The poor class constitutes a synthesis of sociological more unique. It has a great homogeneity, so that its significance and location in the social body is concerned; but it lacks completely of it, if we take into consideration the individual circumstances of their elements.
The be poor, in principle, is the resulting condition of a function socializante as formalized as it may be, reminiscent of Simmel, to be a contributor or be an officer. But as in the case of the foreigner, the poor are located in front of the society as a whole, and it could also be said that outside of it: now, the poor, unlike the outsider, being excluded, is located also in a stand-off that is nothing but a particular form of being-within [p. 71]. The conclusion of Simmel with respect to the dual position (Doppelheit der Position) of the poor is categorical: it is one of the facts sociological elementary or primary, perhaps constitutive (ganz elementare soziologische Tatsache). So, the poor man does not cease to be one of the concrete expressions of a general law: “for the very fit who is the individual in the life of the group, as much as your private life is intertwined with the social life, it is always located opposite to easa colectivcidad, participating in its functioning, or taking the benefit of it, being well or ill treated by her, linked with her inwardly or only outwardly; in short: as separated from it, as the object with respect to dal subject that would be the social whole of which, however, it is a member: a part-subject, by the very fact of their actions and circumstances, which are the basis of their relationships” [p. 71].
The prologue that performs Jerónimo Molina Cano at the beginning of the book (pp. 15-16]
Brief review on Georg Simmel
Georg Simmel was a sociologist, a German psychologist and philosopher born in Berlin in 1858, in whose university, where he studied philosophy and history, phd (1881). Professor of philosophy and sociology at the universities of Berlin, Strasbourg and Heidelberg. Although his academic life was marked by the marginality of the positions he held in the university teaching, his wide-ranging oeuvre and the popularity and prestige among his students transcended the level of administrative status of the University. It is considered one of the fathers of modern sociology.
His thinking is not only influenced authors that maintained proximity, as Max Weber or Edmund Husserl’s, but in thinkers more young people such as Ernest Bloch, Karl Jaspers, Georg Lukacs, Martin Heidegger, Karl Mannheim, as well as in the majority of the members of the Frankfurt School, especially Adorno, Benjaminand Horkheimer.
He was co-founder, along with Max Weber and Ferdinand Toennies, the German Society of Sociology. Among his most outstanding works: Social Differentiation(1890), Problems of the philosophy of history (1892), Introduction to ethics (1893),Philosophy of money (1900),Sociology (1908), and fundamental Questions of sociology(1917).
Simmel develops a pragmatic philosophy and utilitarian knowledge. The knowledge, according to Simmel, is acquired in virtue of the benefits it brings us and not so much from psychological guidelines. Studies the behavior of individual in social groups and in the space of the modern city. Interactions and the formation of the social culture, imitation and fashion, the value of the money in the conformation of the relationships, etc
His concept of the alien or stranger, the one who ‘comes today and stays tomorrow’, has been considered by several authors, such as Everett Rogers, as a precursor of the research in intercultural communication.
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Source: infoamerica.org