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Sociability

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DOI: 10.1002/9781118568446.eurs0483

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 The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies

Sociability

Journal: The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies

Manuscript ID EURS0483.R1

Wiley - Manuscript type: Entry

Date Submitted by the Author: n/a

Complete List of Authors: Garcia Cabeza, Marisol; University of Barcelona, Sociology

Tegelaars, Michiel; European University Institute, Library

Keywords: civilization, digital media, self and identity, social capital, social media

Free Text Keywords: civility, public space

Sociability refers to different forms of social interaction and human

association. The concept, in both descriptive and normative senses, can be
found in many branches of study. In sociology the concept occupied a
central place in the work of Georg Simmel who developed and presented it
as a sociological ideal type. He saw sociability as a pure form of association
in which individuals interact with their material interests and passions held
in abeyance for the sake of the mutual enjoyment of each others’
Abstract: company. After him a good many scholars have elaborated on the concept,
either extending, criticizing or attempting to measure it. In cultural and
social historiography the concept of sociability has been used to focus on
the many places and occasions and ways in which people have come
together, spontaneously and voluntarily, outside the formal institutions of
their societies. Modern views of sociability incorporate the concept in the
study of Internet-mediated social relations, in urban planning, and in the
formation of newer concepts such as social capital and social cohesion.
Page 1 of 12 The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies

Headword/Title

Sociability

ID Number: EURSXXXX

Your Name Marisol García and Michiel Tegelaars

Email Addresses marisolgarcia@ub.edu Michiel.Tegelaars@EUI.eu

Word Count: 2545

In daily parlance the term sociability indicates an individual quality: the ease or inclination
for interacting with others. In Psychology this trait has received ample attention for both
adults (Argyle, 2014, pp. 149-150) and children (Schaffer, 1971). In other academic
disciplines the concept of sociability is used differently and refers rather to the social forms
that individual sociability gives rise to. Among these are Philosophy, History, Sociology,
Economics, Political science, and even Urban planning. Each of these approaches highlights
different aspects of the overall concept.
Within western philosophy since the Renaissance the idea of sociability figured in the
larger debate on human ontology: whether human beings are innately drawn to one
another or are self-interested individuals first and members of society second through some
version of a social contract (Kant, 1963;Todorov, 2001). In his fourth thesis in his essay Idea
for a Universal History Kant finds in man’s “unsocial sociability” the very germ of civilization
(1963, p. 15). In modern philosophy the “Ethics of sociability” explores the ethical dilemmas
and implications of being social.
The idea of sociability also manifested itself from the early modern age onwards and
especially during the period of the Enlightenment when thinkers sought to outline a sphere
separate from both State and Church where people would meet as equals (Gordon, 2017).
The very term “society” entered the lexicon during the sixteenth century to denote this
idea. Interestingly, in the Muslim world where mercantile values and religion were not in
opposition, “trade … was a branch of sociability, to be savoured as much for the pleasures of
human contact, conversation and haggling as for the monetary profits “ (Zeldin, 1995, p.
156)
Much more recently sociability became an important theme for historians when
social and cultural historical research started to address the many forms and methods of
human associations at all levels of society and the changing behaviours that people adopted
among themselves. In England, Germany and France the works of three historians have
greatly influenced this field. Peter Burke describes how from the 15th to the 17th century
the upper classes withdrew from the popular gatherings of festivals, fairs and games of
popular entertainment to private spaces of sociability (Burke, 2009, p. 375). . In the 17th
and 18th century the salon became the socially intimate place where European sociability
occurred and where good manners (civilité) were considered essential. Already in the
 The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies Page 2 of 12

