According to the dichotomy, social ties can be categorized, on one hand, as belonging to personal
social interactions, and the roles, values, and beliefs based on such interactions (
Gemeinschaft, German, commonly translated as "
community"), or on the other hand as belonging to indirect interactions, impersonal roles, formal values, and beliefs based on such interactions (
Gesellschaft, German, commonly translated as
society as in association, corporation, including company, modern
state and academia). The
Gemeinschaft–Gesellschaft dichotomy was proposed by Tönnies as a purely conceptual tool rather than as an
ideal type in the way it was used by
Max Weber to accentuate the key elements of a historical social change. Tönnies was a
Thomas Hobbes scholarhe edited the standard modern editions of Hobbes's
The Elements of Law and
Leviathan. It was his study of Hobbes that encouraged Tönnies to devote himself wholly to the
philosophy of history and the
philosophy of law. And it has been argued that he derived both categories from Hobbes's concepts of "concord" and "union". The second edition, published in 1912, of the work in which Tönnies further promoted the concepts turned out to be an unexpected but lasting success after the first edition was published in 1887 with the subtitle "Treatise on Communism and Socialism as Empirical Patterns of Culture". Seven more German editions followed, the last in 1935, and it became part of the general stock of ideas with which pre-1933 German intellectuals were quite familiar. The book sparked a revival of
corporatist thinking, including the rise of
neo-medievalism, the rise of support for
guild socialism, and caused major changes in the field of sociology. The distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft was a large part of the discussion and debate about what constitutes community, among heavily influenced social theorists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century such as
Georg Simmel,
Émile Durkheim and
Max Weber. The concepts
Gemeinschaft and
Gesellschaft were also used by Max Weber in
Economy and Society, which was first published in 1921. Weber wrote in direct response to Tönnies, and argued that
Gemeinschaft is rooted in a "subjective feeling" that may be "affectual or traditional".
Gesellschaft-based relationships, according to Weber, are rooted in "rational agreement by mutual consent", the best example of which is a commercial contract. To emphasize the fluidity and amorphousness of the relationship between
Gemeinschaft and
Gesellschaft, Weber modified the terms in German to
Vergemeinschaftung, and
Vergesellschaftung, which are the
gerund forms of the German words. Weber's distinction between
Gemeinschaft and
Gesellschaft is highlighted in the essay "Classes, Stände, Parties", which is the basis for Weber's
three-component theory of stratification. Having put forward his conception of the
Gemeinschaft–
Gesellschaft dichotomy, Tönnies was drawn into a sharp polemic with
Émile Durkheim. In a review of Tönnies's book in 1889, Durkheim interpreted
Gemeinschaft as having
mechanical solidarity, and
Gesellschaft as having
organic solidarity, reproaching Tönnies for considering the second type of social organisation artificial and not expanding on the transition from the one type to the other. Durkheim stated that Tönnies's approach to understanding
Gesellschaft was "completely ideological" but that "one cannot fail to recognize in this book truly forceful thinking and an uncommon power of organization." In
World War I propaganda self-sacrificing (virtuous) women were portrayed as the heart of the
Gemeinschaft by providing the model for the dutiful wartime home maker supporting the war effort by sending their men (husbands and sons) to serve in the war, and maintaining the
home in their absence. (In the wartime propaganda this "virtuous woman" was an ideal contrasted to less desirable archetypes that was presented as immoral or unethical women). ==Globalization==