Everett M.Rogers
Communication
Theory
Nine:
One
February
I999
Pages:
58-74
Georg Simmel’s Concept
of the Stranger and Intercultural
Communication Research
The stranger, defined by GeorgSimmel as an individualwho is a member ofa
system but who is not strongly attached to the system, influenced (1) such
importantconcepts as social distance, the marginal man, heterophily,and
cosmopoliteness,(2)the value on objectivityin social science research,and
(3)to a certain extent, the specialty field of intercultural communication.
Here we explore these influencesof Simmel’s theory of human comrnunication,especiallyhis
concept of the stranger,and highlight certain implications
for the contemporarystudy ofintercultural communication.
This present essay traces the evolutionary process through which the
original conceptualization of the stranger by the German sociologist
Georg Simmel at the turn of the century influenced several concepts
important in communication research, the value on objectivity in communication
study (andin other social science research), and, to a certain
extent, the field of intercultural communication.
Our conceptual tracing of this history helps illuminate the largely
unrecognized intellectual debt owed by contemporary communication
scholars to the Chicago School of Sociology, which flourished from 1915
to 1935. The Chicago sociologists, in turn, based their pioneering empirical
investigations on theories imported from Germany, especially the
concepts of Georg Simmel(Rogers, 1994).Simmel’stheory of the stranger
has a low profile in the work of most contemporary communication
researchers, who generally do not cite his concepts and theories.’
This paper traces the intellectual influences of Simmel’s theoretical
perspective through the Chicago School sociologists into social science
research on human communication, especially intercultural communication
and stresses the implications of Simmel’s theory for research on
intercultural communication.
Georg Simmel and CommunicationStudy
Georg Simmel’s scholarly career flourished from 1880 until approximately
40 years later. Simmel’sscholarly interests ranged widely, and his
Copyright 0 1999 International Communication Association
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Georg Simmel
contributions cannot be classified into a single academic discipline, He
is today mainly known as a sociologist, and indeed he taught a course in
sociology at the University of Berlin (one of the first such courses in a
German university)and wrote an important book on sociology,Soziologze
(Simmel, 1908). Other courses and many of his books dealt with philosophy
(Simmel, 1900/1978), but he also wrote about the diffusion of
fashions (Simmel, 1904/1975), small-group communication, and the
nature of interpersonal networks (Simmel, 1922/1955), topics that today
are part of communication study.
In most of his sociological, philosophical, and other scholarly writings,
Simmel reflected a basic perspective on human communication, a
viewpoint that was at the heart of his theorizing. He was a predecessor
to symbolic interactionism, believing that human behavior could be understood
through learning how individuals give meaning to the symbolic
information that they exchange with others.*
Simmel as a Stranger
Georg Simmel(1858-1918) was one of the forefathers of sociology, along
with August Comte, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber. Simmel earned
his doctorate at the University of Berlin, one of the main models for the
American research university (Rogers, 1994),and taught there for most
of his career. Despite his brilliance as a professor, as a productive scholar,
and as an original thinker, Simmel was not promoted from the rank of
Privatdozent, something equivalent to an unpaid, untenured adjunct
professor at a U.S. university today. A Privatdozent collected fees from
the students attending his or her lectures (Kopfgeld,or “headmoney”).
Simmel’s lectures were very well attended (in fact, they were held in the
largest lecture hall at the University of Berlin). “Simmel was somewhat
of a showman” (Coser, 1977, p. 196). His lectures were especially intriguing
to his audiences because he seemed to be thinking out loud. “A
lecture by Simmel was creation-at-the-moment-of-delivery: The essence
of Simmel’sspell seems to have been the spontaneous exemplification of
the creative process” (Wolff, 1950, p. xvii). Simmel’s lecture style was
described as follows: “He [Simmel]was considered one of the most brilliant,
if not the most brilliant, lecturer of his time. ...Many of Simmel’s
lectures were public events and often described as such in the newspapers”
(Coser,1959).
Although a scholar recognizedfor his eminencein Europe and America,
Simmel was rebuffed by the academic community in Germany in his
desire for a full professorship (Coser, 1977, p. 195).Simmel seemed to
depend for approval on his lecture audiences, rather than striving for
recognition by his academic colleagues (Coser, 1959).Simmel’s nonconformist
behavior as a professor is also illustrated by his publishing record.
Of the 180 articles published by Simmel during his lifetime, the ratio of
his work published in scholarly outlets decreased from 50 percent in his
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Communication
Theory
early career to 25 percent later in his career, when he had given up hope
of promotion to professor (Coser, 1959).
