Living surrounded by strangers is a peculiar condition requiring explanation

Evidence

The counterpart of displacement is reembedding. The disembedding mechanisms lift social relations and the exchange of information out of specific time-space contexts, but at the same time provide new opportunities for their reinsertion. This is another reason why it is a mistake to see the modern world as one in which large, impersonal systems increasingly swallow up most of personal life. The self-same processes that lead to the destruction of older city neighbourhoods and their replacement by towering office-blocks and skyscrapers often permit the gentrification of other areas and a recreation of locality. — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 342 (#expands, via linked claim)

This category may be suggested by the proposition that every element of a group is not only a societal part but, in addition, something else. However trivial it may seem, this fact nevertheless operates as a social a priori. For that part of the individual which is, as it were, not turned toward society and is not absorbed by it, does not simply lie beside its socially relevant part without having a relation to it. It is not simply something outside society to which society, willingly or unwillingly, submits. Rather, the fact that in certain respects the individual is not an element of society constitutes the positive condition for the possibility that in other respects he is: the way in which he is sociated is determined or codetermined by the way in which he is not. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 178 (#responds-to, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Shared universal traits make the stranger simultaneously near and far — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 397; Urban life is possible because strangers remain categorically identifiable; A stranger is someone personally unknown yet visually available (+9 more)

Related

• A stranger is someone personally unknown yet visually available (similarity 0.84)
• Modernity transforms the stranger from a whole suspect person into a fleeting contact. (similarity 0.83)
• Urban life is possible because strangers remain categorically identifiable (similarity 0.82)
• Strangers are perceived by type rather than as individuals (similarity 0.81)
• The poor resemble strangers in being both outside and constitutive of the group (similarity 0.80)
• Shared universal traits make the stranger simultaneously near and far (similarity 0.80)
• Ethnic neighborhoods can shelter inhabitants from ever learning to navigate strangers (similarity 0.80)
• The most urban-inept strangers can be the most warmly treated (similarity 0.80)
• The stranger is not a transient wanderer but a settled potential wanderer (similarity 0.79)
• Most of human history was lived in small worlds lacking anonymity (similarity 0.79)
• The stranger embodies a simultaneous union of closeness and remoteness (similarity 0.79)
• Rare and brief city encounters push people to stylize themselves as sharply individualized (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Impersonal modern systems paradoxically enable reembedding of local personal life #expands (0.72) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 342
• Urban life is possible because strangers remain categorically identifiable #responds-to (0.60)
• An individual’s exclusion from society enables their social participation #responds-to (0.55) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 178
• A stranger is someone personally unknown yet visually available #qualifies (0.50)
• Industrial urbanization destroyed appearance as a reliable clue to strangers’ identities #expands (0.50)
• The poor resemble strangers in being both outside and constitutive of the group #expands (0.45) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 417
• Denying shared humanity creates non-relation rather than strangeness within a group #complicates (0.40) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 400
• Even literate ancient peoples suspected strangers might not be fully human #contradicts (0.40)
• Ethnic neighborhoods can shelter inhabitants from ever learning to navigate strangers #qualifies (0.40)