Community and Society

Author: (German)/
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1999-02-01
Features: This book's contribution to sociology mainly lies in discovering and profoundly elaborating on two types of social integration in human group life. Using the concept of dichotomy, it abstractly generalizes these two types from the reality of human integration: Community and Society. T?nnies believed that the type of community is primarily realized in groups based on natural foundations (families, clans), and it can also be realized in small, historically formed associations (villages, cities) and in intellectual associations (friendship, master-apprentice relationships, etc.). He argued that community is built on the instinctive preference of the relevant individuals, the adaptive conformity governed by habits, or the shared memory related to ideas. As basic forms of community, such as bloodline communities, geographical communities, and religious communities, they are not merely the sum of their individual parts but rather an organically integrated whole. "Community is a lasting and genuine form of common life," it is "a perfect unity of the original or natural state of human will." In the history of human development, the type of community integration preceded the purposefully established "society" type of human integration.