot
be reduced to exact equivalents and in
whom, on that account, there flowed from
the same source as did that hatred, the
hatred of the money economy and of the
intellectualism of existence.
The same factors which, in the exactness
and the minute precision of the form of
life, have coalesced into a structure of the
highest impersonality, have on the other
hand, an influence in a highly personal direction. There is perhaps no psychic phenomenon which is so unconditionally
reserved to the city as the blase outlook. It
is at first the consequence of those rapidly
shifting stimulations of the nerves which
are thrown together in all their contrasts
and from which it seems to us the intensification of metropolitan intellectuality seems
to be derived. On that account it is not
likely that stupid persons who have been
hitherto intellectually dead will be blaseÂ.
Just as an immoderately sensuous life
makes one blase because it stimulates the
nerves to their utmost reactivity until they
finally can no longer produce any reaction
at all, so, less harmful stimuli, through the
rapidity and the contradictoriness of their
shifts, force the nerves to make such violent
responses, tear them about so brutally that
they exhaust their last reserves of strength
and, remaining in the same milieu, do not
have time for new reserves to form. This
incapacity to react to new stimulations
with the required amount of energy constitutes in fact that blase attitude which every
child of a large city evinces when compared
with the products of the more peaceful and
more stable milieu.
Combined with this physiological source
of the blase metropolitan attitude there is
another, which derives from a money economy. The essence of the blase attitude is an
indifference toward the distinctions between things. Not in the sense that they
are not perceived, as is the case of mental
dullness, but rather that the meaning and
the value of the distinctions between things,
and therewith of the things themselves, are
experienced as meaningless. They appear
to the blase person in a homogeneous, flat
and grey colour with no one of them
worthy of being preferred to another. This
psychic mood is the correct subjective reflection of a complete money economy to
the extent that money takes the place of all
the manifoldness of things and expresses all
qualitative distinctions between them in the
distinction of how much. To the extent that
money, with its colourlessness and its indifferent quality, can become a common denominator of all values, it becomes the
frightful leveller ± it hollows out the core
of things, their peculiarities, their specific
values and their uniqueness and incomparability in a way which is beyond repair.
They all float with the same specific gravity
in the constantly moving stream of money.
They all rest on the same level and are
distinguished only by their amounts. In individual cases this colouring, or rather this
de-colouring of things, through their equation with money, may be imperceptibly
small. In the relationship, however, which
the wealthy person has to objects which can
be bought for money, perhaps indeed in the
total character which, for this reason,
public opinion now recognizes in these
objects, it takes on very considerable proportions. This is why the metropolis is the
seat of commerce and it is in it that the
purchasability of things appears in quite a
different aspect than in simpler economies.
It is also the peculiar seat of the blase attitude. In it is brought to a peak, in a certain
way, that achievement in the concentration
of purchasable things which stimulates the
individual to the highest degree of nervous
energy. Through the mere quantitative intensification of the same conditions this
achievement is transformed into its opposite, into this peculiar adaptive phenomenon
± the blase attitude ± in which the nerves
reveal their final possibility of adjusting
themselves to the content and the form
of metropolitan life by renouncing the
response to them. We see that the self-
THE METROPOLIS AND MENTAL LIFE
preservation of certain types of personalities is obtained at the cost of devaluing
the entire objective world, ending inevitably in dragging the personality downward
into a feeling of its own valuelessness.
Whereas the subject of this form of existence must come to terms with it for himself,
his self-preservation in the face of the great
city requires of him a no less negative type of
social conduct. The mental attitude of the
people of the metropolis to one another may
be designated formally as one of reserve. If
the unceasing external contact of numbers
of persons in the city should be met by the
same number of inner reactions as in the
small town, in which one knows almost
every person he meets and to each of
whom he has a positive relationship, one
would be completely atomized internally
and would fall into an unthinkable mental
condition. Partly this psychological circumstance and partly the privilege of suspicion
which we have in the face of the elements of
metropolitan life (which are constantly
touching one another in fleeting contact)
necessitates in us that reserve, in consequence of which we do not know by sight
neighbours of years standing and which permits us to appear to small-town folk so
often as cold and uncongenial. Indeed, if I
am not mistaken, the inner side of this external reserve is not only indifference but
more frequently than we believe, it is a
slight aversion, a mutual strangeness and
repulsion which, in a close contact which
has arisen any way whatever, can break out
into hatred and conflict. The entire inner
organization of such a type of extended
commercial life rests on an extremely varied
structure of sympathies, indifferences and
aversions of the briefest as well as of the
most enduring sort. This sphere of indifference is, for this reason, not as great as it
seems superficially. Our minds respond,
with some definite feeling, to almost every
impression emanating from another
person. The unconsciousness, the transitoriness and the shift of these feelings seem
to raise them only into indifference. Actually this latter would be unnatural to us as
immersion into a chaos of unwished-for
15
suggestions would be unbearable. From
these two typical dangers of metropolitan
life we are saved by antipathy which is the
latent adumbration of actual antagonism
since it brings about the sort of distantiation
and deflection without which this type of
life could not be carried on at all. Its extent
and its mixture, the rhythm of its emergence
and disappearance, the forms in which it
is adequate ± these constitute, with the simplified motives (in the narrower sense) an
inseparable totality of the form of metropolitan life. What appears here directly as
dissociation is in reality only one of the
elementary forms of socialization.
This reserve with its overtone of concealed aversion appears once more, however, as the form or the wrappings of a
much more general psychic trait of the
metropolis. It assures the individual of a
type and degree of personal freedom to
which there is no analogy in other circumstances. It has its roots in one of the great
developmental tendencies of social life as a
whole; in one of the few for which an approximately exhaustive formula can be discovered. The most elementary stage of
social organization which is to be found
historically, as well as in the present, is
this: a relatively small circle almost entirely
closed against neighbouring foreign or
otherwise antagonistic groups but which
has however within itself such a narrow
cohesion that the individual member has
only a very slight area for the development
of his own qualities and for free activity for
which he himself is responsible. Political
and familial groups began in this way as
do political and religious communities; the
self-preservation of very young associations
requires a rigorous setting of boundaries
and a centripetal unity and for that reason
it cannot give room to freedom and the
peculiarities of inner and external development of the individual. From this stage
social evolution proceeds simultaneously
in two divergent but none the less corresponding directions. In the measure that the
group grows numericall…
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