Sociology overlooked the pervasive situation of strangers among strangers

Evidence

On the situation of “strangers amid strangers,” the classic stranger literature in sociology is oddly silent. In thinking about strangers, writers from Simmel (1950b) to Schutz (1944) have limited themselves in the main to two situations: (1) the newcomer approaching an established group and becoming assimilated and (2) the newcomer approaching an established group and remaining marginal. While these are certainly fruitful analytic foci since they recur in all places and times, they are hardly the only “stranger situations” worthy of consideration. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 1064

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to the reader’s purpose: Cole’s unreliable wandering observer inhabits exactly the ‘strangers amid strangers’ situation that Simmel-era stranger theory (the newcomer two-case model) never theorized.