Complete the account of Tönnies’s pair of concepts.
Tönnies contrasted ______, where people are bound by kinship, place and shared understanding and the relationship is an end in itself, with ______, where they are bound by contract and calculation and the relationship is a ______. Behind the second lies the deliberate, instrumental form of willing he called ______.
Word bank: Gemeinschaft · Gesellschaft · means · Kürwille · Wesenwille · anomie
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- The first term is usually translated as community and the second as association.
- One kind of willing is rooted in habit and disposition; the other chooses.
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Tönnies contrasted Gemeinschaft, where people are bound by kinship, place and shared understanding and the relationship is an end in itself, with Gesellschaft, where they are bound by contract and calculation and the relationship is a means. Behind the second lies the deliberate, instrumental form of willing he called Kürwille.
The pair is a conceptual opposition rather than a historical claim, and Tönnies insisted both forms are present in every society. It is read as a story of loss because his contemporaries wanted one, and because the German word for community carried a warmth the sociological analysis never quite justified.
Practise The European Consolidation: Durkheim, Weber and Tönnies
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