From Simmel to Relational Sociology 1. Introduction - OSF

This manuscript will be part of the forthcoming The Handbook of Classical Sociological Theory, edited by Seth Abrutyn and Omar Lizardo.

From Simmel to Relational Sociology

Sophie Mützel and Lisa KressinAbstract Georg Simmel (1858-1918), who is widely regarded as one of theclassics and intellectual grandfathers of sociology, has written on a varietyof topics from several disciplinary perspectives. Yet despite the breadth andrichness of his work, current sociology typically focuses only on individualdimensions. On the one hand, Simmel’s work is seen as foundational to aformal sociology, which is at the core of social network analysis. On theother hand, Simmel’s works on cultural issues yield astute analyses ofmodernity, which is why they are classics in the sociology of culture.However, such one-dimensional interpretations of Simmel’s work appearlimited and in turn do not sufficiently capture his influence on the field ofsociology. This chapter claims that the separated readings of the “twoSimmels” need to be brought together to make full analytical use ofSimmel’s most important heuristic distinction: form and content. Moreover,we will show that relational sociology of the past four decades has moved inthat direction by taking the interrelation of structure and meaning seriously.Keywords Simmel, Form, Content, Social Network Analysis, Relational Sociology

1. Introduction

Probably unique among his sociological contemporaries,Simmel explored time and time again the world of everydaysocial interactions and their cultural manifestations. [...] Notonly does Simmel claim that sociology should study the'microscopic-molecular' processes within human interactionand hence justifiably study micro-sociology as well as thestudy of major social structures and formations, but he alsoasserts that such an investigation will produce a 'deeper andmore accurate' understanding of society and, we might addhere, equally of cultural formations.

Frisby & Featherstone, 2006, p. 9Georg Simmel (1858-1918), who is widely regarded as one of the classicsand intellectual grandfathers of sociology, has written on a variety of topicsfrom several disciplinary perspectives. Yet despite the breadth and richnessof his work, current sociology typically focuses only on individualdimensions. On the one hand, Simmel’s work is seen as foundational to aformal sociology, which is at the core of social network analysis (SNA). Onthe other hand, Simmel’s works on a wide range of cultural issues, includinge.g. his treatise on money (Simmel, 2004) or on the modern city (Simmel,1950d), yield astute analyses of modernity, which is why they are classics in

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the sociology of culture. However, such one-dimensional interpretations ofSimmel’s work appear limited and in turn do not sufficiently capture hisinfluence on the field of sociology (e.g. Beer, 2019; Dahme & Rammstedt,1995; Frisby, 2011; Goetschel & Silver, 2019; Goodstein, 2017; Häußling,2010; Kaern, Phillips, & Cohen, 1990; Mozetic, 2017; Pyyhtinen, 2018).Building on these insights, this chapter argues that the two-stranded readingof Simmel of contemporary and past sociology leads to a one-dimensionaluse of his work. Moreover, we claim that the separated readings of the “twoSimmels” need to be brought together to make full analytical use ofSimmel’s most important heuristic distinction: form and content. Thisdistinction needs to be treated as a duality instead of a contradiction (e.g.Lizardo, 2019). We will show that relational sociology of the past fourdecades has moved in that direction by taking the interrelation of structureand meaning seriously. We argue that further use of Simmel’s duality ofform and content will yield additional analytical depths and insights. Relational sociology, as an analytical approach, offers an alternative tosubstantialist works of a sociology that understands the social mostly interms of its “fixed entities with variable attributes” (Abbott, 1988;Emirbayer, 1997, p. 286). It also tries to emancipate itself from its analyticroots in structural analysis. Instead of single interactions, the focus lies onthe dynamic relations between social entities that shape social formations.At the same time, relational sociology does not aim for deterministic macro-analysis; from a relational perspective, structure emerges from “unfolding,ongoing processes” (Emirbayer, 1997, p. 289), which result from anindividual’s capacity for agency and involvement in the construction ofmeaning. To be sure, relational sociology unites basic concepts ofunderstanding the social while drawing on different sociological traditions(e.g. Crossley, 2015; Dépelteau, 2015; Emirbayer, 1997; Mische, 2011). In this chapter, we will mainly focus on Simmel’s enduring influence on theschool of relational sociology, which combines social network and culturalanalysis. The development of this specific field of relational sociology isdriven by empirical studies as well as an elaborated toolkit of methods,which are based in network and often text analysis (e.g. Mische, 2011;Mützel, 2009; Pachucki & Breiger, 2010). In addition to being deeplyembedded in the same relational thinking that drives Simmel’sunderstanding of society and social life, adding elements of meaning to aformerly culture-free, structural network analysis (White, 1992), relationalsociology implicitly draws on the main distinction made by Simmel: formand content. An interest in the combination of both form and content haspushed the development of a relational sociology rooted in network analysissince the 1990s. In that sense, Simmel is not only a classic of relational

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thinking in his works on form but also in his work on the relations ofcontent, that is meaning. This chapter offers a genealogy of concepts, which have moved fromSimmel to formal to relational sociology via a path of social networkanalysis as well as a path of cultural analysis. The focus is in particular onU.S. and European sociology. Thus, this chapter contributes to ongoingdiscussions on the interrelation of structure and meaning in relationalsociology and underscores Simmel’s foundational thinking on the duality ofform and content.

2. Simmel’s Sociology

[S]ociety is for Simmel only a result of the relations amongindividuals and groups, something that has to be produced andconnected rather than always being there (Pyyhtinen, 2018,p. 24).

Georg Simmel, born in 1858 in Berlin, is known as one of the founders ofsociology: He fundamentally contributed to the definition of sociology’sjurisdiction as a discipline and was one of the founders and board membersof the German Sociological Association in 1909.1 Yet despite his ideationaland institutional importance for German sociology, he was never granted afull and permanent professorship in sociology. Instead, he died as fullprofessor in philosophy in Strasbourg in 1918 (Wolff, 1950, xviii). Inacademic circles, Simmel was well known as a Berlin intellectual andlecturer. At the same time, he was seen as an eclectic academic, prolificallywriting on a variety of issues from different backgrounds, includingsociology, philosophy, psychology, and history. This, in turn, made itdifficult for Simmel to obtain a full professorship in one discipline.Additionally, Simmel was facing the anti-Semitic resentments of his time(Jung, 2016).Simmel understood science as empirical and non-normative. Scientificknowledge was not to be discovered with a practical or normative goal inmind, but as an end in itself (Dahme, 1995). Defining sociology as a sciencein that sense, while also writing on “personal ‘attitudes towards the world inthe language of a view of life’” (Dahme, 1995, p. 225, own translation)however meant a constant crossing of disciplinary boundaries for Simmel.By his own definitions, he was a sociologist and philosopher.2

1 After only three years of membership, Simmel and colleagues, such as MaxWeber and Werner Sombart, left the association again due to opposing opinions onthe question of Werturteilsfreiheit (Nedelmann, 2007, p. 75).2 Dahme elaborates on Simmel’s differentiation between science and philosophy,and the blurring of this boundary over the years of his writing. While Simmel’sdefinition of formal sociology followed a rather positivistic notion of science, he

