Gemeinschaft
Gemeinschaft and GesellschaftUsually taken in tandem, these German terms generally refer to Ferdinand Tönnies's ‘community’ and ‘society’ couplet, although the latter is sometimes also translated as ‘association’ (see Tönnies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, 1887). According to Tönnies's thesis on European modernization, the passage from the former to the latter proceeds through a rationalizing process, involving a move from relationships based upon family and guild to those based on rationality and calculation. Gemeinschaft was the world of close, emotional, face-to-face ties, attachment to place, ascribed social status, and a homogeneous and regulated community. Gesellschaft has come to be linked with urbanism, industrial life, mobility, heterogeneity, and impersonality. Much of the debate about the concept of community has been structured in these terms (see C. Bell...
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