sixteenth century this idea appeared in the short treatise by Erasmus of Rotterdam, De
civilitate morum puerilium. This didactic book spoke of the rules for bodily behaviour and
proper manners to be shown in society. These were crucial elements in the “civilizing
process”, a term coined by Norbert Elias who tells us that Erasmus’ treatise comes at a time
of social regrouping in between the loosening of medieval hierarchy and before modern
times (Elias, 2000, p. 45ff.) First, the salon supplanted the public squares, later on, cafés,
social clubs, academies and museums emerged as the spaces of sociability in most European
countries in relation to the consumption of culture and goods. Many of these institutions
required membership, others like cafés, opened up the opportunity for equalising
sociability. But in all places bodily and social behaviour, self-restraint and decorum became
part of the individual self and were practiced in company. Unlike Elias, the German
philosopher Jürgen Habermas located the origins of modern sociability and civil society
outside of the realm of court society (Cowan, 2012).
For France Maurice Agulhon has analysed manifestations of sociability over centuries and
chronicled, in a series of works, many instances of people coming together voluntarily and
collectively without being motivated by legal, political, professional or family reasons
(Agulhon, 1966, 1977, 1984, 2012).
The German sociologist Georg Simmel presented his analysis of the concept of
sociability in a German sociology conference in 1910. His contribution was later translated
into English, published in the American Journal of Sociology in 1949, and cited ever since
(Simmel, 1949). He later included a chapter on sociability in his late work, Grundfragen der
Soziologie 1917, translated by Kurt Wolff (Wolff, 1950, pp. 40-57). His concept of sociability
is an ideal type of a specific sociological structure in which participants come together, not
for instrumental motives, but simply for the satisfaction of being with others. If real
interests, whether aligned or clashing, do not determine the participants’ behaviour any
restraint comes through self regulation, i.e. tact, discretion and manners, regardless of
riches, position, fame, learning or other merit. Neither do deeply personal qualities,
intimate feelings, or mood impinge on the relationship. Thus interests and passions are the
upper and lower boundaries of this type of association. The intrusion of either changes the
pure essence of association and makes it about content rather than form. Contact, speech
and exchange would then become instruments of objective or subjective purpose.
Sociability is therefore marked by radical equality, with each person’s pleasure in it
contingent on that of the others. Perhaps consonant with the time in which he wrote,
Simmel asserts that sociability is difficult to bring off across class divides (1949, p. 257).
Later authors have looked for common human traits that might yet lead to disinterested
sociability, perhaps somewhat stretching the concept, such as in multiethnic
neighbourhoods (Germain, 2006). Simmel briefly traces the emergence of this type of
association back to medieval aristocratic circles. Through time the concrete ends of such
gatherings were replaced by mere forms, a court-society etiquette without reference to any
reality outside the group. This reduction could have become a caricature were it not for the
esthetic quality of a symbolic performance exhibiting the “sublimated dynamics of social
existence and its riches” (1949, p. 261). Simmel sees parallels with the fields of art and of
play in which form rather than content is central.
Page 3 of 12 The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies

The study of sociability and the play of human association and its role in human
experience was carried forward by Erving Goffman who saw, differently from Simmel, the
realm of sociability as subject to outside pressures (Davis, 1997). He locates social
interaction within the frame of an “interaction order” (Goffman, 1983). In such order there
are established standards known by the individual. Participants in social gatherings are
normally well aware of attributes that are created outside the specific gathering status,
merit, etc.. Moreover, the individual perceives the premises that regulate and constrain the
social interaction, such as the moral standards or the rules of decorum (Goffman, 1956, p.
66ff.).
Goffman’s analysis developed a detailed method in which the context of social
interaction is highly relevant to understanding what happens in social situations. There are
restrictions of time and space in situations of interaction. He refers to the region, where
individuals develop scene resources defined as the medium. The individual can move
between regions, some of them more ritualised than others and with a variety of
limitations. For Goffman all social interactions are meaningful and express the complexities
of social structures. In sociability the individual is fundamentally concerned with the “self-
image” as he experiences vulnerability: “In the presence of others we become vulnerable ...
and command the resources to make others similarly vulnerable to us”. This vulnerability is
both physical and psychological (1983, p. 4). In fact, the world of sociability, although it is a
world in which “a democracy of the equally privileged is possible without frictions” in the
words of Wolff (Simmel, 1950, p. 48) it is, at the same time, a world in which the individual
invests more in the preservation of the “self-image” than in the “self”.
Goffman’s emphasis on the interrelation between the interaction order and macro
structures goes even further. Not only can the workings of the interaction order be seen as
“the consequences of systems of enabling conventions” where social control is exercised
collectively. In ceremonial gatherings and celebrations, such as public festivals, further
consequences for macrostructures can ensue. For example, what started as the Notting Hill
multi-ethnic carnival became a space for political organization of West Indians in London
(1983, p. 10).
Goffman is not the first observer of this double function of public space. As Mumford
reminds us, the Athenian agora was not only a market place, it was “above all a place for
palaver” (1961, p. 149). The open space of the agora served as a an “informal club” where
Athenians found their friends casually if they waited around long enough. Thus the agora
combined many important urban functions – citizenship, commerce, religion and sociability.
Since then public spaces of sociability have existed in all cities, whether as Mediterranean
plazas and piazzas, or public parks in northern cities.
In the United States Jane Jacobs has given a good description of what may be called
“street sociability” in which a number of the features singled out by Simmel can be
recognised: “…it is possible in a city-street neighbourhood to know all kinds of people
without unwelcome entanglements, without boredom, necessity for excuses, explanations,
fears of giving offence, embarrassments respecting impositions or commitments, and all
such paraphernalia of obligations which can accompany less limited relationships. It is
 The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies Page 4 of 12