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Contrary to his standing in German academia, in the U.S. Simmel was “inthe unusual position of being the only European scholar who has had apalpable influence on sociology […] throughout the course of the 20thcentury” (Levine, Carter, & Miller Gorman, 1976, p. 813). Translated fromGerman and published as early as 1893 in journals such as The Annals ofthe American Academy of Political and Social Science and The AmericanJournal of Sociology, Simmel’s works on “The Problem of Sociology”(Simmel, 1909), “The Persistence of Social Groups” (Simmel, 1898), “TheChapter of the Philosophy of Value” (Simmel, 1900), “The Number ofMembers as Determining the Sociological Form of the Group” (Simmel,1902a, 1902b), or “The Sociology of Conflict” (Simmel, 1904a, 1904b,1904c) were accessible in English. Thus, Simmel was very visible andinfluential in early U.S. Sociology (Small, 1902). He also had a “prominentposition” (Wolff, 1950, xxiv) in Park’s and Burgess’ (1922) textbook withseveral contributions, including “The Sociological Significance of the‘Stranger’”, “Sociology of the Senses: Visual Interaction”, and “TheMetropolis and Mental Life”. In the 1950s, Simmel was re-translated and re-discovered in U.S. Sociology by the second generation of Chicago Schoolmembers, structural sociologists and their intellectual kin. Nevertheless,translations into English of two of his main monographs were publishedonly recently, i.e. the complete work of “Sociology” (Simmel, 1908/2009)and Lebensanschauung “The View of Life” (Simmel, 1922/2010). One of the most important concepts of Simmel’s work and a core analyticalprinciple for sociology is the notion of Wechselwirkung, variously translatedas “reciprocity”, “reciprocal orientation”, “reciprocal effect”, “reciprocalinteraction”, or “interaction”. Simmel starts with an empirical observation:whatever an individual or a larger collective does, has effects on whatanother individual or a larger collective does. Such interactions show a“global regulative principle” (Simmel, 1890/2001, p. 13); they exist ingeneral and cannot be avoided. The effects of interactions come in differentforms. Such focus on interactions leads to study relations between social actors,rather than just individual actors. The concept of Wechselwirkung also“stands for his rejection of reification and mystification of supraindividualsocial units and his commitment to process analysis […] What weexperience as if it were a social unity, is in reality composed of permanentlyongoing processes” (Nedelmann, 2007, p. 68). Society is thus not a fixed

later described science as one of many forms of culture (Dahme, 1995, p. 226),always in need to legitimize its claims. In his later work, he even introduced a“philosophical sociology” next to the formal, clearly scientific one. While it isoften argued that during his life Simmel made a clear turn from sociology to themetaphysics of his last book “The view of life”, Dahme argues, this can only beunderstood as a mere shift of perspective (Dahme, 1995, p. 228).

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unit. Rather interactions between individuals lead to a dynamic and gradualprocess of sociation, or Vergesellschaftung. In that sense, any social groupis an event, a Geschehen (Simmel, 2017), because “sociation continuouslyemerges and ceases and emerges again” (Simmel 1950a, p. 10). In developing this relational and processual notion of Wechselwirkung,Simmel differentiates between form and content of interaction: While aform of interaction is analytically understood as abstracted from specificsocial situations in space and time (e.g. hierarchy, competition, orfriendship), when observed empirically, form never exists without content(e.g. “impulse, interest, purpose, predisposition, psychological state, andincitement”) (Simmel, 1908/2009, p. 23). Simmel argues that for “a specialscience of society as such” the forms of interaction need to be onlyanalytically separated from their contents (Simmel, 1909, p. 298). Socialforms can appear in different contexts, taking on different contents whileretaining their form. This particular understanding of sociology’s task haspropelled sociology forward: on the one hand, it led to further insights intothe analysis of social structure using formal, mathematical methods. It alsosparked further developments of Simmel’s ideas in urban studies of the so-called Chicago School. This distinction and the interrelation between formand content are thus not only theoretically significant, but equally importantfor categorizing Simmel as either a formal sociologist or as a scholar ofcultural content, a dualism which should be turned into a duality, i.e. aninterrelation. Simmel on FormIn his endeavor to legitimize sociology’s existence and to define a uniqueresearch subject for the emerging discipline, Simmel uses his analyticalcategories of form and content to define sociology’s position in relation toother social sciences. Simmel develops a sociology that is explicitly not an“encyclopedic sociology” (Parsons, 1998, p. 32; Sorokin, 1964, p. 499), butrather focuses on the study of interactions and their sociation as a newanalytical perspective. He calls this study of social forms pure or formalsociology. In contrast to other formal sociologists who like von Wiese haveclassified 650 social forms (Sorokin, 1964, p. 495), Simmel’s formalperspective is not interested in “some classification of social forms” per seor of static character but focusses on “the emergence and movement ofrelations and their forms” (Pyyhtinen, 2018, p. 36). In his own works,Simmel studies e.g. the forms of groups (Simmel, 1898, 1902a, 1955/1964),conflict (Simmel, 1904a, 1904b, 1904c, 1908/2009), “superordination andsubordination” (Simmel, 1896, 1950d) and sociability (Simmel & Hughes,1949). Simmel uses the term “form” as institutional patterning, asinteractional processes, as ways of being sociable, and as forms ofexperiencing (Wanderer, 1987, p. 22). He also looks at even more “basic

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structural elements” (Hollstein, 2001) such as space, spatial distance, andanticipated duration (Simmel, 1908/2009). Because of a focus oninteractions as foundational for social forms, Simmel’s works have greatlyinfluenced understanding the social in relational, network analytic terms. Simmel on ContentBesides his contributions to the program of a formal sociology and itsdefining concepts, Simmel has also paid great attention to the characteristicsof modernity, especially to modern life in the city. In this sense, his majorworks on fashion (Simmel, 1957), money (Simmel, 2004), and urban life(Simmel, 1950d) share a cultural-philosophical perspective when focusingon the time and place specific contents of general social forms (e.g. Frisby& Featherstone, 2006; Mozetic, 2017). For Simmel, to understandmodernity meant studying different modes of life, e.g. within the conditionsof the metropolis or the economy of money. To do so also included seeingand experiencing the place under study, hence a “microscopic view” on thesubjects and objects of study. An important distinction within his writings on culture is the distinctionbetween subjective and objective culture (Frisby & Featherstone, 2006,p. 5):

Culture is, as it were, formed intentional subjectivity thatemerges out of human life and its interactions and is createdby human beings as objectified contents or entities inlanguage, religion, normative orders, legal systems, traditions,artistic artefacts, and so on.

In addressing the transition from one form of culture to another, Simmeltheorizes the process of institutionalization (Martin, 2009; Nedelmann,2007), the Verdichtung or condensation of specific micro interactions andtheir subjective intentions into objectified modi of culture. Indeed, thiscaptures a “dialectic of institutionalization” (Martin 2009, p. 337):

If interactions are repeated, and participants have a subjectiveunderstanding of the boundaries and contents of thisinteraction, something new becomes created whether or notthe participants intended this – the “relationship” or tie seemsa thing in itself. People can then orient to the relationship asopposed to one another.

