Sociology: Inquiries into the Construction of Social Forms

Introduction

Georg Simmel’s Soziologie (1908), a volume of nearly 800 pages, brought together and reworked studies he had published since the 1890s. Its first chapter sets out the programme: sociology is not a science of everything social but of the forms of sociation – the patterns in which people interact – abstracted from contents such as interests and purposes. The chapters treat the number of members (the pair and the triad), superordination and subordination, conflict, secrecy and secret societies, the intersection of social circles, the poor, the self-preservation of groups, and space. Robert Park, who had attended Simmel’s lectures in Berlin, carried his ideas into the Chicago School.

Connections

Builds on

• The Philosophy of Money1900 · Georg Simmel

More works by Georg Simmel

• 1900The Philosophy of Money
• 1903The Metropolis and Mental Life