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    Fatema Khanom
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    Georg Simmel was a 19th-century German sociologist who studied the effects of urbanization. He postulated the concept of the "blasé urbanite" in his work "The Metropolis and Mental Life." Simmel argued that the immense sensory stimulation of cities led urbanites to develop a detached, indifferent attitude as a coping mechanism for overstimulation. Additionally, the money-driven transactions of urban economies reinforced this "blasé" attitude by reducing social interactions to impersonal exchanges without emotional significance. Simmel viewed the blasé attitude as urbanites' strategy for surviving the rapidly changing, overstimulating environment of the modern city.

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    Georg Simmel was a 19th-century German sociologist who studied the effects of urbanization. He postulated the concept of the "blasé urbanite" in his work "The Metropolis and Mental Life." Simmel argued that the immense sensory stimulation of cities led urbanites to develop a detached, indifferent attitude as a coping mechanism for overstimulation. Additionally, the money-driven transactions of urban economies reinforced this "blasé" attitude by reducing social interactions to impersonal exchanges without emotional significance. Simmel viewed the blasé attitude as urbanites' strategy for surviving the rapidly changing, overstimulating environment of the modern city.

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    141 views2 pages

    Georg Simmel

    Uploaded by

    Fatema Khanom
    Georg Simmel was a 19th-century German sociologist who studied the effects of urbanization. He postulated the concept of the "blasé urbanite" in his work "The Metropolis and Mental Life." Simmel argued that the immense sensory stimulation of cities led urbanites to develop a detached, indifferent attitude as a coping mechanism for overstimulation. Additionally, the money-driven transactions of urban economies reinforced this "blasé" attitude by reducing social interactions to impersonal exchanges without emotional significance. Simmel viewed the blasé attitude as urbanites' strategy for surviving the rapidly changing, overstimulating environment of the modern city.

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    Georg Simmel was a 19th-century German sociologist.

    Throughout his career in sociology,


    Simmel penned more than 200 academic and non-scholarly articles and fifteen books. Simmel,
    being brought up near a growingly urban city now Berlin, was able to closely observe the social
    paradigm triggered by the industrial revolution, which contributed to his later work.

    Simmel was concerned with the impact of urbanism on the way of life and its effect on the
    relationships in urban societies. He postulated the concept of blasé urbanites in his classic essay
    “The Metropolis and Mental Life.” Here, Simmel pointed out the differences that set the blasé
    urbanites apart from people in rural societies: the intensification of nervous stimuli and the
    money economy.

    From a micro-sociological perspective, Simmel argued that there is a gap in the intensity of
    stimuli received between urbanites and people from rural areas. Cities are concentrated with
    people, infrastructure, and numerous objects; thus, there is a constant influx of visual, auditory,
    and other sensory stimuli from the external world. The intensity of stimuli experienced by
    urbanites is insurmountable, and it is almost impossible for them to absorb, process, and respond
    to every event around them. Thus, to protect themselves from overstimulation, urbanites adopted
    an intellectualized approach to life-the blasé attitude.

    The money economy reinforces the physiological cause of the blasé attitude. Money and
    commodities are being exchanged relentlessly in urban societies, so most social interactions
    occur during the trade. However, people do not need to have emotional relationships to trade in a
    free market. Furthermore, money mediates all qualitative and individualistic features into
    quantitative terms. Hence, social relationships tend to have a transactional feature, where blasé
    urbanites do not attach any emotional significance to the individuals they interact with. 

    The blasé urbanites can be characterized by detachment, indifference, and calculative exactness.
    Blasé urbanites display apathy and lack of compassion for others in society. They view people
    and objects around them as homogeneous crowds without any qualitative distinction so they
    eventually ignore most of these remotely-relevant things. Blasé urbanites are also rational. Since
    engaging with every person they encounter requires substantial energy and time, urbanites
    condition themselves to carry about their own business without emotional regard for the external
    world.

    Simmel viewed the blasé attitude as a mechanism to cope with the rapidly changing environment
    that is compressed and contrasting at the same time. This type of mental conditioning serves as a
    survival strategy against the overstimulation of an urban city that has a myriad of people doing
    diverse activities at a given time.

    Simmel’s idea of blasé urbanites resonates with the ideas of other renowned sociologists like
    Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim. Marx’s idea on how capitalism led to the alienation of workers
    and Durkheim’s organic solidarity can relate to Simmel’s idea of blasé urbanite that elucidates
    how urbanization diluted the compassion and concern of urbanites for others in society.

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