Ferdinand Tonnies was a sociologist studying the community. Considering he wrote his concepts in the 1800’s, they are perceived quite different today. He came up with the idea of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. Gemeinschaft is based on a community, such as closer, more intimate relationships with people in that community, while Gesellschaft is based on society, and uses examples like motivation by self-interest. In the reading on Tonnies, he gave us very specific and strict guidelines of what a community is, what Gemeinschaft and Gesellechaft is, and the strict boundaries between rural and urban. At the time I’m sure all his points were very valid, but today the guidelines on all these things have changed. Today we don’t necessarily have to be living in a community to be a part of one. For example, at Illinois State I am a part of the Greek community. In Tonnies reading, he gave boundaries on how far away you could live in order to be of a community, but today people are a part of many different communities. Although, living in a neighborhood community Is was comes to most of our minds first, but people can be in many different communities. Also, many communities can be both Gemeinschaft and Gessellschaft. In his article he explained how these two ideas are polar opposites, but if you really think about it, they aren’t. Take the city of Chicago for example, they are technically considered Gesselschaft because everyone in that big city doesn’t have intimate relationships, and most likely are more worried about what’s good for them and not everyone else in the city, but there are plenty of communities within the city, like China town, or little Italy, these are all examples of the Gemeinschaft within this large city.
In the article on rural and urban divide, it talks about how they were very very separated when Tonnies was writing this. Rural was very isolated, and had very little products and enterprise going in and out of these towns. As time has gone on, the...