The topics of Simmel’s lectures, and of the books and articles that he
wrote, varied widely. Simmel stated that he could “Simmelize” (that is,
make a theoretical analysis of) almost any topic. This wide range of
interests did not help advance Simmel’s career. Ortega y Gasset compared
him to “a kind of philosophical squirrel, jumping from one nut to
another” (Coser,1965, p. 3).
The topics that Simmel chose to analyze were related to his personal
life experiences. Simmelwas the son of Jewish parents who converted to
Christianity. He experienced anti-Semitism and this prejudice may have
been one reason for his lack of academic advancement. The model for
his concept of the stranger was the Jewish trader:
Throughout the history of economics the stranger everywhere appears as the trader,
or the trader as stranger. ...The stranger .. .intrudes . ..into a group in which the
economic positions are actually occupied-the classical example is the history of European
Jews.”(Simmel, 1950, p. 403)
As Robert E. Park, the American sociologistwho introduced Simmel’s
theories to U.S. scholars, stated: “The emancipated Jew was, and is,
historically and typically the marginal man, the first cosmopolite and
citizen of the world. He is, par excellence, the ‘stranger,’which Simmel,
himself a Jew, has described with such profound insight and understanding”
(1928.p. 882).
Simmel’s Stranger and InterculturalCommunication
Simmel’sconcept of the stranger (derFremde in German), and its intellectual
descendants of social distance, the marginal man, and heterophily,
are particularly important to the specialty field of intercultural communication.
This field is commonly traced to its beginnings by the anthropologist
Edward T. Hall at the Foreign Service Institute in the 1951-
1955 period. “The story of intercultural communication begins at the
Foreign Service Institute” (Leeds-Hurwitz, 1990). Hall was one of the
first to use the term intercultural communication, and his book, The
Silent Language (Hall, 1959),contained many of the perspectives later
emphasized by scholars of intercultural communication. However, as I
attempt to show in this paper, a basic focus of intercultural communication,
that of a communication relationship between two or more people
who are dissimilar, can be traced to Georg Simmel’s concept of the
stranger, explicated a half century before Hall’s important book.
Simmel’s theoretical perspective on communication can be summarized
as follows (Levine, Carter, & Gorman, 1976):
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Georg Simmel
1.Society consists of communication among individuals.
2. All human communication consists of exchange that has reciprocal
effects on the individuals involved.
3. Communication occurs among individuals who are at varying degrees
of social distance from one an~ther.~
4. Communication satisfies certain basic human needs, such as for
companionship,to express aggression, or to pursue certain desired goals.
5. Certain types of communication become relatively stable over time,
and thus represent culture and social structure.
Intercultural communication, defined as the exchange of information
between individuals who are unalike culturally (Rogers & Steinfatt, in
press), has been broadened in recent years to include communication
across gender, ethnic, age, and other variables that may affect human
communication. So the meaning of “culture” in the field of “intercultural”
communication has been generalized beyond its earlier meaning
of nutzonal culture. Later in this paper, we argue that this broadening
might have occurred earlier had the pioneers of intercultural communication
been more fully aware of Simmel’s perspective.
Simmel’s Concept of the Stranger
The stranger, as defined by Simmel (1950,p. 402), is an individual who
is a member of a system but is not strongly attached to that ~ystem.~
“The stranger is .. .not ...the wanderer who comes today and goes
tomorrow, but rather is the person who comes today and stays tomorrow”
(Simmel, 1950,p. 402). Perhaps the stranger is a recent migrant to
the system, who retains the freedom of coming and going. The stranger
does not conform completely to the norms of the sy~tem.~The stranger’s
interpersonal relationships with others in the system are characterized
by social distance: “Distance means that he, who is close by, is far, and
strangeness means that he, who also is far, is actually near” (Simmel,
1950, p. 402). An individual can be a member of a system in a spatial
sense, but not be a member in a social sense (McLemore, 1970).
Simmel’s insights on the role of the stranger were part of his general
concern with the relationships between the individual and the systems
of which the individual is a member, and in how these cross-level relationships
influencethe individual’s behaviot6For example, Simmel(l922/
1955, p. 140)stated: “The groups with which the individual is affiliated
constitute a system of coordinates, as it were, such that each new group
with which he becomes affiliated circumscribes him more exactly and
more ambiguously.” In this sense, an individual’s social networks serve
to limit the individual’s actions. The stranger, relatively free of such network
links in his or her system, can more easily deviate from the norms
of the system.
