There are two central ideas that form Simmel’s perspective:
social forms and the relationship between the subjective experience of the
individual and objective culture. Simmel
always begins and ends with the individual.
He assumes that the individual is born with certain ways of thinking and
feeling and most social interactions are motivated by individual needs and
desires. Encounters with others are
molded to social forms in order to facilitate reciprocal exchanges. These forms constitute society for
Simmel. Objective culture is that
culture that is universal yet not alive to the individual’s subjective
experience. Thus the person is unable to
fully grasp, comprehend, or intimately know objective culture. The tension between the individual on the one
hand and social forms and objective culture on the other is Simmel’s focus of
study.
There are a variety of social forms; among them are
sociability, exchange, conflict, and group size. Sociability occurs in interactions that have
no other goal than chit-chat. Though the
goal appears of no consequence, the functions of such interactions are
important for the well-being of society and the person—they socially connect us
to others, provide cultural and emotional capital, affirm social reality, and
solve the problem of association.
Reciprocal exchange is the foundation of society. Exchange is ordered by value and value is
ordered by sacrifice and scarcity.
Conflict is a social form that provides such functions as group
solidarity, normative regulation, centralization of power, and coalition
formation. The kind of function that
conflict provides depends on whether the collective is a social system or
group. Group size also functions as a
social form. Triads, for example,
involve power relations, whereas dyads do not.
On the other hand, dyads are much more uncertain and thus perceived as
unique due to their size.
Urbanization increases the division of labor, the use of
money, and changes the configuration of social networks. All of these have direct and indirect effects
on the level of objective culture and its effects on the individual. The use of money increases personal freedom
for the individual yet at the same time it intensifies the possibility of
anomie, diminishes the individual’s attachment to objects, and increases goal
displacement. People join groups for
either rational or organic motivations.
Rational motivations are prevalent in urban settings and imply greater
personal freedom coupled with less emotional investment, and possible anomie
and role conflict; organic motivations imply less personal freedom and greater
social conformity coupled with increased personal and social certainty.
Both gender and religion are natural states for human
beings. Each person has a religious
impulse and a certain degree of religiosity.
Religion, on the other hand, acts like a categorical scheme, and it
overextends the valid limits of religiosity.
Religion thus objectifies the world by claiming exclusive right to such
impulses as faith, love, and sacrifice, and by conceptualizing all available
worlds through its scheme. Gender is
also an essential attribute of humans.
Men naturally objectify themselves as they are motivated to produce. Women, on the other hand, are naturally
integrated with all aspects of their being.
Men operate through a dualistic knowledge system, seeking proofs for
knowledge in the empirical world, while women’s way of knowing is non-dualistic
and centered. The problem of gender
inequality is that men have dominated the social world and its culture. Culture, then, for the most part is objective
and at odds with women’s nature. True
gendered social change will come as women’s knowledge and way of being are
valued as equally as men’s.
Simmel was concerned about the effect of objective culture
on the individual’s subjective existence.
Postmodernists have taken that concern to another level. In times past, most of the culture was
produced by people situated in real social groups that interacted over real
issues. This grounded culture created real
meanings and morally infused norms, values, and beliefs. In postmodernity, much of the culture is
produced or colonized by capitalists using advertising and mass media. This historic shift implies that culture has
changed from a representation of social reality to representations of
commodified images, culture is produced rather than created, and people have
changed from culture creators to culture consumers. In Baudrillard’s words, culture in postmodern
society is filled with simulacrum that references hyperreality.
Further reading on Simmel:
