Sociology overlooks the everyday situation of strangers surrounded only by other 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

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• DEFINE: Distinguishes the under-theorized ‘strangers amid strangers’ situation from the two canonical stranger tropes (assimilated newcomer, marginalized newcomer).
• SEED: Potential essay: why the flâneur’s condition—surrounded entirely by strangers with no ‘group’ to orbit—escaped classic sociology’s framing.

Related

• Sociology overlooked the pervasive situation of strangers among strangers (similarity 0.94)
• Strangers always disrupted daily routines in small communities (similarity 0.79)
• The stranger is simultaneously outside and inside the group’s structure (similarity 0.78)
• The poor resemble strangers in being both outside and constitutive of the group (similarity 0.78)
• Living surrounded by strangers is a peculiar condition requiring explanation (similarity 0.78)