Page "Community" Paragraph 6

German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies distinguished between two types of human association: Gemeinschaft ( usually translated as " community ") and Gesellschaft (" society " or " association ").

In his 1887 work, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, Tönnies argued that Gemeinschaft is perceived to be a tighter and more cohesive social entity, due to the presence of a " unity of will.

" He added that family and kinship were the perfect expressions of Gemeinschaft, but that other shared characteristics, such as place or belief, could also result in Gemeinschaft.

This paradigm of communal networks and shared social understanding has been applied to multiple cultures in many places throughout history.

Gesellschaft, on the other hand, is a group in which the individuals who make up that group are motivated to take part in the group purely by self-interest.

He also proposed that in the real world, no group was either pure Gemeinschaft or pure Gesellschaft, but, rather, a mixture of the two will do.