“The Stranger” By Georg Simmel Report Examples

In many respects, Georg Simmel was a discoverer of new roads in sociology for those looking for a way to the fragmented territory of modern life. Simmel in his work “The Stranger” shows that a modern city creates new forms of interaction and new people.
The intensity of life is so great that people cannot cope with it with measures they can take from the nature. Then they create – electronic devices, cars, build roads and do many other things to keep up with the pace of modern life. The USA is not an exception. Even more – it is an example of how the country is full united with roads, highways and other means of connection, such as railways, subways and in the nearest future – with the futuristic Hyperloop – a tremendous project of Elon Musk. But let`s return to the conventional roads and ideas discussed by Georg Simmel in his article “The Stranger”.
Modern Americans have to keep distance between them and the surrounding physical and social environment. For this purpose they choose cars as means of fast transportation. Absolute majority of Americans choose this way of life. However, there are still those who seem to be “strangers” in the modern American society.
In everyday language, as a rule, the meaning of the word “stranger” is associated with negative connotations. It refers to the concept of "exclusion" – lack of participation or a complete shutdown from any kind of social institutions – economic, political, cultural, family, institutions, neighborhood community, religious etc. However, in the US context, strangers often mean those who does not share ideas of transportation which is carried out by means of fast-speed roads. Such American “strangers” choose less conventional nowadays means of transportation – their legs and bicycles, they prefer walking to driving for many reasons.
Not using car-driven roads for transportation seems to be a deviation from a "normal" behavior of vast majority of people living in the USA. A sociological concept of a “stranger”, according to Simmel, has at its basis a philosophical category of "otherness" and the concept of the "other". Simmel talks about a "stranger" as someone who combines the proximity and distance in related groups. People refusing to use roads are those strangers, those “others” who differ from the vast majority of people and do not belong to the large group of Americans. In some aspects, they do not share the recent past of the American nation, which actively started building roads at the beginning of the XX century.
Still, thanks to the presence of strangers, American society today is able to determine what is normal for it and what is not, it can decide where to go further. Those who do not use roads in the USA act as arbitrators, who can judge members of American society which cannot imagine its life without modern means of transportation. Hence, “strangers” within an American society tend to curb further spread of roads to vast lands of the USA which is rather beneficial for the environment since this brings less harm to it.