Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft

Gemeinschaft And Gesellschaft

Gemeinschaft ( ) und Gesellschaft (generally translated as "community" and "society") are sociological categories introduced by the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies for two normal types of human association. (A normal type, as coined by Tönnies, is a purely conceptual tool to be built up logically, whereas an ideal type, as coined by Max Weber, is a concept formed by accentuating main elements of a historic/social change.) Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft sparked a major revival of corporatist thinking including sparking the rise of Neo-medievalism, rise of support for guild socialism, and caused major changes in the field of sociology.

Tönnies' concepts of Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft were published first in 1887. Seven more German editions came out during his lifetime, the last in 1935. The second edition of 1912 turned out to be an unexpected but lasting success, and the antagonism of these two terms belonged to the general stock of concepts pre-1933 German intellectuals were quite familiar with, though the concepts were quite often misunderstood.