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Communication
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Whereas the stranger is often viewed with suspicion (and perhaps
xenophobia) by others in the system because of the uncertainty and
unpredictability of the stranger’sbehavior (Berger& Calabrese, 1975),
there are unique advantages to the individual and to the system of such
distanced perspectives: “To be a stranger is naturally a very positive
relation” (Simmel,1950,p. 402).The stranger seesthe system in a different
light than do others. Many works of fiction are built on the arrival
of a stranger in a system (McLemore, 1970), so that the system is described
through the eyes of an outsider.’
The stranger’s viewpoint may be more objective. “He is not radically
committedto the unique ingredientsand peculiartendenciesof the group,
and therefore approaches them with the specific altitude of ‘objectivity.’
...It is a particular structure composed of distance and nearness, indifference
and involvement” (Simmel,1950,p. 404). As an example of the
advantages of the stranger’sobjectivity, Simmelcited the practice in Italian
citiesof selectingtheir judgesfrom the outside, sothat they would be
free from entanglement in family and party interests. “The objective
individual is bound by no commitments which could prejudice his perception,
understanding, and evaluation of the given” (Simmel, 1950, p.
405).
The Chicago School
The ChicagoSchool,which flourished at the University of Chicago from
1915to 1935,introduced German theories like Simmel’sto America and
implemented them in empirical research on the social problems of Chicago.
The University of Chicago, one of the first research universities in
America, was founded in 1892with the financial assistance of John D.
Rockefeller, then the richest man in the world. Thanks to its ample resources,the
University of Chicagowas able to raid other universitiesfor
their star professors, and, within only a fewyears of its establishment, it
was a highly prestigious university (Rogers, 1994, pp. 139-145).
The first department of sociologyin the United Stateswas established
at the University of Chicago in 1892, and it soon grew to completely
dominate this new field. The so-called Chicago School was known for
its studiesof socialproblems likeprostitution, poverty, crime, and racial
conflict in the low-income areas near the Midway campus in south Chicago.Thisresearchwas
funded by the Rockefellerfamily and was strongly
influenced by Simmel’stheories. Albion Small, founder and chair of the
Department of Sociologyat Chicago, translated 15of Simmel’swritings
and published them as articles in the American Journal of Sociology,
which he edited.* The two most influential members of the Chicago
School, George Herbert Mead and Robert E. Park, had pursued graduate
study at the University of Berlin and enrolled in courses taught by
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Ceorg Simmel
Simmel (Rogers, 1994, pp. 137-202). So in various ways the Chicago
School served as the main intellectual channel through which Simmel’s
theories were imported to the United States and implemented in empirical
research. One of the important ideas thus transferred was that of the
stranger.
The Stranger and Objectivity
The key scholar in translating and applying Simmel’s concept was Robert
E. Park, a former newspaper reporter who earned his PhD degree in
Germany. In 1900Park took Simmel’scourse in sociology at the University
of Berlin. It gave him the fundamental perspective of communication
and society for which he had been searching. After his return to the
United States, Park worked for Booker T. Washington, the leading African
American leader of the day, as a public relations assistant at the
Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Out of this experience in the American
South, Park gained an understanding of individuals of mixed racial ancestry,
from which he developedhis concept of the marginal man (Hughes,
1980, p. 69).
In 1915,at the age of 50, Park began teaching sociology at the University
of Chicago. Park soon was regarded as the intellectual leader of the
Chicago School of Sociology and the most influential figure in determining
the direction of American sociology. Park was particularly instrumental
in changing the new field of sociology from “do-gooderism” to a
more objective social science (Hughes, 1980, p. 73). Chicago was a city
of immigrants from European villages, living in urban slum conditions.
The empirical studies by Park and his doctoral students were intended
to document and provide understanding of these immigrants’ social problems.
Park insisted that such investigation must attempt to be objective.
The proper role of the social researcher, Park felt, was to study and
report research results, but not to engage in ameliorating the social problems
that were studied. This task should be left to social workers and to
other professionals. Park drew on Simmel’s concept of the stranger as a
model for the objectivity of the social scientist(Raushenbush, 1979,p. 96).
For example, a Chicago sociologist might investigate prostitution, but
the scholar’s personal abhorrence of this profession should not affect
how the research was conducted or the interpretation of the findings
(Rogers, 1994, p. 187).Park insisted that his graduate students should
not become personally involved in the social reform of social problems,
other than in studying these problems objectively so that they could be
better understood. Park described Chicago sociology as “a logical scheme
for a disinterested investigation” (1922, p. 15).