This also may work vice versa: “people can make their understanding of thecontent of the relationship separable from a particular structure” (Martin,2009, p. 337). In contrast to his analyses of social forms as a sociologist, Simmel’sphilosophical works on culture focus on a diagnosis of his time and urbanspace and normatively claim a “tragedy” or “crisis of culture” (Simmel,1916, 2008). Originating in life, “cultural forms may occasionally develop

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in such a manner that they begin to constrain life and even becomedestructive for life” (Pyyhtinen, 2018, p. 121). Simmel thus saw culturalelements to develop their own logics, reacting upon – in the sense ofconstraining – the individual because of their relationships, i.e. recurrentpatterns of interactions.

3. From Simmel’s Formal Sociology to Social Network Analysis

In the U.S., Simmel’s ideas on social forms inspired works on the analysisof social structure. One line can be traced back to Robert K. Merton atColumbia University. Not only did he cite and praise Simmel in his ownwork (e.g. Merton, 1968, 1972). Merton also taught Simmel’s ideas in hisclass “on the history of sociological theory and analysis of social structure”(Levine et al., 1976, p. 819) to students, who would later contribute tosociological theory and methods in their work on the sociology of conflict,social exchange theory, or SNA, e.g. Alvin Gouldner, Peter M. Blau, JamesS. Coleman, Lewis A. Coser, and Charles Kadushin (Levine et al., 1976;Pyyhtinen, 2018). Another scholarly line of direct influence is Kurt H.Wolff at Brandeis, who translated some of Simmel’s central German texts(e.g. Wolff, 1950), and who introduced Ronald L. Breiger to Simmel’s work(Breiger, 1974, p. 181). Moreover, in the U.S., Simmel’s ideas on social form have beenfoundational for much of seminal social network analytic ideas. Thehistorical lineage from Simmel’s formal sociology to social networkanalysis is uncontested (Kadushin, 2012). Indeed, Lizardo points out that(2009, pp. 47–48) most U.S. network theorists

trace back their lineage to Simmel’s work (Boorman andWhite 1976; Breiger 1990; Breiger and Ennis 1979: 263, n.264; Emirbayer and Goodwin 1994: 1415; Pescosolido andRubin 2000; White, Boorman, and Breiger 1976: 730, n. 731),and that they see themselves as fostering a radical paradigmshift through which the formal classical tradition of Simmelwill finally be realized (Berkowitz 1982, 1988; Wellman1988).

In his texts, which Simmel himself considered and labeled as sociological,he developed several concepts that have become building blocks ofstructural analysis and its specific form of social network analysis (SNA).Unlike Simmel himself, whose work on social form was conceptual anddescriptive, structural sociologists have translated insights into perspectiveson the empirical social world that can be mathematically modeled andformalized. Simmel’s formal sociology inspired the elaboration of formal

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toolkits. Two of Simmel’s concepts concerning social forms have inparticular shaped sociological perspectives on social relations, havecontributed to moving the focus on relations rather than on properties ofindividuals, and have been foundational for the developments of relationalsociology: social circles and their intersections as well as the importance ofgroup size.

Social Circles and their Intersections

One of Georg Simmel’s fundamental insights into social structure is to seethe intersection of social circles (Simmel, 1955/1964)3. Simmel understandssociety as a bundle of partly overlapping, relatively loose clusters or socialcircles, which intersect each other. A social circle is the union of individualswho belong to it and, in turn, an individual is an intersection of the circles towhich the individual belongs (141). Thus, Simmel connects belonging todifferent social circles to individuality. Individuality stems from a set ofunique crisscrossing memberships in social circles. In turn, socialintegration stems from the interlinkages of individuals between differentmemberships in social circles (Simmel, 2018, 465 ff.). This wasfoundational for later studies on the relationship of the individual andsociety in modern times (e.g. Nadel, 2004).

In his study “The Friends and Supporters of Psychotherapy: On SocialCircles in Urban Life” (1966), Kadushin uses Simmel’s theoretical work onsocial circles for empirical analysis. Kadushin calls for the empiricalanalysis of social circles with computational methods, in this case latentclass analysis, “so that a body of knowledge about circles can be developed”(Kadushin, 1966, p. 789). He also notes, “sociometric methods are theobvious tool for the study of social circles, and these methods have been inexistence for over 30 years”. However, in this paper Kadushin “definedcircles empirically without necessarily having to engage in extensive anddifficult sociometric analysis” (Kadushin, 1966, p. 792).

Even more influential, conceptualized as “affiliation networks”, Simmel’ssocial circles have had an enormous impact on the analysis of socialstructures and the development of SNA. In his seminal article Breiger(1974) formalizes Simmel’s idea (181-182):

Consider a set of individuals and a set of groups such that thevalue of a tie between any two individuals is defined as thenumber of groups of which they are both members. The valueof a tie between any two groups is defined conversely as thenumber of persons who belong to both of them.

3 The German reference is Die Kreuzung der sozialen Kreise (Simmel, 1908/1992).In a 1955 translation into English, Bendix chose the title “The web of group-affiliations” (Simmel, 1955/1964).

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A set of actors thus affiliates with a set of groups and vice versa.Information about these two sets of data can be represented together:persons and the groups they belong to can be expressed as a two-modeaffiliation matrix. In turn, the relations between persons and the groups theybelong to can be visually represented as a bipartite graph, in which the twotypes of nodes are simultaneously shown, connected by their affiliation.Affiliation networks are different from social networks derived from directinteractions between actors in the sense that the nodes consist of twodifferent kinds (“two modes”), e.g. actors and events. This characteristic ledto Breiger calling them “membership networks”. Moreover, affiliation- ortwo-mode-networks can be transformed into two separate thoughsubstantively interrelated and consistent of each other one-mode networks:one consisting of actors related by their shared membership of the samegroup, and the other consisting of groups related by their shared members. This technical feature of duality, going back to Simmel with a mathematicalre-formulation, has presented network analysts with the possibility to workwith data sources other than direct interactional data that typically originatefrom observations or questionnaires. Data sources range from vast arrays ofhistorical data from archives (e.g. Ventresca & Mohr, 2005) to large-Ndatasets of trace data (e.g. Shi, Shi, Dokshin, Evans, & Macy, 2017).Moreover, these technical aspects have shown broad usage in formalmodeling of what are called two-mode or bimodal or affiliation networks inthe sociological social network literature (e.g. Agneessens & Everett, 2013)and bipartite graphs in the “new” science of networks, with a reference tograph theory (e.g. Watts, 2004). Utilizing the formal modeling properties,research from a variety of disciplines has shed light on substantive areas,including the study of taste (e.g. Lizardo, 2006), social movements (e.g.Bearman & Everett, 1993; Diani & Kousis, 2014), historical change (e.g.Tilly, 1997), scientific fields (e.g. Moody, 2016), organizations (e.g.Mizruchi & Galaskiewicz, 2016), markets (e.g. Brailly, Favre, Chatellet, &Lazega, 2016), and the global economy (e.g. Hidalgo & Hausmann, 2009),to name only a few. The concepts of affiliation networks and “duality” havebeen applied and further developed in decades of empirical research,“moving from studying interrelations among social actors to analyzing theunderlying structure of interests, tastes, styles, and categories” (Mützel &Breiger, Forthcoming). Group Size: Dyads and TriadsAnother of Simmel’s influential insights for formal sociology is theimportance of group size for social dynamics (“Die quantitativeBestimmtheit der Gruppe”, Simmel, 1902a, 1902b, 1950b). Simmeldistinguishes between dyads and triads – and understands this difference asfundamental. Dyads form the basis of the social as they are the outcomes of

