Simmel and Beyond

The Contemporary Relevance of Simmel’s Thought

Pedro Caetano, Maria Manuela Mendes, Pedro Caetano, Maria Manuela Mendes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781032000916
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000528817
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Bringing together the work of scholars from across Europe, this book shows how Simmel's categories can be used to explore contemporary issues and further shed light on trends characteristic of global modernity. Thematically organised around the major societal challenges currently faced by developed countries – those of making societies that are inclusive, reflexive and creative, sustainable, and democratic societies – it examines diverse phenomena, such as living in an increasingly multicultural societies, the social exclusion of vulnerable ethnic groups, the increasing concern with cyberbullying, the need to fight climate change, the rise of political populism, and the recruitment of youths from western countries to Islamic religious fundamentalism. Drawing on Simmel's sociological theory and expounding new approaches to research inspired by his work, this volume emphasises the conceptual pillars of Simmelian thought, meanings, processes, and forms. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and social theory with interests in the work of Simmel and its contemporary relevance.

Part I Inclusive societies

1 Building a bridge of justice simmel’s view to overcome otherness towards an inclusive society

Pedro Caetano and Maria Manuela Mendes

DOI: 10.4324/9781003182139-3

Introduction

Although it has never ceased to be a source of inspiration for many social scientists over the last century, the legacy of Georg Simmel’s thinking has recently been the object of an increased interest. This is evident in the profuse bibliography exploring possible approaches to the challenges of multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism stemming from his insight into the stranger (Alexander, 2004; Friese, 2004; Rundell, 2004; Karakayali, 2006; Horgan, 2012; Marotta, 2012; Stavo-Debauge, 2013). Similarly, Simmel’s relational thinking has been one of the important theoretical and methodological foundations of the emerging network analysis (Emirbayer, 1997; Mische, 2011; Erik, 2013).

Drawing on Simmel, these two lines of research, in spite of bringing to the fore again the concepts of proximity and social distance, dear to Simmel, may represent two divergent tendencies as far as the understanding of these concepts is concerned. Ethington (1997), in “Toward a Recovery of Georg Simmel’s Social Geometry”, explained them clearly when, in advocating a return to the structural and geometric perspective of social space in Simmel, he disapproved the hegemony that the symbolic perspective of social distance still exerted on these concepts, tracing them back to the works of Park (1924) and Bogardus (1925, 1926), two prominent representatives of the Chicago School of almost a century ago.

Nevertheless, following a re-evaluation of Simmel’s entire oeuvre, some recent scholars (Fuhse, 2009, 2012; Lee and Silver, 2012; Fitzi et al., 2018) have succeeded in drawing attention to the benefits of articulating symbolic forms of culture with the analysis of social structure in a coherent theoretical research programme. In the same vein, instead of the classic tripartite vision of the work of the German thinker, they strive to give a more balanced view for a continuity of Simmel’s thought throughout his intellectual career. Other scholars prefer to articulate Simmel’s thought around a midpoint of inflection. For instance, Bleicher (2007, p. 139) finds a sense of continuity in Simmel’s thinking, recognising a middle point in his intellectual trajectory, in between the Kantian and Goethenian poles.

Aiming to reinforce the articulation between these various inflections as well as these two trends of research, and seeking not only to retrace Simmel’s thought but also to take a step further in methodological terms, this chapter intends to articulate these two perspectives – the challenge of multiculturalism with the advantages of structural analysis – in an exploratory study which draws on a theme dear to the Simmelian reflection: to test “the general concept of socialisation by its conditions” (Simmel, 1910, p. 377)¹ in order to identify and locate the most significant properties of the different forms of interaction marked by relations of otherness.

For Simmel, in fact, “sociology may be regarded as the geometry of social forms” (Levine, 1971, p. xxv), so that “in all these modes of interaction, the emphasis is on good form” (Levine, 1971, p. xxvii). Recognising that the concept of forms of social interaction (Wechselwirkung) is Simmel’s guiding concept, this study attempts both to know the fairest forms of human interaction in a context of cultural diversity and to measure and map these same forms. Therefore, it is a question of exploring a renewed perspective on the relations that are established between the possible modes of sociation in a specific situation, and, in this way, to do justice to a Simmel’s view of the visualisation of social forms in a contextualised environment.

By doing so, we are also responding to an important methodological challenge posed by Simmel himself, for whom “there is only a difference in degree between the studies of man and the sciences of external nature” (Simmel, 1971, p. 33). The German sociologist aimed for “(...) a device to make and legitimize scientific discrimination between form and content in the treatment of empirical phenomena” (Simmel, 1971, p. 30), which would make it possible to achieve a “particular scientific point of view conceived by the notion of sociation” (Simmel, 1971, p. 32), a point of view in which “attention can be more focused rather upon tracing, analyzing and connecting its contents” (Simmel, 1971, p. 32).

However, as he acknowledged, “as far as I can see, there is no sure method of distilling this sociological significance out of our complex fact which is, after all, real only along with all its contents” (Simmel, 1971, p. 31). The two major obstacles to the study of the objective reality of sociation – the process by which we connect and become members of society – pointed out by Simmel are of two kinds: conceptual and analytical, on the one hand; and technical-instrumental, on the other. They prevent both the attainment of a proper classification and coordination of the contents of sociability, and the correct analysis of the meaning of its pure forms.

