The Lecture Contains: Social Life in a City. An Urbanite's Life. References. Objectives_template

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1 The Lecture Contains: Social Life in a City An Urbanite's Life References file:///d /NPTL%20WORK/Dr.%20Anindita%20Chakrabarti/UrbanSociology/lecture13/13_1.htm [5/31/ :21:33 AM]

2 Unlike the rural setting where the rhythm of life and sensory imagery flow more slowly, habitually and evenly, the city bombards the individual with an enormous kaleidoscope of sights, sounds and smells. To avoid being overwhelmed by such stimulation, the individual learns to discriminate carefully. This type of response is due to over-stimulation there is intensification of emotional life due to the swift and continuous shift of external and internal stimuli. The pace and multiplicity of economic, occupational and social life create the need for developing a protective organ. But what is this protection for? It is for protecting oneself against the fluctuations and discontinuities of the external milieu. This attitude produces an incapacity to react to a new stimulation with the required enthusiasm and it is most noticeable among the children of large cities. Money, as discussed earlier, also lends support to this blasé attitude. Since money homogenizes dissimilar things it gives the feeling that there is no reason why a particular thing should be preferred over another. Money erases all qualitative distinctions between manifold things and expresses all qualitative distinction as distinction of how much? Money, says Simmel, is the ultimate leveller. The blasé attitude also extends to what Simmel says the privilege of suspicion which makes us oblivious of our neighbours. It is not only indifference but also aversion. In this context the aversion-indifference attitude gives a sense of freedom to the individual. The freedom that the metropolitan human being enjoys is marked by bodily closeness and mental distance. It is a Lonely Crowd where freedom is not necessarily a pleasant experience. One needs to overcome that sense of alienation to feel at home. file:///d /NPTL%20WORK/Dr.%20Anindita%20Chakrabarti/UrbanSociology/lecture13/13_2.htm [5/31/ :21:34 AM]

3 Apart from rational organization of time Simmel saw the rationality of the city in its advanced economic division of labour. Money again had an important role since advanced division of labour requires a universal means of exchange. Money performs this critical function. That the cities are the most advanced seat of division of labour is reflected in the following example. It is only in the cities that one finds that remunerative occupation such as quatorzième can exist. These are people whose profession is to get dressed around dinner time and attend dinner if the number of guests at a party happens to be thirteen. These people belong to high society and old aristocracy. Because of its large size, cities make it possible to have highly diversified plurality of achievements. Whereas the struggle for customer leads to specialization, at the same time new and unique needs arise. Another feature of the urbanite s life is the complete absence of nature. Through human history human beings have been in struggle with nature, which in the context of the city has been transformed into a conflict with human beings. In the city the gains that have to be fought for are granted not by nature but by man. The more separated human beings are from nature, the more dependent they are on each other. file:///d /NPTL%20WORK/Dr.%20Anindita%20Chakrabarti/UrbanSociology/lecture13/13_3.htm [5/31/ :21:34 AM]

4 In this context the problem is that of retaining individuality and making oneself noticeable. Where each individual has the freedom to ignore the other, it is not clear how they would gain self-esteem without gaining attention from others. Others perception of ourselves is important in building one s self-image but it is now all the more so. The overall pattern of these reflections of other people s opinions becomes a dominant aspect or our own identities. 2 The question that Simmel poses is if one s self-conception/self-esteem is so much dependent on other s opinion, what happens in a blasé world? One continually struggles to maintain one s individuality. Not only one s own individuality; it is in this modern world that we attach uniqueness towards others to all our relations. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had rendered the gemeinschaft bond meaningless and had promoted equality and liberty but now in the context of endless freedom and alienation the modern mind is suffering from the absence of everyday, community-based interactions and certainties of the gemeinschaft world. The whole process is a struggle and our task, says Simmel, is not to condone or complain but to understand. 2 One can understand this point in light of Charles Cooley s theory of the looking-glass self. file:///d /NPTL%20WORK/Dr.%20Anindita%20Chakrabarti/UrbanSociology/lecture13/13_4.htm [5/31/ :21:35 AM]

5 References Simmel, Georg The Metropolis and Mental Life. In The Sociology of Georg Simmel. Kurt H. Wolff (ed.). London: The Free Press. Pp file:///d /NPTL%20WORK/Dr.%20Anindita%20Chakrabarti/UrbanSociology/lecture13/13_5.htm [5/31/ :21:35 AM]