The emphasis on scientific objectivity by Park, influenced by Simmel,
was generally accepted by many American sociologists and by many
other social scientists of the day. Prior to Park, many sociologists had
come from social work or the ministry and thought mainly of ameliorat-
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Communication
Theory
ing social problems. Park sought to direct sociology toward becoming a
~cience.~In addition, the social sciencesat this same time generally took
the physical and biological sciences as their model of academic respectability,
and this influence led to an emphasis upon objectivity.
The Concept of Social Distance
Park, inspired by Simmel’s notion of the stranger and Simmel’s related
idea of intimacy versus distance in interpersonal relationships (Bogardus,
1959, p. 13), developed the concept of social distance, defined as the
degree to which an individual perceives a lack of intimacy with individuals
who differ in ethnicity, race, religion, occupation, or other variables
(Park, 1924;Park, 1950, pp. 256-260). One of Park’s doctoral student,
Emory S. Bogardus, developed a social distance scale that measured
whether a respondent felt closer to Chinese or to Mexicans, for
example (Bogardus, 1929, 1933, 1959).Thus a respondent was asked,
“Wouldyou marry a Chinese?Would you have Chineseasregular friends?
As speaking acquaintances?” (Bogardus, 1933).Then the same series of
questions were asked the respondent for Mexicans and other categories.
Essentially, the Bogardus social distance scale quantified as a continuous
variable the perceived intimacy versus distance of an individual to
various other racial or ethnic categories.
The concept of social distance focused scholarly inquiry on social relationships
between two or more individuals who were different.1° This
communication between unalikes is the defining characteristic of intercultural
communication.
The Concept of Marginal Man
Simmel’sconcept of the stranger also influenced Park (1928)to conceptualize
what he called the “marginal man,” an individual who lives in
two different worlds, in both of which the individual is a stranger (Park,
1928; Levine & others, 1976).An example, studied by Park, was the
first-generation American offspring of European immigrant parents.
These marginal men and women typically rejected the European culture
and language of their parents, but did not consider themselves to be true
Americans. They felt relatively free from the norms of either system,
which may be one explanation for their relatively higher crime rates in
Chicago. Park stated that the marginal man is
a cultural hybrid, a man living and sharing intimately in the cultural life and traditions
of two differentpeoples; never quite willing to break, even if he were permitted to do so,
with his past and his traditions, and not quite accepted, because of racial prejudice, in
the new society in which he now sought to find a place, (1928)
In addition to migrants, marginal men might be racial hybrids of mixed
blood, for example, an Eurasian in Asia, or a cultural hybrid like a Christian
convert in Asia or a Europeanized African. One of Park’s doctoral
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Georg Simmel
students, Everett V. Stonequist, described various types of marginal men
in his book, The Marginal Man (1937).Park’s concept of the marginal
man was later extended to the sojourner, an individual who visits another
culture for a period of time but who retains his or her original
culture (Siu, 1952).The sojourner later became a favorite topic of study
by intercultural communication scholars and led to such concepts as the
U-curve of adjustment, culture shock, and reentry shock (Rogers &
Steinfatt, 1999).
Park’s intellectual interest in the marginal man stemmed from his perspective
that such individuals represented a kind of laboratory for understanding
social change: “It is in the mind of the marginal manwhere
the changes and fusions of culture are going on-that we can best
study the processes of civilization and of progress” (1928).
The Concept of Heterophily
Another intellectual descendant of Simmel’s stranger, somewhat related
to the concept of social distance advanced by Park and by Bogardus, is
heterophily, defined as communication between two or more individuals
who are unalike. The opposite concept, homophily, is communication
between two or more individuals who are similar (Rogers, 1995).
The concepts of homophily and heterophily were developed by Paul F.
Lazarsfeld and Robert K. Merton (1964) and have been utilized in a
number of communication researches (Rogers, 1995).The concepts of
homophily-heterophily, and such synonyms as similarity-dissimilarity,
segregating-differentiating, and similarity-complementarity have been
investigated in organizational communication, small groups, communities,
and other systems.”