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interactions between two individuals. In dyads, secrets are safe, yet dyadsare inherently fragile: “if one individual departs, a group may still continueto exist” (Simmel, 1902a, p. 40), while a dyad breaks apart.A significant change occurs, if a third individual joins the dyadicinteraction. With the move from two to three and with the embedding ofdyads into context, social forms become collective social forms (objektive,überindividuelle Gebilde). At the same time, a third also becomes anintruder to dyadic relations. Simmel distinguishes between three functions athird individual may take (Simmel 1950c): the third may be a non-partisanor a mediator who keeps the collective social form together; the third canalso be a divisive force: a tertius gaudens (from tertius gaudens duobuslitigantibus or “if two quarrel, the third rejoices”), who draws benefits fromkeeping the two others apart and thus indeed obliterating the interactionsbetween all three individuals by allowing only dyadic interactions; or a thirdmay follow the idea of divide et impera (divide and conquer) anddestructively split up the social form altogether. This special role of thesocial form of triads vis-à-vis dyads has sparked many SNA concepts. For one, dissecting a network into its basic units of dyads and triads andtheir characteristics is a typical way to reduce complexity in the analysis ofnetwork structures. Instead of analyzing the network as a whole, it can begrouped into these smaller social forms. For example, basic centralitymeasures make use of the social form of a dyad, as they are calculated basedon the existence of a relation between two nodes. Triads, as more complexsocial forms, have been used to characterize network structures, e.g. using aso called “triad census” (Davis & Leinhardt 1972).Moreover, triads have informed many SNA theories with regard to thestructures of a network. Heider proposed the concept of the “balanced state”of a triad (1946), which he later explicitly relates to Simmel (Heider, 1958,p. 179). Heider “focused on a single individual and was concerned abouthow this individual's attitudes or opinions coincided with the attitudes oropinions of other ‘entities’ or people” (Wasserman & Faust, 1998, p. 220).Heider’s idea is that attitudes change if the constellation within this triad isimbalanced, the consequence is that balance needs to be restated. Thiscognitive theory has been formalized to a structural theory (Cartwright &Harary, 1956), proposing the use of the “definition of balance […] generallyin describing configurations of many different sorts, such as communicationnetworks, power systems, sociometric structures, systems of orientations, orperhaps neural networks” (Cartwright & Harary, 1956, p. 292). Across thesciences others have worked with Simmel’s structural insights on theclustering of the social world on the basis of triadic closure: having a mutualcontact increases the tendency of two formerly unconnected actors to

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establish at least a weak tie (e.g. Granovetter, 1973; Kossinets & Watts,2006; Newman, 2001).Building on Simmel’s insights of the tertius gaudens (Simmel, 1950c,p. 154) and social circles, Ronald Burt develops the concept of “structuralholes” (1992). This concept describes a specific position within a socialstructure that gains its advantages from uniting or splitting two other parties.Without the third, the two are separated by “a hole”.4 Those two might berepresentations of social circles making the third the intersection. Burtformulates this into his theory of a “Social Structure of Competition”(1992), in which those who occupy the hole control benefits of information,thus putting them into the position of a “broker” (Burt, 1992, p. 34):

The tertius plays conflicting demands and preferences againstone another and builds value from their disunion. You enterthe structural hole between two players to broker therelationship between them.

Burt understands his “structural hole argument” as a “theory of freedom”(Burt, 1992, p. 7), i.e. the freedom of the third to take advantage of“entrepreneurial opportunities”. In contrast, Krackhardt (1999) points to the triadic forces that restrictindividuals because they “contribute to the group’s survival and preserve itsidentity at the expense of the individual, at least when compared with theisolated dyad” (Krackhardt 1999: 185). Krackhardt introduces the notion ofa “Simmelian tie” as a reciprocal and strong tie between two actorsembedded in a clique, in which they are also “each reciprocally and stronglyties to at least one third party in common” (186). Bound by a third as part ofa clique and its norms of public behavior gives each actor less autonomy,less power, and less independence. Simmelian ties are also found to be morepersistent than Heiderian processes (Krackhardt & Handcock, 2007). These insights on the structural form of triads and the role of third haveinformed a rich literature on brokerage conceived as a “relation in whichone actor mediates the flow of resources or information between two otheractors who are not directly linked” (Fernandez & Gould, 1994, p. 1457) andin which the broker as a tertius gaudens stands between disconnected actors,benefitting from the position by playing off the two others against eachother leveraging and exploiting their conflict (Burt 1992). Others haveextended the structural features of brokerage by highlighting the processesof third parties’ interactions (e.g. Obstfeld, Borgatti, & Davis, 2014). Thiswork indicates conduit brokerage, i.e. passing of information withoutattempting to change the relationship (Burt 2004) as well as a tertius

4 Much earlier, White et al. stated, that “the essential feature of social networksmay well be the sharp breaks in patterns – the ‘holes’ in the networks” (White etal., 1976, p. 737).

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iungens brokerage, in which the third actively pursues coordination andconnection (Obstfeld 2005, 2017), following Simmel’s notion of the third asa non-partisan, who brings others together. Formal Sociology of Abstract StructuresThe two 1976 publications of “Social Structure from Multiple Networks” onblockmodels and role structure (White et al., 1976; Boorman & White,1976) offer another level in the formalization of forms and in abstraction forthe analysis of social relations. The formal method of blockmodeling shedslight on structurally equivalent positions within networks. Actors withsimilar relations to other actors are grouped within a block, though those ofa block do not need to have direct relations to each other. Indeed, no or fewrelations also yield structural equivalence. Blockmodeling reduces thecomplexity of a network of relations to focus on the more generalizable andsocially deep structure of positions and their relations. It is a mathematical,formalized method, which has yielded important insights on social structure(e.g. Bearman, 1993; Padgett & Ansell, 1993) and in the past decades hasbeen developed mathematically (e.g. Doreian, Batagelj, & Ferligoj, 2004;Žiberna, 2014). Yet others are concerned: for example, Nadel (2004, p. 122)asks if social forms are

too 'pure' or 'formal', too empty of content and henceuninformative? The answer is that this rigorous formalism,and the consequent ‘emptiness’ of the description, are theprice we must pay for the extraction of an embracing andstrictly positional picture of societies.

