Gemeinshaft vs. Gesellshaft

In high school, my friend Jean (John in English) had our respective obsessions.  His was Vietnam (the war) and mine was Germany & WWII.  Our conversations would have the following ingredients:

 “ARVN!”                         “Wehrmacht!”
“Dien Bien Phu!”             “Stalingrad!”
“Green Berets!”              “Skorzeny!”
“French Foreign Legion!” “Waffen SS!”
“Ho Chi Minh!”                “Hitler!”
“Westmoreland!”             “Rommel!”
“Saigon!”                         “Berlin!”
“Apocalypse Now!”           “To Hell And Back!”
“Tet!  Khe Sanh!”             “El Alamein!  D-Day!”

 And so on…  Eventually he married a German woman and moved to Stuttgart, whereas I ended up in a law firm representing Vietnamese clients.  So we’re switched up.  

 In 1996 I visited Germany for his wedding, which took place in a small village in northwest Bavaria, Eichenbuhl.  This was a town so small everyone knew each other by name.  His sister-in-law was moving to Munich, the huge city, where, by comparison, she would be swallowed up by the faceless masses, a sea of anonymity where you didn’t even say hello to the person living next door to you in the apartment building.  

Although Jean himself didn’t express any particular preference for one vs. the other, much less express any particular value judgments, he did recognize that the two were dramatically different environments.  New Yorkers, for instance, have a bad reputation (justified or not) for refusing to help each other out or get involved.  In fact, you tend to find that people in small towns around the world think this about the people from the big cities: a sea of hostile strangers who wouldn’t lift a finger to help each other out in a time of need, which – of course – people in small towns do all the time.

I can’t count how many American films try to cram this theory down our throats, time and time again.  Typically the protagonist is an arrogant “city slicker” who looks down his nose on the small town hicks with whom he’s temporarily stuck, but gradually learns to appreciate this environment and its people – however quaint and out of style they may be – and begins to see his big city peers and friends as shallow and deceitful. Ultimately he decides to stay there and marry the “girl next door” he fell in love with.  “Doc Holliday”, with Michael J. Fox, is just one of these types of films.

A remarkable example of the contrary view is expressed in the movie and novel “Peyton Place”, where a girl’s life is ruined by the hypocrisy of the small town gossips.  Everyone knowing everyone else turned into a twisted nightmare, as the gossips wouldn’t mind their own business and petulantly and arrogantly judged those who they found lacking in character.  Even the main character, Constance Mackenzie, all high and mighty, hides a sordid past.

Ferdinand Tönnies was the late 19^th-early 20^th century German philosopher who articulated the constrasting concepts of “gemeinshaft” (community) vs. “gesellshaft” (society).  Gemeinshaft is defined as a group in which individuals consider themselves working for the best interests of the group – typically a family group or small town - whereas in a gesellshaft – typically a large corporation or bureaucracy – the individual works for his or her own best interests.  Liberals tend to tack onto this analysis, describing large corporations as faceless bureaucracies with no human touch, in which office politics, intrigue, and profits all dominate, which is why they seek a return to simpler, smaller groups as well as a return to rural, agrarian society.

However, it’s easy to see this as an oversimplification as well as inaccurate.  The largest bureaucracy tends to be the military, which is an organization which is not responsive to individual needs and is not geared towards representing individuals.  Quite the contrary: the culture of the military is that the individual is expected to suppress his individuality, interests, and desires for the benefit of the Army, Navy, etc.  Moreover, within the military, at the squad, ship, and squadron level, the soldiers, sailors and pilots ultimately achieve a sense of community – called “camraderie” in this context - with each other, as against and opposed to the force as a whole.  And the same often holds true of individual sections of large companies, not to mention very small firms.  Clearly, trying to distinguish “community” vs. “society” in this sense ultimately becomes nonsensical when you begin looking at it in greater detail.  So much for trying to address the topic in these terms.  We’re better off returning to the “big city” vs. “small town” analysis.

Living in the city.  When I lived in the US before we moved to Paris, we were in Gaithersburg, Montgomery Village.  My parents told us, “when we originally told people we were going to move to Gaithersburg [1970] they asked, ‘ugh, why are you going to move all the way OUT THERE?’”  Then we moved to Paris in 1979, moving to Paris proper in 1984.  At this point we were well and truly IN the city, the 8^th Arrondisement.  Although Villiers and Miromesnil metro stops were close enough, we could walk to the US Embassy at Place de la Concorde and the Champs Elysees.  In 1990 we moved back to Gaithersburg.  Every trip to Rio from 2000-2005 was spent in either Copacabana (3 times), Ipanema (once), or Leblon (once), well within the city itself.  As I noted earlier, in late August 1988 we stayed in Manhattan, up on 96^th Street, for about 10 days.  But from 1990 onward I’ve been living in Northern Virginia, definitely suburban territory, and by no means a “roça”. 

The suburbs.  Actually, when we think of suburbs what we think of are BIG CITY PEOPLE who have moved out of the city to seek a SMALL TOWN environment.  But they are still sophisticated, urbane, worldly – especially since most of them still work IN the big city itself.  In a sense, it’s a lifestyle which attempts to merge the best of both worlds, since the suburbs, by their nature, are in close proximity by car or public transportation to the big city.  The funny thing is, the urban, trendy bohemian people who choose to live in the city itself, often look down on the suburbs as essentially rural.

Roça e Buzios.  In January 2003, we visited Buzios, a small town on the coast of Rio de Janeiro state, about 2 hours out of town from the city of Rio de Janeiro itself.  When we returned, the evening of the second day, the sky started getting dark – and we got the horrible sensation, the paranoia, of being isolated out in the “roça” (countryside), a remote, desolate area where no one was around.  Rio, with all its overcrowded masses and crime and vice, was nonetheless hospitable and sheltering compared to the loneliness of the country.  This is where people ARE, this is where things happen (good and bad)…and this is where we want to be.

Bottom Line.  Although I can appreciate Manhattan, Paris, and some parts of DC, I have to say that I prefer the suburbs most of all – developed enough that you have what you want within good distance, but not the parking nightmare that the city is.  I think of the suburbs as the best of both worlds.