Lazarsfeld and Merton ( 1964, p. 21)utilized homophily-heterophily
to analyze social network data that they gathered in two housing communities:
(1)Craftown, a project of 700 families in New Jersey, and (2)
Hilltown, a biracial project of 800 families in Pennsylvania. Respondents
were asked to identify their three closest friends. Homophily was
measured as friendships between individuals who were alike in some
designated respect, and heterophily as friendships between individuals
who differed in some designated respect. So, for instance, a respondent
who identified his or her most intimate friends as racially different from
himself or herself displayed a high degree of heterophily.l2
Homophily and heterophily have been measured both subjectively, as
the degree to which an individual perceives himself or herself as similar
or dissimilar from another person, and, more objectively, as the degree
to which two or more individuals are observed to be similar or dissimilar
(Rogers & Bhowmik, 1970).Past research has dealt mainly with objective
homophily-heterophily. When both have been measured, the re-
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sults indicate that they are positively, although not strongly related. Further,
subjective homophily is more closely related than is objective
homophily to other variables like frequency of communication and interpersonal
attraction (Rokeach, 1968, p. 63).
Cosmopoliteness
Another concept in current use by communication scholars that also
descended from Simmel’snotion of the stranger is cosmopoliteness, defined
as the degree to which an individual has a relatively high degree of
communication outside of the system (Rogers, 1995,p. 274). Cosmopolites
provide a system with openness, the degree to which a system exchanges
information with its environment (Rogers & Agarwala-Rogers,
1976,p. 140).The concept of cosmopoliteness was developed by Robert
K. Merton (1949, pp. 441-474) in a study of influentials’ media exposure
in Dover, NJ, called “Rovere,” a pseudonym. A national news magazine
(Time)sponsored Merton’s research project in Rovere. It was designed
to determine whether or not the readers of Timewere influential
opinion leaders. An initial sample of 86 respondents were asked to name
individuals who had influenced them in making a decision. Thirty of the
influentials thus identified were then interviewed as to whether they read
Time and various other media. A first cut at the data analysis indicated
that influentials were no more likely to read Time magazine than were
noninfluentials.
Merton then found that the 30 influentials included individuals with
two quite different orientations: locals versus cosmopolitans. For a local
influential, “Rovere is essentially his world” (Merton, 1949, p. 477).
Locals were wedded to Rovere for life and had lived there for a long
period. They identified strongly with the community, were well known
by other residents, and mainly read local media. In contrast, cosmopolitans
were more mobile, more highly educated, traveled widely, and had
friendship networks with individuals outside of the community. Every
one of the 14cosmopolitans in Merton’s study read either The New York
Times or the New York Herald Tribune,or both. Time magazine readers
were especially likely to be cosmopolitans (Merton, 1949, p. 462).
Merton traced his concepts of local and cosmopolitan to Ferdinand
Tonnies’s (1940)concepts of gemeinschaft (community)and gesellschaft
(society) and to Simmel, whom Merton called “that man of innumerable
seminal ideas” (1949, p. 458). Merton does not specifically cite
Simmel’s writing about the stranger as the source of his idea of the local/
cosmopolite, although he had been exposed to Simmel’s concept of the
stranger while he was enrolled in doctoral study at Harvard University
in the 1930s (Levine, Carter, & Gorman, 1976).Merton also read Park
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Georg Simmel
and Burgess’s (1921) Introduction to the Science of Sociology, which
included a translation of Simmel’s writing on the stranger. Merton had
acquired a personal copy of Simmel’s(1908)Soziologie,which contained
Simmel’s concept of the stranger, on a trip to Europe in 1937,and thereafter
gave concentrated attention to Simmel’s theories in his course at
Columbia University on the history of sociological theory (Levineet al.,
1976).
Why is the stranger a cosmopolite, oriented outside of the system and
with a relatively high degree of communication with others outside of
the system? The stranger differs from the other members of the system,
perhaps due in part to his or her recency of joining the system. Wood
stated: “A stranger who has entered a group for the first time is outside
the system of relationships which unite the group” (1934, p. 8).This
external orientation frees the stranger from the norms and expectations
of the system, and also sets the stranger at a certain social distance from
others in the system. Thus the stranger perceives the system in a different
light than the host and is freer to consider new ideas, especially those
from external sources.
Later scholars changed Merton’s noun of “cosmopolitan” to a conceptual
variable, “cosmopoliteness,” thus convertingMerton’s ideal types
of cosmopolitan and local to a continuous variable (Rogers, 1995, p.
274).The concept of cosmopoliteness has been applied in organizational
research, where the individuals high in cosmopoliteness may be called
boundury-spanners (Thompson, 1967;Janowitz & Delany, 1957).Cosmopolites
have been found to be concentrated at the top and at the
bottom of many organizations (Rogers & Agarwala-Rogers, 1976,
p. 67).