To be sure, White et al. (1976) explicitly chose to focus on the analysis ofstructure. They point out that “[t]he cultural and social-psychologicalmeanings of actual ties are largely bypassed. […] We focus instead oninterpreting the patterns among types of tie” (734). Nevertheless, theanalysis is deeply relational: the “resulting ‘blockmodel’ is a view of socialstructure obtained directly from aggregation of the relational data withoutimposing any a priori categories or attributes for actor” (White et al., 1976,p. 731). At the same time, White et al. recognize the existence of differenttypes of relations that lead to different interpretations of positions in anetwork (e.g. friendship or kinship). Similarly, Breiger’s (1974) use of theintersection of social circles from affiliation networks to the concept ofduality, interpreting both modes of networks as mutually defining, alsocontains a translation of Simmel into highly formal methods while at thesame time considers relations between entities in their meaning makingcapacity. Formal and relational, these works are exemplars of relationalanalyses of social forms and benchmarks for contemporary relationalperspectives.

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4. From Simmel to Cultural Analysis to Relational Sociology

In the U.S., Simmel’s microscopic investigations of “mundane everydayinteractions and our experience with them” (Frisby & Featherstone, 2006,p. 9) became very influential for another important strand of sociology:symbolic interactionism. While interested in social forms as “the elementaryparticles of sociation” (Rock, 1979, 51) interactionism takes as its startingpoint the micro-level of all social interactions, often using qualitative,ethnographic field methods that allow for a direct empirical contact withcontent.5 Only by understanding (Verstehen) time and place specific culturalpeculiarities of interaction, i.e. their meaning, “the institutional structures inwhich experiences are realized” (Rock, 1979, p. 98) become visible for theinteractionist sociologists. This section shows how Simmel’s methodological focus on everydayinteraction, which implies a relational, dynamic perspective on the socialwithout granting explanatory primacy neither to the individual nor tosocietal dimensions, feeds into symbolic interactionism, a sociologicaltradition that focuses on the interpretation of social meaning. In this sectionwe sketch an analytical lineage from Simmel to relational sociology viaPark’s human ecology, Blumer’s symbolic interactionism, Goffman’sinteraction order to Strauss’ negotiated order and Fine’s group culture6.These strands all contain Simmelian ideas on the content of socialinteraction and how content relates to its manifestation in forms.7

5 For an explicit call to use Simmel’s formal approach for ethnographic field work,see Zerubavel (1980).6 Another lineage, which cannot be elaborated here but which is running throughparts of Simmel’s thinking, symbolic interactionism’s foundations and relationalsociology, is the philosophical tradition of pragmatism (e.g. Emirbayer, 1997;Helle, 2001; Rock, 1979).7 Park, Blumer, and Goffman indicated direct linkages to Simmel, either byshowing signs of appreciation or distinction. Yet, Low argues that Simmel hasrarely been credited (or cited) in the empirical works of interactions due to“collective amnesia” (2008, p. 337). Similarly, Dingwall (2001) follows Rock whostates that it “is as if no thought of consequence preceded the work of the ChicagoSchool […] Kant, Hegel and Simmel are forced to assume a largely invisiblepresence which has led to a frequent misreading of the origins and nature of theirimpact on interactionism” (1979, p. 45). Oriented towards the present and future,Low adds: “So perhaps the most intriguing question is not why Simmel isunacknowledged by symbolic interactionists but how is it that his work hassurvived and continues to be the subject of repeated renaissance by a variety ofinterpretist researchers, micro-sociologists, postmodernists, and cultural theorists”(2008, p. 337).

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To be sure, Simmel’s first impact on U.S. sociology did not occur atColumbia University but rather at the Department of Sociology at ChicagoUniversity. Mainly, the so-called first but also some of the secondgeneration of the “Chicago School” were influenced by Simmel’s generalinteractional approach and specific work on urban life (Bulmer, 1986;Levine et al., 1976; Low, 2008). Moreover, they were also instrumental inbringing Simmel’s work to the U.S. Albion W. Small, founder and chair ofthe Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago since 1892,published nine of Simmel’s papers in AJS between 1896 and 1910. Some ofthem Small’s own translations, they had been foundational for Simmel’sreception in early U.S. sociology.

Also important was Robert E. Park, a sociologist who had attended some ofSimmel’s lectures at Berlin University and joined Chicago’s Department ofSociology in 1914. He took Simmel’s concept of Wechselwirkung andrendered it into English, marking the beginning of a sociological paradigmfocusing on the study of “interaction”. Park’s sociology shows many tracesof Simmelian thinking, e.g. Park argued that social circles produce the“marginal man” (Park, 1928), yet over time Park shifted his focus fromabstract forms to “types of concrete collectivities” (Shils, 1996). Park’sanalytical interest in the emergence, stability, and change of norms andvalues (Levine, 2010, liii), echoed Simmel’s interest in conflict.

In his uptake of Simmel’s focus on interaction, Park introduced a concept toU.S. sociology, which together with Mead’s ideas would become onebuilding block of the interpretive school of symbolic interactionis. 8 HerbertBlumer, trained by Mead and Park amongst others, proposed threeprinciples of “the nature of symbolic interactionism” (Blumer, 1969, p. 2):

The first premise is that human beings act toward things onthe basis of the meanings that the things have for them. […]The second premise is that the meaning of such things isderived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that onehas with one’s fellows. The third premise is that thesemeanings are handled in, and modified through, aninterpretative process used by the person in dealing with thethings he [sic] encounters.

In addition to its name, it is the proposed relational perspective on the socialthat echoes Simmel. Blumer does not only regard interactions between

8 Due to its much larger popularity and spread, this text will focus on the ChicagoSchool strand of interactionism. There are also others, such as the so-called Iowaschool, which was much more structurally oriented and less reluctant to explicitlybuild on Simmel’s work (Smith, 2017, p. 49).

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human beings as central, but equally the interdependence of meaning andinteraction. Yet despite these obvious parallels, Blumer hardly mentionsSimmel. What seems to prevent the direct crediting of Simmel in thesefoundational statements of symbolic interactionism is Blumer’s curiousreading of Simmel as a representative of a substantialist perspective.9

Blumer did in fact cite Simmel in his work on fashion, but criticized him fornot being “able to depict the operation of the modern fashion mechanism”(Pyyhtinen, 2018, p. 170). Despite this misunderstanding, Blumer andSimmel in fact share the evaluation of the “importance of context inunderstanding meaning in social life” (Low, 2008, p. 329).

With Simmel from Micro/Macro to Meso

Simmel’s work has also been important for micro-sociological inquiries. Infact, in some of his writings Simmel explicitly distances himself from whathe perceived to be an outdated perspective on the totality of social life andwhich he attempts to replace by a “micro-scopic inquiry” (Simmel, 1907).In his “Sociology of the Senses”, for example, Simmel intends “to pursuethe meanings that mutual sensory perceptions and influences have for thesocial life of human beings, their coexistence, cooperation and opposition“(Simmel, 1907/2006, p. 113). Simmel’s analytical interest not only lay inpure forms of interaction but also in their meanings, their contents, whichcan only be understood by paying attention to the “small insignificant unitsor ‘threads’ of sociation” (Frisby, 2002). Yet, pursuing a microscopicperspective, Simmel also explicitly “sought to avoid dissecting life to thepoint of being unable to see its unique combination of properties” (Beer,2019, p. 52). As his duality of form and content proposes, interactions onthe micro-level with their specific contents are an empirical access point forthe observer. At the same time, Simmel is also interested in theircrystallization into forms as elements of social structure: “In his early work,Simmel uses the rich concept of Verdichtung which means condensation,coalescence and crystallization. Cultural artefacts created out of the contentsof human experience can achieve their own objective existence in distinctiveforms that may be temporary but which may also persist over time in, say,cultural traditions” (Frisby & Featherstone, 2006, p. 4).10

9 “Thus, when Blumer came to use Simmel, he did so in a manner that extracted afew sociological ideas stripped out of the philosophical context that lent those ideassophistication and subtlety” (Smith, 2017, p. 61).10 Martin (2009) indicates how the duality between the form and content of relationships can be translated into the possibility to “transform an account in termsof form into one in terms of content and vice versa” (17) by analytically focusing on relationships at the local level.

