Georg Simmel, the Stranger and the Sociology of Knowledge

Abstract

The Simmelian stranger has been extensively studied and critiqued. This paper suggests that although this body of literature has contributed to a conceptual refinement of the category, its analysis confines itself to Simmel's seminal essay on the stranger. A broader and deeper analysis of Simmel's stranger is possible when we contextualise it within Simmel's broader intellectual project and link it to his conception of historical knowledge, his reflections on the third element, the cosmopolitan aesthetic sensibility and the genius. It is suggested that the affinities between the stranger and other ideas within his work allow us to ponder the contribution that Simmel can make to the debate on standpoint epistemologies.

Keywords:

• Simmel
• The Stranger
• Standpoint Epistemologies
• Historical Knowledge

Notes

1. The exemption here is the work of Karakayali (2006) in which he draws on Simmel's work on form and content, the philosophy of money, superordination and subordination and the philosophy of history in his account of the role of strangers in the social division of labour.

2. A classic study that understands the stranger as a multidimensional category is Margaret Mary Wood's (1934) The stranger: a study in social relationships. Bauman's work also demonstrates the multiple constructions of the stranger in terms of the pre-modern, modern and post-modern manifestation (see Marotta 2002).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Vince Marotta

Dr Vince Marotta is a Senior Lecturer in sociology and Co-Deputy Director of the Centre for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University. His recent publications include Intercultural Relations in a Global World, Common Ground Publishing LLC, Champaign, Illinois, 2011 (with Michele Lobo & Nicole Oke); Muslims in the West and the Challenges of Belonging, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Victoria, 2012 (with Fethi Mansouri) and ‘Home, mobility, and the encounter with otherness’, in Mansouri, Fethi and Lobo, Michele (eds), Migration, citizenship, and intercultural relations: looking through the lens of social inclusion, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2011, pp. 193–209