Research on the diffusion of innovations has also made extensive use
of the concept of cosmopoliteness (Rogers, 1962,1995). For example,
one of the earliest and most influential diffusion studies was an investigation
of the spread of hybrid seed corn among Iowa farmers (Ryan &
Gross, 1943). Farmers who were more innovative in adopting the new
seed traveled more often to cities like Des Moines. A similar relationship
between innovativeness (defined as the degree to which an individual is
relatively earlier than others in adopting new ideas) and cosmopoliteness
was also found in a study of the diffusion of a new medical drug among
doctors (Coleman,Katz, & Menzel, 1966).More innovative physicians
traveled more often to out-of-town medical specialty meetings.
Individuals who travel widely, such as those who sojourn to live for a
time in another culture, are of particular interest to intercultural scholars,
because they have a high degree of contact with culturally unlike
individuals, both while sojourning, and to a certain degree, on their reentry
(Rogers & Steinfatt, 1999).
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Communication
Theory
The Fieldof InterculturalCommunication
Georg Simmelprovided one conceptual foundation for the field of intercultural
communication, defined previously as the exchange of information
between individuals who are unalike culturally (Rogers& Steinfatt,
1999).
Beginningsof the Fieldof InterculturalCommunication
Edward T. Hall and the staff of the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), in
Washington, DC, in the period from 1951 to 1955 established the field
of intercultural communication (Leeds-Hurwitz,1990;Rogers & Steinfatt,
1999).At that time, the United States had emerged as a leading world
power, but American diplomats seldom understood the culture, or knew
the national language, of the country in which they were posted. U.S.
diplomats were relatively ineffective, compared to those of other nations.
The FSI was created in 1946 as a unit within the U.S. Department
of State to train and retrain American diplomats and technical assistance
workers.
At first, Hall and his anthropological and linguistics colleagues in the
FSI taught the participants about the anthropological concept of culture
and about the specific culture of the nation in which they were to be
assigned. The FSI participants also took intensive language classes that
were taught by native speakers. This language training was quite successful,
but the anthropological training was considered ineffective by
the FSI participants. They told Hall that they needed to communicate
across cultures, and thus wanted to understand intercultural differences,
rather than to study anthropological understandings of the single culture
in which they were to work.
So,Hall, in collaboration with GeorgeL. Trager,a linguisttrained in the
Whorf-Sapirtradition of linguisticrelati~ity,’~created a new approach that
Hall called “intercultural communication.’’ At the FSI, intercultural communicationmeant
communication between individualsof differentnational
cultures. Hall concluded: “Culture is communication and communication
is culture” (1959, p. 186),an interrelationship previously recognized by
Simmel (Levineet al., 1976).Hall’s important book, The Silent Language,
as its name implies, focused on nonverbal communication, and, more
broadly, oninterculturalcommunication.Hall’s book wasverywidelyread,14
and contributed toward the establishment, over the following decade, to
the teaching of university courses in intercultural comm~nication.’~The
courses in this new field were taught in departments of communication,
rather than in anthropology or linguistics (Leeds-Hurwitz,1990;Rogers &
Steinfatt, 1999).Hall did not cite Simmel’stheory of the stranger in The
Silent Language,nor in any of his books or other publications dealing with
interculturalcommunication (Rogers&Steinfatt,1999).Hallcredited Benjamin
Lee Whorf for his influence on Hall’s conceptualization of intercul-
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Ceorg Simmel
tural communication (1959, pp. 118-120) and Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic
theory for Hall’s investigation of the out-of-awareness aspects
of nonverbal communication (Hall, 1959, pp. 59-60; 1992, pp.
The Broadeningof Intercultural Communication
As teaching and research in intercultural communication developed over
the decades, the meaning of “culture” in intercultural communication
broadened from Hall’s original conception of national culture to any
type of culture or co-culture. Intercultural communication came to mean
communication between individuals who differed in important ways.
They might differ in ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age, gender, lifestyle,
or in other ways. This broadened definition of the field is reflected in
most intercultural communication textbooks today.
A key figure in this broadening of the fieldwas William B. Gudykunst,
a professor of communication at California State University, Fullerton.
