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Leroy Tung

10/30/2011

Theories of Environment

Professor John May

Summary of Georg SimmelThe Stranger

Georg Simmel is a German sociologist who was born on March 1, 1858 to a Jewish

family but then he was baptized as a Protestant when he was young. The essay The Stranger

was one of the social types that Georg Simmel wrote about and was included originally in one of

his works, Soziologie, 1908. This essay focus on defining what is a stranger within our complex

society, the strangers role within our society and how the society interacts with the strangers.

The Stranger, was originally named Exkurs uber den Fremden in German; Der Freme

has two meanings, the first meaning is a stranger, an individual that is not known by the others or

someone that is relatively remote to ones life; the second meaning is a foreigner, someone who

comes from a society that does not belong to a certain group of people. Both meanings share a

similarity that the stranger was originally not related to the group of the people who settles in a

destined location and the stranger is someone who just happens to encounter the group at the

settled location.

In the essay, Georg Simmel started off simply defining what a stranger is in sociological

form, the stranger in his eyes is a combination of both who wanders, that the individual is not ties

to every given point in space and thus it is the opposite of a person who permanently or

temporarily stays at a specific location. In this case, the stranger is not only defining the

relationship between individuals but is also becoming a symbol for the relationship between

individuals.

After he introduces the concept of a stranger, he then started to give the stranger a

definition: there are two types of wanderer but only one of them will be consider as the stranger

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to other; the one that does not belong to the group of strangers are the one who keeps wandering

without a stop at any given point, whereas the other kind of wanderer, who he calls the potential

wanderer, is the one who comes and stay at where he becomes a stranger to the others. Even

though the potential wanderer stays, he still is consider as a stranger to the potential group of

people who are strangers to the potential wanderer no matter what kind of attributes he brought

to the group, he is just an individual who happens to stays in the same location with the group, he

is not native to the group nor the location that the group is staying at. A great example of this can

be defined as the immigration situation nowadays in our society: an individual or a family can

decide to claim as a resident(s) to a certain country, years go by, these people can apply for

citizenship(s) for that country that he stays for a period of time, but all things concluded, they are

still strangers to that particular country since they do not initially belong to that country,

citizenship(s) and residency is just a formal declaration from the country stating that they have

the rights to stay, which tying this situation back to what Simmel defines strangers as potential

wanderers who come and stay.

He then further explains the relationship between human beings under the effect of

strangeness between one another, that the strangeness between people can actually part people

but also bring people closer. For example, the strangeness between a pair of good friend can

actually part them when one finds out there is something that one should know but does not

know, the strangeness will then be accentuate as one tries to find out more about the uncertainty;

on the other hand, the curiosity that caused by the strangeness can bring an individual closer to a

stranger by having that individual approaching the stranger and attempt to know more about the

stranger. Simmel states that this push-pull condition is a completely positive relation and a

specific form of interaction between human beings. He concludes this pattern by observing the

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relationship between the inhabitants of Sirius with us human beings, that they have no

relationship with us at all under the sociological form, which none of their inhabitants will come

and stay at our location. Yet, this push-pull condition states above is a key component for a

group to stay together thus making the stranger an element of the group itself.

True life example is then given after analyzing the relationship between stranger and

others. Simmel chose to explain the relationship with the social role of a trader in a town, who

brings something that cannotbe produced within the towns chain of production. If a person in

the town decides to go out and trade with others, it will make that person a stranger to others

community also. So, the social role of a trader in sociological form must be a stranger. Traders

can always find a role within any community since the people who belongs to a community lacks

mobility and there are only a limited amount of customers within a number of customers. Jewish

traders is the best life example in this case, since these Jewish traders are no owners of land,

not only they are not constrict by the lands, but they are also social free because they do not

belong to any communities; settlers on the other hand are bounded by their kinship, locality or

occupation.

Strangers do not belong to any communities neither do they are restrict to any groups,

they then have an objective point of view of seeing things that happens around them; and

because of their detachment and nonparticipation, they stand at a position that is remote yet

near, indifferent and involve at the same time. As mention in Simmels essay, certain Italian

cities make use of these attributes of strangers when it comes to judicial call because the small

communities are sometimes too interrelated to one another thus making them in need of someone

that is outside of the community to see things objectively.

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Being objective also make the stranger most trustable, that they often receives the most

surprising revelations and confidences, when an individual finds all others that are close to

him/her being subjective. Once again, strangers are free because they are not bound to anything

and they are always objective no matter where they travel and settle. Their judgments that they

make are not affected by anything else because they are free, they see things more generally and

more objectively and their actions are not confined by custom, piety, or precedent.

The strangers are so close yet so far, sometimes an individual may find a stranger closely

related to themselves because they may happen to share some kind of similarities in nationality,

ethnic background or occupation; they are also far away because these similarities are not only

between the individual and the stranger, but to the general public as well. As Simmel stated in

his essay, a similarity so widely shared could just as easily unite each person with every

possible other, since the similarities can be share among so many individuals, it makes it

impossible for an individual to eliminate the existence of the strangeness between one another.

This kind of strangeness is also inevitable to love relationship, which is one of the most

intimate relationships in this world besides kinship. It is the erotic relations at first for both

individuals to reject any kind of generalization between them; it seems like the person whom

one is in love with is irreplaceable and the uniqueness of the feelings for one another is so strong

that cannot be departed. Once this uniqueness fades, it will make the opposite individual

indifferent to the general mankind because the intrinsic value does not exist anymore, if the

one another individual was replaced, the same kind of the unique feelings will kick it regardless

of who that person is.

In conclusion of his theory, Simmel concludes that strangers are never unique group of

individuals but types. When strangers are mentioned, we always perceive them in the order of

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the country, the city, the race and so on, things that are universal but not characteristics of one

individual, which these universal norms can be share among with many human beings. A

stranger is still a unique form within the society because it has a special proportion and

reciprocal tension of vicinity and farness between the stranger and us.

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Works Cited

Simmel, Georg. "The Stranger." On Individuality and Social Forms; Selected Writings.Chicago:

University of Chicago, 1971. 143-50. Print.