Ferdinand Tönnies

Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft

Your understanding of Durkheim’s theory should be melded with what is learned in the concepts of German sociologist; Ferdinand Tönnies and his two conceptual models for types of human association: Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. They describe two common kinds of human groupings or association.

As mentioned in the article on Dunbar’s Number, there is a heavy group of overlapping theorems which developed over millennia. They are well tested and highly useful if understood in totality. Martin Luther used the word in Apostles Creed. Notably, Luther was looking to employ music and singing as a mean whereby he could entice the congregation to support the church and its interests. As explained in the definition below, Gemeinschaft requires that the individual cedes their interest for the “group”, in Luther’s instance that would be the Lutheran Church.

• Gemeinschaft: organic society
  • Gemeinschaft (“community”) an association in which individuals are oriented to the larger group as much as, and often more than, their own self interest, and are further regulated by common social mores or beliefs about the appropriate behavior and responsibility of members of the association.
• Gesellschaft: mechanic society
  • Gesellschaft (“society”) describes associations in which, for the individual, the larger association never takes precedence over their own self interest, and these associations lack the same level of shared social mores as Gemeinschaft.