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Especially his last book “The view of life” (Simmel, 1922/2010) focuses onthe interrelationship of “subjective culture” on the micro-level and“objective-culture” on the meso-level cumulating in Simmel’s diagnosis of“the tragedy of culture”. Through interaction, meaning from micro-situations (“subjective culture”) can stabilize and therefore become part ofthe meso-structure (“objective culture”), with the capacity to develop amomentum on its own and even constrain subjective culture in reverse. Thisdevelopment, from the start at the micro-level, observing the negotiation ofmeaning through the interaction of individuals, to the emergence of meso-forms and macro-structures out of these micro-interactions, analogouslydescribes the intellectual development of symbolic interactionism.

As a colleague of Blumer, a student of Everett Hughes, Erving Goffmanwas at Chicago at a time in which “Simmel’s sociology constituted asignificant element of the intellectual milieu” (Smith, 1989, p. 22). Oncecalled “the unacknowledged reincarnation of Georg Simmel” (Rock, 1979,p. 45; for a similar notion also see Smith, 2017), Goffman did not give muchcredit to Simmel’s work.11 Nevertheless, in the Preface to Presentation ofSelf Goffman states: “The justification for this approach (as I take to be thejustification for Simmel's also) is that the illustrations together fit into acoherent framework that ties together bits of experience the reader hasalready had and provides the student with a guide worth testing in casestudies of institutional social life” (Goffman, 1959, xii). Like Simmel’sfocus on “microscopic molecular processes”, Goffman argued for theobservation of an “interaction order” at the micro level of interactions since“it is in social situations that most of the world's work gets done” (Goffman,1979, pp. 5–6).

Focusing his own analysis on face-to-face interaction and embodied socialinteraction, Goffman developed a theory of interaction among co-presentindividuals. His interest in social order stemming from interaction, led himto analyze a great variety of hitherto unnoticed “forms of sociation”, e.g.basic kinds of face work, forms of alienation from interaction, publics,performances and teams. However, while Simmel’s formal sociology wasinterested in larger institutional analyses, Goffman’s forms stay dependenton specific cultural, local and temporarily factors of the situational contextof interaction. Moreover, while interested in detecting social forms,Goffman’s methodological approach was not formal-mathematical.

11 Goffman is known for a sparse acknowledgment of the sources of his sociologySmith (1989, p. 21) and was just as reserved in citing Simmel in his works as Parkand Blumer were.

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Anselm Strauss went further than Goffman in moving the focus from microto meso-structures as he widened the symbolic interactionist approach to thestudy of social organizations. Building on Shibutani’s (1955) “referencegroups”, Becker’s (1984), Hughes’ and his own theory of social worlds(1978b), Strauss proposes the processual concept of “negotiated order”(1978a) to grasp stabilization of social interaction in social organizations.This version of interactionism holds that it is through interaction thatstructures are enacted, but in that process, “interaction becomes conditionalinteraction” (Maines, 1982, p. 278). Strauss’ concept of social worlds andarenas is also used by Adele Clark in her situational analysis. It “dwell[s] atwhat Simmel (1955/1964) called the ‘intersection of multiple social circles,’and people participate simultaneously in many social worlds, depending ontheir ‘web of group affiliations’” (Clarke, Friese, & Washburn, 2018, p. 66).

A last scholar to be mentioned in this line of interactionists related toSimmelian ideas is Gary Allen Fine. As a student of Goffman, his workfocuses on small group culture, or idioculture, highlighting how thecontingent form of a small group comes about due to shared meanings,behaviors, and beliefs, thus combining considerations on form and content(e.g. Fine, 1979; Fine, 1987). While Fine’s form of focus is the group, henevertheless is keenly aware that “focusing exclusively on the group, astructure that depends on the immediacy of interaction and strong ties,ignores how social relations and cultures reverberate throughout society. Agroup operates within complex arrangements that extend beyond itsboundaries” (Fine, 2012, 168). Fine also considers the roles of networks tounderstand the interplay of groups, their subcultures and larger socialstructure and culture. Moreover, in a seminal article, Fine and Kleinmann(1983) suggest to insert more of interactionist approaches into structuralnetwork analysis. While much of “network analysis ignores howrespondents conceive of their social networks and define their relationships”interactionist perspectives of social structures conceives actors’ meaning ascentral (Fine & Kleinmann, 1983, p. 98). Later works point to the fluidity ofboth social relationships and their meaning (Fuhse, 2009; Ikegami, 2005;Salvini, 2010).

With Simmel from Substantialism to Processual Relationalism

With his focus on social forms, Simmel has often been identified as asubstantialist scholar. Yet, particularly the second chapter of his last book(1922/2010) can be read as a statement against substantialists’understanding of the world—including the methodological approach ofdissecting the world in representative parts to infer abstract knowledgeabout the whole. It is indeed the “relationality of the parts [that] is crucial,

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so viewing life in unity is what Simmel sees as being the key problem”(Beer, 2019, p. 34).

Such anti-substantialist stance is at the core of symbolic interactionism,which works with a processual perspective, i.e. never taking any socialorder for granted but observing the constant negotiation of meaning. Thisfluidity of meaning and order, the constant work it takes to produce, re-produce or change them is the main interest of interactionists (e.g. Tavory,2016).

In addition, in his late work Simmel also elaborates on “questions abouthow symbolic systems work to channel and redirect human life” (Simmel,1922/2010, p. 28). He turns to the socially construed nature of classificatorysystems and their importance for meaning making. He argues that the waysuch systems are categorized is important for understanding the relationalproperties of the social and individual (Beer, 2019, p. 106). In this sense, notonly social forms, but also cultural meaning needs to be understoodrelationally. Much of the sociology of culture’s work on classification,categorization, and boundary work (e.g. Abbott, 1995; Bowker & Star,2000; Fourcade & Healy, 2017; Gieryn, 1983; Lamont & Molnár, 2002)takes this understanding as its starting point.

Thus, Simmel’s sociology has not only directly influenced the tradition ofSNA that contemporary relational sociology draws on. A relationalsociology that interrelates structure and culture is also rooted in amicroscopic, interpretative perspective, which similarly goes back toSimmelian ideas.

