Georg Simmel's highly original take on the newly revived field of sociology succeeded in making the field far more sophisticated than it had been beforehand. He took insights from dialectical thought and Kantian epistemology to develop a "form sociology" method that remains implicit in the field a century later. Forms include such patterns of interaction as inequality, secrecy, membership in multiple groups, organization size, and coalition formation. While today texts and professional societies are organized around "contents" rather than "forms," a fresh reading of Simmel's chapters on forms suggests original avenues of inquiry into each of the contents--family, business, religion, politics, labor relations, leisure.

This book shows that a dialectical conceptual model underpins Georg Simmel's writings. The book provides key examples of social forms – including fashion, the secret and money – as exemplifications of this method. The volume concludes with a reassessment of Simmel's relevance today.

These skillfully written essays are based on the Georg Simmel Lectures delivered by Neil J. Smelser at Humboldt University in Berlin in the spring of 1995. A distillation of Smelser's reflections after nearly four decades of research, teaching, and thought in the field of sociology, the essays identify, as he says in the first chapter, ". . . some central problematics—those generic, recurrent, never resolved and never completely resolvable issues—that shape the work of the sociologist." Each chapter considers a different level of sociological analysis: micro (the person and personal interaction), meso (groups, organizations, movements), macro (societies), and global (multi-societal). Within this framework, Smelser covers a variety of topics, including the place of the rational and the nonrational in social action and in social science theory; the changing character of group attachments in post-industrial society; the eclipse of social class; and the decline of the nation-state as a focus of solidarity. The clarity of Smelser's writing makes this a book that will be welcomed throughout the field of social science as well as by anyone wishing to understand sociology's essential characteristics and problems.

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Outlines the cultural and historical context in which Simmel worked; reviews Simmel's most important writings; and examines his legacy to sociology by illuminating his links with Weber's theories and his relationship with Marxism.