While Gudykunst was studying for his MA degree in sociology, he encountered
Simmel’s concept of the stranger, and, some years later, emphasized
this concept in his efforts to define the field of intercultural
communication. In a 1983 article published in the InternationalJournal
of Intercultural Communication,a leading scholarly journal in intercultural
communication, Gudykunst laid out his basic applications of
Simmel’s concept. This perspective was later carried through in a textbook,
coauthored with another intercultural communication scholar,
Young Yun Kim, at the University of Oklahoma, Communicating with
Strangers: An Approach to Intercultural Communication (Gudykunst
& Kim, 1984/1993/1997). Here and in other writings, Gudykunst argued
that the stranger is perceived as unfamiliar by other members of
the system, and thus a high degree of uncertainty is involved, as the
stranger’s counterpart does not possess adequate personal and other information
about the stranger, at least initially. In this sense, the stranger
is an individual different from oneself (Sorrells, 1997).This definition is
indeed broad, and is close to the concept of heterophily. A stranger spans
boundaries through heterophilous communication with others.
Gudykunst and Kim conceptualized communication with a stranger
as the key intellectual device to broaden the meaning of intercultural
communication (1997, p. 49). The cultural differences could involve
national culture, or some other type of culture, such as organizational
culture or the culture of the deaf. So Gudykunst and Kim utilized the
concept of the stranger as a unifying theoretical theme for the study of
intercultural communication. Gudykunst’s argument that intercultural
communication should be conceptually based on the notion of communication
with a stranger has been accepted by some other intercultural
communication scholars, in both their textbooks (Rogers & Steinfatt,
1999)and other publications (Sorrells, 1997).The Gudykunst and Kim
241-256).
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textbook was the sixth most-highly cited book in the Interculturallournal
of Zntercultural Relations from 1983 to 1996 (Hart, 1998). Citations
to Simmel’s concept of the stranger, however, are practically nonexistent
in the contemporary literature in intercultural communication.
Paths NotTaken
How would the field of intercultural communication be different today
if it recognized more clearly its intellectual connections to Simmel’sconcept
of the stranger?Simmel called attention to the degree of perceived
distance between two or more individuals as a fundamental dimension
in understanding human behavior. The stranger was a kind of ideal type
for Simmel, representing communication between distanced people. If
intercultural communication scholars traced their field more directly to
Simmel rather than to the scholarship of Edward T. Hall, they might
have been earlier in conceptualizing the distinctive quality of intercultural
communication as centering on information exchange between distanced
individuals who are usually unalike (heterophilous)in important
ways that affect their communication. The more limited, original perspective
of intercultural communication as communication between
people of different national cultures stemmed from the Foreign Service
Institute’s applied objective of training American diplomats for international
assignments. This more constricted scope of intercultural communication
is represented in Hall’s The Silent Language (1959).
If intercultural communication scholars recognized their intellectual
debt to Simmelmore fully, perhaps they would have focused more closely
on the uncertaintyI6that usually is involved in intercultural communication
(Rogers& Steinfatt, 1999).How do individuals reduce this uncertainty
by means of communication with relative strangers (whoare relatively
difficult to communicate with)?How does one begin a conversation
with a stranger who is completely unknown?What role does empathy,
weak network links (Granovetter, 1973),and other communication
concepts play in understanding communication with strangers? These
research questions, and other scholarly paths not taken, might have been
explored if intercultural communication scholars had more closely understood
their academic ancestry. “The notion of the stranger is a powerful
and relevant concept for the field of intercultural communication”
(Sorrells, 1997).
Conclusions
The present essay traced the intellectual descendants of Georg Simmel’s
concept of the stranger from its original publication in German in 1908,
through its English translations in 1921 by Park and Burgess (Simmel,
1921)and in 1950 by Wolff (Simmel, 1950),into contemporary applications.
Simmel defined the stranger as an individual who is a member of
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Georg Simmel
a system, but who is not strongly attached to the system. This relative
freedom from the norms of the system allows the stranger to enjoy certain
unique qualities: He or she may be able to view the system from a
different (and perhaps more objective) perspective, which might be appropriate
for social scientific investigations of the system, maintained
Robert E. Park.
Simmel’sfollowers spun off four concepts related to Simmel’sstranger:
social distance, the marginal man, heterophily, and cosmopoliteness.
Social distance is the degree to which an individual perceives a lack of
intimacy with individuals different in ethnicity, race, religion, occupation,
or other variables. Marginal man is an individual who lives in two
different worlds, in both of which the individual is a stranger. Heterophily
is the degree to which two or more individuals who interact are unalike.
Cosmopoliteness is the degree to which an individual has a relatively
high degree of communication outside of the system.
Simmel’s original concept of the stranger, and the four concepts derived
from it, are all relational in nature. They deal with the interpersonal
relationships of the individual to other individuals or to the system
of which the individual is a part, or both. Fundamental to Simmel’s
general theoretical perspective were the strengths and weaknesses of intimate
versusdistant relationships, between both the individual and others
and the individual and the system.
