Georg Simmel and the Metropolization of Social Life

Georg Simmel’s status in the canon is less secure than that of the preceding trio. This was evident in the 1930s when Talcott Parsons drafted a chapter on Simmel for The Structure of Social Action, but decided not to include it. This chapter on the metropolitization of social life reveals the originality of Simmel’s thought, concluding with a brief analysis of his intellectual inheritance as reflected in the Chicago School. Parsons’s reputational trajectory differs from Simmel, for once he looked secure in the canon, but subsequently critics would ask, “Who now reads Parsons?”