Georg Simmel and relational sociology

Christian Papilloud

pp. 201-215

in: François Dépelteau (ed), The Palgrave handbook of relational sociology, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

Abstrakt

In his Soziologie (1908), Georg Simmel summarizes the main characteristics of his relational sociology, stating that sociology rests on three major assumptions. The first one is the assumption of relation. The two others are the singular character of the individual position—each individual has a proper place in the social world—and the role that actors play in public situations. Further, Simmel describes his sociological method, which can be summarized with the following formula: relativism is a relationism. Simmel's sociology is a relativistic one not in the common meaning attached to the term relativism (all is relative) but in the sense that social reality is made up of relations.

Cited authors

Simmel Georg