5. With Simmel’s Formal Sociology towards a Relational Sociology

The term formal sociology led to a decoupling of Simmel’s remarksconcerning form and content and gave rise to their own history of receptioncarried by different strands of past and contemporary sociology.12 Currentreadings of Simmel suggest this to be a misinterpretation of his actualintentions when defining sociology’s unique jurisdiction.“[F]or Simmel, the form/content distinction was not a dualism; instead, itwas a duality” (Lizardo, 2019). Simmel never meant to imply that formscould be investigated without appreciating content - indeed this is one of the“pitfalls of formal analysis” (Martin, 2009, p. 9). Rather, any socialstructure needs to be understood with a dual focus on form and content as

12 On the theoretical problems stemming from this two-fold reading of Simmel as aformal and relational sociologist, see Erikson (2013).

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well as a processual view as “sociation continuously emerges and ceasesand emerges again” (Simmel 1950a, p. 10). This process perspective onform necessarily includes content (Simmel, 1908/2009, p. 23) :

In every existing social phenomenon, content and social formconstruct a united reality; a social form can no more existdisconnected from content as can a spatial form exist withoutsome material, the form of which it is.

Taking this seriously, even a formal sociology cannot ignore content in solefocus on form. And indeed, while early programmatic works in structuralistSNA explicitly bypassed the issue of cultural content and meanings of ties(White et al., 1976, p. 734), it soon became evident, that the avoidance ofcultural understandings and behavioral assumptions was difficult to sustainwhen analyzing relations, since any relation between social actors entailsseveral and changing meanings in particular cultural and intersubjectivecontexts (Brint, 1992; DiMaggio, 1995). Beginning with the late 1980s, an increasing number of network researchincluded culture in network analyses. At that time, studies on semantic andemotional networks (e.g. Carley, 1986; Carley, 1994; Krackhardt, 1987),historical networks (e.g. Bearman, 1993; Gould, 1991; Padgett & Ansell,1993) and artists’ networks (e.g. DiMaggio, 1987; Faulkner & Anderson,1987) began to address how relations shape cultural practices and how, inturn, cultural practices might affect relations. This research consideredcultural aspects and relational structure as related though separate realms.Others, engaged in discussions with relational thinking pointed out thatempirical networks are relational webs of meaning, discursively constitutedin processes, and essentially cultural products (Emirbayer & Goodwin,1994; Somers, 1994).Beginning in the mid-1990s, network research in this vein also began toexpand the notion of who counts as a network actor and started to includeconcepts (e.g. Carley, 1997; Mohr & Lee, 2000), categories (e.g. Martin,2000; Mohr & Duquenne, 1997) and narrative clauses (e.g. Bearman, Faris,& Moody, 1999; Bearman & Stovel, 2000) as nodes. Such analyses ofsemantic or conceptual networks indicated particular cultural patternsbetween those non-human units that in turn were seen to shape humanactors’ perceptions and behavior. Capturing the development of cultural and network thinking up to that point,Emirbayer identified a movement for “a relational sociology” (1997).13 Incontrast to substantialist accounts, in which variables or pre-defined actorsrelate to each other and do the acting, Emirbayer argued for a particular

13 To be sure, Emirbayer’s perspective brings together a range of studies under theheading of relational sociology, also including and analytically building on Tilly(1978); Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992); Abbott (1995).

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transactional approach. Relational sociology sees “relations between termsor units as preeminently dynamic in nature, as unfolding, ongoing processesrather than as static ties among inert substances” (289). Moreover, it rejects“the notion that one can posit discrete, pregiven units of analysis such as theindividual or society as ultimate starting points of sociological analysis”(287).14 In effect, Emirbayer not only captured ongoing developments at thetime, but also issued an agenda-setting call for analysts to study culture andstructural networks as interrelated. An increasing amount of research is spanning the boundaries betweenculture and networks (for an overview see DiMaggio, 2011; Mische, 2011;Pachucki & Breiger, 2010). Key cultural sociologists now argue for networkanalysis “as the natural methodological framework for empiricallydeveloping insights from leading theoretical approaches to cultural analysis”(DiMaggio, 2011, p. 286). In turn, key network analysts consider how“culture prods, evokes, and constitutes social networks” as an integral partof their analysis (Pachucki & Breiger, 2010, p. 219). These lines of workhave shown that cultural meanings shape social structure (e.g. Lizardo,2006), and that social networks are also culturally constituted andinterwoven with meaning (Mische, 2003, 2008).

Central references in the latter movement to intersect network and culturalthinking as entangled are the programmatic writings of Harrison White.White’s Identity and Control (White, 1992) pushes sociological theorybeyond rational choice, structuralist, mechanistic, and variable-basedsociologies towards a more dynamic and contextual model by consideringhow meaning shapes a relational context and, dually, how relations createmeaning. White presents a reconceptualization of how we understand actors,action, and social relations, by analyzing how identities, relations and theirsocial formations with all their ambiguities emerge. White starts off with theobservation that we live in a world of contingencies and social chaos, whichwe as social actors are able to maneuver, because we are able to couple anduncouple social ties across multiple social contexts. White’s work on theconstitution of markets highlights the dual discursive and structuralinterrelation (Mützel, 2016; White, 2000, 2002; White & Godart, 2007).

6. Simmelian Ideas in Current Relational Sociology

On the one hand, relational sociology’s relation to Simmel is obvious: Bothunderstand and explain the social by analyzing the relations of its basic

14 These ideas have been productively expanded for a range of fields, e.g.Emirbayer and Johnson (2008), Mutch, Delbridge, and Ventresca (2016) onorganizational analysis, Moody and White (2003) on structural cohesion, andLamont and Molnár (2002) and Wimmer (2008) on the study of boundaries.

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elements, instead of focusing on isolated elements and their attributes. Forrelational sociology in the tradition of social network analysis Simmel isperceived to be the classic sociologist who already thought in networkterms. On the other hand, given his focus on form and content, on structureand meaning, Simmel’s work can also serve as classic references to supportthe cultural turn in relational sociology. This last section will thus show howSimmel’s push for content and form has been realized in different part ofcurrent relational sociology.

The relation of form and content, of structure and meaning and themethodological access to both are still being negotiated among currentscholars of relational sociology. Some have indicated different ways howmeaning has been conceptualized and, subsequently, how this has beentranslated into empirical studies (e.g. Fuhse, 2009; Fuhse & Mützel, 2010).A central reference for the study of meaning is Mohr’s review (1998).15 Nottaking a network perspective per se, but rather a relational perspective,which more broadly includes different ways to conceptually and empiricallyget at dual relationships of structure and content, Mohr’s work outlinedways to formally “measure meaning structures”. As the title indicates, thiswas a call to quantify the study of cultural meaning vis-à-vis hermeneuticand interpretative methodologies (Mohr, 1998, p. 345).

One way to read the cultural turn away from formal SNA is to read it also asa formal turn away from interpretative cultural studies. The early“measuring meaning” review highlights works which focus on meaningsusing formal methods to show structures of cultural items. In the twentyyears following this call, scholarly disputes continue along how much andwhich formal vis-à-vis interpretative procedures in measuring meaningthrough its structure and vice versa are necessary. In that sense, we find thata binary rather than a recombinatorial logic is prevalent within relationalsociology. Even though relational sociologists aim to take structure andmeaning into consideration, they do not necessarily agree on the boundarybetween both and how to detect them. In that sense, they are – again – closeto the old reading of Simmel of either formal sociology or cultural analysis.The developments over the past two decades can be fractually grouped intotwo strands: one the one side those who argue for more formal modeling, onthe other side those who argue for more interpretative approaches.

