Microscopic everyday interactions are the threads that bind society.

Evidence

That people look at one another and are jealous of one another; that they exchange letters and have dinner together; that apart from all tangible interests they strike one another as pleasant or unpleasant; that gratitude for altruistic acts makes for inseparable union; that one asks another to point out a certain street; that people dress and adorn themselves for each other—these are a few casually chosen illustrations from the whole range of relations that play between one person and another. They may be momentary or permanent, conscious or unconscious, ephemeral or of grave consequence, but they incessantly tie men together. At each moment such threads are spun, dropped, taken up again, displaced by others, interwoven with others. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 47

Categorization

• XREF: These microscopic threads are precisely what civil inattention filters out in dense urban space — relevant to Lofland’s stranger categorization and the blasé attitude’s numbing. — connects to: Cultural transmission internalises the values, norms, and beliefs that hold society together, revealing how shared ideas shape behavior across time and place. — Cultural Transmission Theory; A science of society must study only forms of interaction — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 196; Situation-level symbolic transactions can influence society’s broader reproduction (+5 more)

Related

• A science of society must study only forms of interaction (similarity 0.80)
• Everyday life dissolves the institutional-interactional and private-public divides in social theory. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Everyday interaction rests on unproblematic, taken-for-granted world-certainty #exemplifies (0.85)
• Social order is fundamentally about how systems bind time and space #qualifies (0.80) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 44
• Situation-level symbolic transactions can influence society’s broader reproduction #corroborates (0.70)
• A science of society must study only forms of interaction #expands (0.50) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 196