Sociology treats sheer population increase only implicitly, not as a mechanism

Evidence

Sociologists have not, I think, paid sufficient detailed attention to the effects of numerical increase on either human consciousness or the organization of social life (although popular social science literature [for example, Hall, 1966; Morris, 1969] abounds with terrible warnings of impending doom if high population densities are allowed to continue or increase). Recognition of numerical increase as a basic explanatory variable is, of course, implicit in the classic sociological dichotomies, gemeinschaft-gesellschaft, status-contract, mechanical solidarity-organic solidarity, folk society-urban society, and so on, which represent attempts to capture glob- ally enormous historical changes. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 1062

Categorization

• XREF: Grounds the reader’s cross-reading: Simmel’s blase attitude reading needs ‘numerical increase’ as an explicit causal variable affecting consciousness, which Lofland flags as under-theorized.