"Excursus on the stranger" in the context of simmel's socio-logy of space¹

Abstract

"Excursus on the Stranger" by Georg Simmel is a popular classical sociological text, whereas the stranger as a social type is one of the best known concepts of classical sociology. This paper claims that common sociological interpretations of this concept greatly ignore the context of Simmel's text and his thoughts, thus missing the essence of his idea. This is due to the fact that Simmel wrote about the stranger in the context of his sociology of space, which is a relatively unknown feature of his thought. We discuss significant features of Simmel's sociology of space, and present a reconceptualization of the stranger within this context.