ABSTRACT
In previous chapters, I mentioned how the dichotomies developed by Tönnies, Maine, Durkheim, Wirth, and others lead to the assumption that rural life consists of intimate and personalized primary relationships; and that urban life, in contrast, is characterized by anonymous, segmented, fleeting, and secondary involvements of strangers with no biographical knowledge of each other. This false dichotomy has led many analysts to ignore the anonymity of rural life and the intimacy of urban life. Further, and most significantly in the study of the city, much of the attention has been directed to discover the nature of community. Left at the wayside is the failure to examine in more detail the world of strangers. But just as one can understand social interaction that exists in primary group relationships, one can also examine the social interaction patterns that exist in the world of strangers.
