George Simmel

Georg Simmel, a sociologist and a philosopher born in 1858 in Germany, is best known as a microsociologist who played a significant role in the development of small-group research, symbolic interactionism and exchenge theory. There are four basic levels of concern in Simmel’s work. First are his assumptions about the psychological workings of social life. Second is his interest in the sociological workings of interpersonal relationships. Third is his work on the structure of and changes in the social and cultural “spirit” of his times. He also adopted the principle of emergence, which is the idea that higher levels emerge from the lower levels. Finally, he dealt with his views in the nature and inevitable fate of humanity. His most microscopic work dealt with forms and the interaction that takes place with different types of people. Simmel's basic approach can be described as "methodological relationism," because he operates on the principle that everything interacts in some way with everything else. His essay on fashion, for example, notes that fashion is a form of social relationship that allows those who wish to conform to do so while also providing the norm from which individualistic people can deviate. Within the fashion process, people take on a variety of social roles that play off the decisions and actions of others. On a more general level, people are influenced by both objective culture (the things that people produce: culture, science..) and individual culture (the capacity of individuals to produce, absorb, and control elements of objective culture). Simmel believed that people possess creative capacities (more-life) that enable them to produce objective culture that transcends them. But objective culture (more-than-life) comes to stand in irreconcilable opposition to the creative forces that have produced it in the first place Simmel is best known in contemporary sociology for his contributions to the understanding of