The conceptual and analytical obstacle corresponds to the difficulties in finding the most significant and pertinent criteria for decomposing empirical objects into categories of form and content, so that a “similar element be singled out of the complex phenomena so as to secure a cross-section, whereby dissimilar elements – in our case the contents – reciprocally paralely paralelyse each other, as it were” (Simmel, 1971, p. 29). The problem concerns, above all, the way in which modes of sociation are conceptualised and described, i.e., the way in which categories are extracted from the contents of the interaction. In this sense and paraphrasing Levine (1971, p. xxvii), the Simmelian method, privileging the inductive approach, ‘enhances discovery’, since it “does not force all phenomena together into a general scheme nor does it molest them with arbitrary or rigid categories; at the same time, it avoids mindless empiricism by providing a context of meanings for sets of observations”.

The technical-instrumental obstacle refers to the technical difficulties of geometric abstraction regarding the forms and the contents of interaction and their subsequent projection in a plane: “by bending and limiting each other mutually, all of them together project its image with increasing exactness upon the new plan of abstraction” (Simmel and Wolff, 1950, p. 200). However, these limitations were overcome from the last two decades of the 20th century onwards since Simmel’s vision became feasible due to the recent techniques of statistical analysis such as multiple correspondence analysis (MCA).

With this in mind and closely following the Simmelian method, this chapter explores the opportunity to geometrically illustrate the possible conditions of the forms of sociation of a hypothetical but actual situation set in a Portuguese public school where Roma/Gypsies students have to be integrated. This situation challenges the limits concerning the acceptance of the Other, taking into account that Roma/Gypsies are one of the most vulnerable social groups to discrimination and most distressed by prejudice in Portugal (Caetano and Mendes, 2014). Therefore, it is not surprising that the phenomenon of ‘white flight’ still persists in Portuguese schools (Araújo, 2014; Abrantes et al., 2016).

As part of a school environment survey about the fairest way to integrate Roma/Gypsies students, the question is put to non-Roma/non-Gypsies students from three public secondary schools in Greater Lisbon. In this way, this study seeks to contribute to the knowledge on the ideal (fairer) ways of managing otherness from the perspective of the students, as well as mapping and measuring them.

With the objective of explaining a methodological strategy that may provide an itinerary for analytical sociological research (Simmel, 1971, p. 32), this chapter is structured as follows: firstly, it is proposed, d’après Simmel, to address the constitutive properties of social forms, while defining the main characteristics of the Simmelian ‘implicit method’ (Rémy, 1995); secondly, the main tool of empirical data collection used in this research – the scenario-based questionnaire – is characterised, through the explanation of the techniques and the analytical procedures of categorisation and codification of forms and contents; thirdly, the results obtained are analysed in order to understand them in light of the Simmelian concepts of ‘a priori of sociation’ and ‘bridge’ (Simmel and Wolff, 1950); and finally, making use of the last work of Simmel, The Vision of Life, we add to the epistemological perspective an ethical view, indispensable for a practical and comprehensive view of justice.

A teleological approach to a relational geometry of forms

In Simmel, the forms of sociation are constituted as units of interaction from a diverse set of elements (contents) or other more elementary forms. These units are not static; they must be understood as processes, although there may be a centripetal tendency, in certain contexts, towards a strong normalisation and crystallisation of their contours, that is, of their individuating limits. Nevertheless, forms and contents can only be determined relationally: “no thing or event has a fixed, intrinsic meaning only emerges through interaction with other things or events” (Levine, 1971, p. xxxiii). Therefore, the association between forms, elements, and categories, by elective affinities (Rémy, 1995, p. 151) and oppositions, produces incessant variations and innovative qualitative contours, contributing to the qualitative differentiation of the social (Fitzi, 2017, p. 118). This engenders the field of a relational geometry of forms, where “a line has no intrinsic length; it can be measured only by comparing it with another line” (Levine, 1971, p. xxxiii). Similarly, and in this sense, “the properties of forms and the meanings of things are a function of the relative distances between individuals and other individuals or things” (Levine, 1971, p. xxxiv).

In this theoretical conception, the analysis of forms constitutes a research device with a methodological purpose (Pyyhtinen, 2008, p. 6) to determine the meanings of concepts, since the Simmelian method, as it was referred to, is mainly characterised by the inductive approach. The use of a priori, which at first glance can be regarded by sociologists with disbelief, is not inconsistent or incompatible with an empirical approach to phenomena. Since, the a priori of sociation refers to formal (categorical) conditions of sociation, i.e., their conditions of possibility, the forms can only be characterised as a posteriori. Simmel is quite clear in this respect when he asserts, regarding the spatiality of social forms and the nature of the nexus that can be established between forms and the a priori, that “it is one of the most frequent aberrations of the human causal impulse to take formal conditions, without which certain events cannot occur, for positive, productive results of those same things” (Simmel et al., 1997, p. 137).

Simmel’s originality consists in reconstructing these conditions of possibility of sociation, i.e., the a priori, as being rooted not only in objective social structures but above all, based on the experience of subjects as social and individual actors. In this way, Simmel privileges a ‘bottom-up’ approach rather than a ‘top-down’ one, seeking to legitimise the practical point of view of the individual as a member of society. It is with this purpose in mind that Simmel conceptualises the process of sociation as “the consciousness of associating or of being socialized” (Simmel, 1910, p. 378), or, in other words, “which signifies to the individual a foundation and a ‘possibility’ of belonging to a society” (Simmel, 1910, p. 389).

Moreover, the first a priori of sociation establishes that sociation is reflected, fr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• Part I Inclusive Societies
• Part II Innovative Societies
• Part III Reflective Societies
• Index