Modernity transforms the stranger from a whole suspect person into a fleeting contact.

Evidence

We can find a starting point for this discussion in the familiar sociological observation that in modern social life many people, much of the time, interact with others who are strangers to them. As Simmel pointed out, the meaning of the term “stranger” changes with the coming of modernity. In pre-modern cultures, where the local community always remains the basis of wider social organisation, the “stranger” refers to a “whole person”—someone who comes from the outside and who is potentially suspect. There may be many respects in which a person moving into a small community from elsewhere fails to receive the trust of the insiders, even perhaps after having lived in that community for many years. In modern societies, by contrast, we do not characteristically interact with strangers as “whole people” in the same way. Particularly in many urban settings, we interact more or less continuously with others whom we either do not know well or have never met before—but this interaction takes the form of relatively fleeting contacts. — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 197

Categorization

• XREF: The fleeting ‘stranger as abstract system’ versus pre-modern ‘stranger as whole person’ distinction resonates with how Stevens encounters people only through role-based professional frames. — connects to: Modernity does not replace intimacy with impersonality but transforms it through distancing — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 343; Living surrounded by strangers is a peculiar condition requiring explanation; Novelistic simultaneity links strangers through shared clocked time and the reader’s omniscient view. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 89

Related

• Modernity does not replace intimacy with impersonality but transforms it through distancing (similarity 0.88)
• Living surrounded by strangers is a peculiar condition requiring explanation (similarity 0.83)
• Modernity transforms both global interconnection and the most intimate personal life (similarity 0.82)
• Modernity transforms friendship’s opposite from enemy to mere acquaintance (similarity 0.81)
• Modern place is a local expression of distant, disembedded relations (similarity 0.78)
• Novelistic simultaneity links strangers through shared clocked time and the reader’s omniscient view. (similarity 0.78)
• Strangeness is a specific proportion of nearness and distance (similarity 0.78)
• Modern displacement integrates people into globalised communities rather than estranging them (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Modernity does not replace intimacy with impersonality but transforms it through distancing #expands (0.70) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 343
• Living surrounded by strangers is a peculiar condition requiring explanation #qualifies (0.50)