Community and Society

By Ferdinand Tönnies and Tonnies Loomis

Book Overview

T?nnies' Community and Civil Society (first published in 1887 as Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft) is a classic of social and political theory, exploring the tension between close-knit communities and an... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1953450180
• ISBN13: 9781953450180
• Release Date: January 2021
• Publisher: Mockingbird Press
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 0.96 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A classic

This book really is a classic in its field. Written towards the end of the nineteenth century it tried to cope with the whole universe of new phenomena that the young industrial European society encountered for the first time in its history. The book was not considered too influential at first but shortly before WW1 and even more so after it, it began to grow in influence. Tonnies's greatest contribution to sociology is perhaps the distinction he makes between a large society and a small community and the difference in the substance of the relationships prevailing in one and the other. He was largely a conservative, viewing the preindustrial world in rosy colours and in this way he served as one of the ideological sources of fascism (but then, Nazis abused and misinterpreted many other authors, so this is not anything against Tonnies). Strangely enough, even the totalitarian Left found him inspiring, thus cementing the view that both the big totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century had lots in common.