Strangers and Strangership

Abstract

Over a century ago, German sociologist Georg Simmel observed that the figure of the stranger is characterised by a peculiar mixture of physical proximity and social distance. In both social science and popular media, the stranger tends to be treated as equivalent to the immigrant or the unknown Other. This paper takes some of the ideas that the stranger concept generates and pushes them outwards by using Simmel's observation as a springboard to develop the relational concept of strangership. Where the study of strangers focuses on the specific traits of individuals and groups, the concept of strangership focuses instead on the characteristics of relationships between strangers. Three conditions for the emergence and/or presence of strangership are described. In the spirit of contemporary theoretical work that seeks to connect the special position of the stranger to inequality, the paper concludes by proposing the concept of strangership as a way to foreground the relational character of life lived amongst strangers in ways that can thicken how we think about both solidarity and inequality.

Keywords:

• Simmel
• Social Relationships
• Strangership
• Stranger
• Inequality
• Solidarity

Acknowledgements

A draft of this paper was presented at the 2010 World Congress of Sociology in Göteborg, Sweden. Thanks to Elisa Reis for the opportunity to present and to members of RC16 for their comments there. Special thanks to Peter Mallory for his insightful comments on an earlier draft and to students in his Theories of Friendship seminar for their input. Thoughtful feedback from the editor was especially useful. Thanks also go to Fuyuki Kurasawa for the many conversations that helped me to develop and fine-tune the concept of strangership. I also wish to acknowledge financial support from the Acadia University Research Fund.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mervyn Horgan

Mervyn Horgan is an assistant professor of sociology and a member of the faculty in the Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought at Acadia University. His research on strangership is part of a broader interest in the role of symbolic boundaries in the production and sustenance of difference, inequality and solidarity. He is currently conducting research on incivilities in everyday life, vernacular cosmopolitanisms, the ethics of indifference and confluences between sociology and contemporary art (with Saara Liinamaa)