Formally Measuring Meaning

15 Also see the special issue of “Theory and Society” (2014), Vol 43 (3-4) on“Measuring Culture” and the special issue of “Poetics” (2018), Vol. 68 on “Formalstudies of culture”.

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Mohr’s suggestion that textual analysis will offer new possibilities in theformal, relational modeling of culture was prescient. Indeed, muchempirical work has been conducted over the past 20 years using large-scaletextual data for cultural analyses (e.g. Bail, Brown, & Wimmer, 2019;Kozlowski, Taddy, & Evans, 2019; Rule, Cointet, & Bearman, 2015).Focusing on text as data, such types of work can overcome limitations ofresources that interpretative traditions of text analysis face confronted withlarge corpora of text. At the same time, drawing on the toolbox of naturallanguage processin and network analysis applied to text allows the detectionof complex meaning structures.

Defending a formal perspective, Lee and Martin (2015a; 2018) argue verymuch according to Simmel’s attempt to demarcate sociology’s jurisdictionas a science that has to abstract from the empirical complexity of meaning toget access to its basic, and in that sense reduced structure. Contributing tothe field’s discussion on the “adequate” method of the sociological study ofculture (Lee & Martin, 2015b), they propose a “cartographic approach” intheir study of textual data (Lee & Martin, 2015a). For sociology to be alegitimate science, it needs to abstract in a formal and therefore standardizedway with results that can be replicated in contrast to the “craftsmanship” ofhermeneutics (Lee & Martin, 2015b).

However, “measuring meaning” does not free analysts from interpretation.Rather, it only shifts at what moment in time interpretation becomesnecessary. One example is topic modelling (Blei, 2012; Blei & Lafferty,2006) which groups together words of large text corpora based on their co-occurrences in the texts over the whole corpus. These resulting word groupscan be understood as “topics” of the corpus. They can yield rich insightsinto processes over time and entire fields (e.g. DiMaggio, Nag, & Blei,2013; Fligstein, Stuart Brundage, & Schultz, 2017; Light & Adams, 2016;Mützel, 2015). However, finding plausible “meaning” in those word groupsand delivering an interpretation of the topics is impossible without a deepunderstanding of the texts and a domain knowledge of the field of study(e.g. Mohr & Bogdanov, 2013; Mützel, 2015). Making such interpretativeuncertainties of “measuring meaning” more explicit and acceptable could beone possible strategy to recombine anew structure and meaning. Summing up, this line of current relational sociology does relate toSimmel’s focus on interaction and relation, it also appreciates thatsociological analysis needs not only to measure structure but also tooperationalize meaning. However, in doing so, the understanding ofmeaning is strongly based on formal measurement, an abstraction of theintersubjective access to meaning that a humanistic tradition and surelySimmel’s own cultural analysis would prefer. In this sense, scholars who are

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“measuring meaning” continue to use Simmel’s notion of the scientificdiscipline of sociology that investigates culture but attempts to keep cultureout of its own work.16

Interpreting MeaningAnother line of current relational sociology studies structure and patternswith formal, network analytic techniques and meaning with interpretativemethods. It calls for “mixed-methods social network analysis” (Crossley &Edwards, 2016; Domínguez & Hollstein, 2014) as well as for the inclusionof theoretical concepts of interpretive traditions, such as symbolicinteractionism in form of social worlds, together with social networkanalysis (Crossley, 2015; Fine & Kleinmann, 1983). Mixed methodsapproaches working with network concepts vary in their specificimplementation of “mixed”, sometimes referring to the type of data beinganalyzed or to the chosen procedure of analysis. They share anunderstanding that formal measures have their limits in their access to socialmeaning, despite their use in the examination of social structures. Insightsinto various characteristics of structures, i.e. forms, like time and space etc.,need to be combined with “different perceptions, interests and lifeworldorientations”, which can primarily be conceptualized empirically by use of“mixed-methods designs” (Hollstein, 2008, p. 102) in order to capture formand interpretation.

Yet again others try to combine automated, formal text analysis with theclassic hermeneutic tradition of interpreting texts (e.g. Baumer, Mimno,Guha, Quan, & Gay, 2017; Breiger, Wagner-Pacifici, & Mohr, 2018; Mohr,Wagner-Pacifici, Breiger, & Bogdanov, 2013; Nelson, 2017; Wagner-Pacifici, Mohr, & Breiger, 2015). This line of work illustrates that withinthe tradition of relational sociology a basis for a fruitful combination offormal and interpretive methods is possible—while reflective and livelydiscussions on theoretical concepts and methods for the study of form andcontent will continue.

7. Conclusion

The theoretical perspective of current relational sociology concerning whatto look at when studying the social is surely closer to the symmetric readingof Simmel as a formal sociologist and philosopher of culture, as a scholarwho paid attention to form and content, not excluding one over the other. In

16 Lee and Martin chose a different wording by differentiating between “two meansof interpreting, formal and substantive. Further, make a parallel distinction betweentwo objects of interpretation, form and content”. In that sense, the “[t]raditionalinterpretation is a substantive interpretation of content” and their own approachequals to a “substantive interpretation of form” (Lee & Martin, 2015a, p. 16)

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that sense, relational sociology is closer to the sociological classic thanformal SNA. In the genealogy of ideas, relational sociology can be tracedback to Simmel via SNA, but equally via the interactionist studies ofculture. However, concerning the question of how to approach this interestof study, distinctions in the tradition of formal sociology are still beingdrawn by some scholars claiming that sociologists have to commit to formalapproaches only. We have argued that the theoretical, relational perspectiveon the social in principle links them all; and this certainly does occasionallybecome apparent in discussions concerning the combination ofinteractionism and network analysis. Although sociologists have beeninterested in Simmel’s work on form and on content in the past as well as inhis sociological and philosophical texts, this chapter has argued for astronger linkage of both lines of work and their related different conceptualand methodological perspectives on the interest of study.

This richness in conceptual approaches and innovative methods resonateswith the richness and breadth of Simmel’s work. The current use of hisideas underscores him a classic. Simmel’s conceptual ideas, his fundamentalrelational understanding of the social, his “sociological” interest in stablesocial forms but also his “philosophical” insights into cultural meaning,specific in space and time, have enriched the whole of current relationalsociology. Looking at sociology’s history of the past 120 years, we see thatdisciplinary boundaries are just as fluid as any other social boundaries.Bearing this in mind, the past readings of two Simmels with only oneinforming formal and later relational sociology appears to be a very limiteduse of Simmel’s contribution to all the concepts that still today shaperelational and cultural sociology, which range from interaction to socialforms, boundaries, and identities.

This chapter has shown that Simmel’s work is more multiplex than theformal sociology, so foundational for SNA, or the focus on interactions, sofoundational for symbolic interactionism, may suggest at first. Indeed,contemporary relational sociology, which intends to interrelate structure andmeaning, can benefit from Simmel’s own ideas.

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From Simmel to Relational Sociology 1. Introduction - OSF

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