Although it has not been widely appreciated, Simmelwas, in an intellectual
sense, one forefather of intercultural communication.
Everett M. Rogers is professor, Department of Communication and Journalism, University of New
Mexico. The author expresses his thanks to Rolf Wigand, professor in the School of Information
Studies at Syracuse University,and to Kathyrn Sorrells, University of New Mexico, for their critical
reading of an earlier draft of the present essay. Many of the ideas expressed here are based on
Rogers and Steinfatt (1999).The present paper draws upon archival materials in the E. T. Hall
Papers, Special Collections, University of Arizona Library, and upon a graduate course in intercultural
communication taught by Edward T. Hall at the University of New Mexico in 1997.
Author
’ One notable exception to the general lack of recognition of Simmel by communication scholars
is the Gudykunst and Kim (1984/1992/1997)textbook in intercultural communication entitled
Communicating with Strangers, which quoted from Simmel’s (1950) original description of the
stranger and which utilizes the stranger as its main perspective for explaining interculturalcommunication.
A similar reference to Simmel’s stranger as a basic idea in understanding intercultural
communication is provided by Gudykunst (1983, 1993).
Simmel’stheoretical perspective was one of the intellectualbases for the symbolicinteractionist
viewpoint developed by the Chicago School of Sociology during 1915-1935 (Rogers, 1994, p.
170).
’ This dimension of social distance that Simmel saw as fundamental to his conception of human
communication was the root notion for his concept of the stranger and thus was central to the
concepts of social distance, the marginal man, cosmopoliteness,and hornophily-heterophilydeveloped
later by other scholars. Simrneldid not specify exactly how to measure social distance (Simmel
Notes
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Theory
was mainly a theoretician, unconcerned with empirical study). Perhaps the operational vagueness
of Simmel’s concept encouraged the variety of its intellectual descendants.
Simmel’soriginal writing about the concept of the stranger first appeared in German in 1908 on
pages685-691 ofhis Soziologie: Untersuchungenuber die Formen der Vergesellschaftung.This work
was translated by Park and Burgess(Simmel,1921, pp. 322-327) and Wolff (1950,pp. 402408).
’ Thus, a stranger ischaracterized by a low degree of cohesion,defined by social psychologists as
the degree to which an individual fulfills the role expectations of a system (Camvright & Zander,
1953/1968).
Stranger communities exist, in addition to stranger individuals. Examples are Jews in America,
Koreans in Los Angeles, and Indians in Tanzania. Both strangers and stranger communities have
been found to be particularly entrepreneurial because of the selectivity of who migrates and of the
migrants’ general nonconformity to the norms of the system.
’ A review of various literary works concerning the stranger is provided by Sorrells (1997).
Small had been a fellow student with Simmel at the University of Berlin in 1880, and they
The development of the Chicago School of Sociology and its emphasis upon objectivity are
By 1959,30years after the original publication of his social distance scale,Bogardus (1959,pp.
Many of these studies are summarized by Rogers and Bhowmik (1970).
Lazarsfeld and Merton (1964,p. 63)cited Georg Simmel(l950)and Robert E. Park and Ernest
W. Burgess (1921),along with other scholars, as the source of their conception of homophilyheterophily.
Merton indicated (in a personal communication cited in Levine et al., 1976, p. 819)
that his interest in Simmel’s theories originated in Talcott Parson’s doctoral course in sociological
theory at Harvard University in the early 1930sand in reading the selections by Simmelin Park and
Burgess’s sociology textbook.
Trager had been a colleague of Benjamin Lee Whorf and Edward Sapir at Yale University from
1936to 1938,when the perspective of linguistic relativity, defined as the degree to which language
influences human thought and meanings, was developed (Carroll, 194011956,pp. 1-34).
Some505,000copies of The Silent Language were sold from 1961to 1969 (letter to Edward T.
Hall from June Layton at his publisher, dated March 19,1969, E. T. Hall Papers, Box 41, Folder 4,
Special Collections, University of Arizona Library).
Professor Mitchell Hammer, a professor at American University, recalls that when he was enrolled
in doctoral study of intercultural communication at the University of Minnesota in the late
1970s, “TheSilent Language was our Bible” (personal communication, March 20, 1998).
Uncertainty is an individual’s inability to predict or to understand some situation because of a
lack of information about alternatives.
maintained a close collegial relationship thereafter (Christakes, 1978).
documented in over 700 publications, which are summarized by Rogers (1994, pp. 137-202).
97-101) cited 57 articles and books with “social distance” in their title.
I ’
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