possible to be on excellent sidewalk terms with people who are very different from oneself,
and even, as time passes, on familiar public terms with them.” (Jacobs, 1977, pp. 72-73). She
emphasizes the importance of the human scale of public spaces. Modern urban planners
have made the concept of sociability their own and are concerned with the physical aspects
of public spaces that make them conducive to human contact and meaningful interaction
(Mehta, 2014). With urban growth accelerating all over the world the experiential quality of
city life is becoming ever more important, in which sociability figures largely (Southworth,
2016).

A new type of public space has come into existence with the creation and spread of
the Internet, the devices to access it, and the emergence of social media. Sociologists were
quick to see the need to study this new field of social relations (DiMaggio, 2001) and online
sociability is one of the areas they addressed as “distinct from information seeking,
commercial activity, and the use of online media for politics” (Schroeder, 2016, p. 5626).

The discipline of economics has also discovered sociability. The value that people
receive from associating with their fellows has been given the name of Relational Goods
defined as “local public goods which need to be co-produced in order to be enjoyed
together” (Becchetti, 2011). The positive payoff from sociability helps to understand why
“rational individuals” would want to associate with others (Uhlaner, 1989).

The notion of Social Capital, embraced and promoted by academics and policy
makers alike, has people’s participation in voluntary groups as one of the elements that
make up this complex concept. The attempt to quantify the concept is one of the
distinguishing features in the work of Robert Putnam who lists sociability among the
indicators in his Social Capital Index (Putnam, 2001a;Putnam, 2001b). Likewise, sociability
enters into another concept used in urban policy making: Social cohesion, reflecting the
“willingness of members of a society to cooperate with each other in order to survive and
prosper” (Stanley, 2003).

Cross references
EURS0444
EURS0214
EURS0472
EURS0473
EURS0478
EURS0482
EURS0484
EURS0300
EURS0519
EURS0524

References

Agulhon, M. 1966. La sociabilité méridionale: Confréries et associations dans la vie collective en

Provence orientale à la fin du XVIIIe siècle Vol. XXXVI. Aix-en-Provence: La Pensée
Universitaire.
Page 5 of 12 The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies

Agulhon, M. 1977. Le cercle dans la France bourgeoise, 1810-1848. Etude d'une mutation de
sociabilité. Paris: Librairie Armand Colin.
Agulhon, M. 1984. Pénitents et francs-maçons de l'ancienne Provence : Essai sur la sociabilité
méridionale Nouvelle édition ed.. Paris: Fayard.
Agulhon, M. 2012. Préface. In H. Leuwers, J.-P. Barrière & B. Lefebvre Eds., Élites et sociabilité au
XIXe siècle Vol. Histoire et littérature de l'Europe du Nord-Ouest, pp. 5-8. Villeneuve d'Ascq:
IRHiS.
Argyle, M. 2014. Cooperation : the basis of sociability. London: Routledge.
Becchetti, L., Trovato, G., & Londono Bedoya, D. A. 2011. Income, relational goods and happiness.
[doi: 10.1080/00036840802570439]. Applied Economics, 433, 273-290.
Burke, P. 2009. Popular culture in early modern Europe 3rd ed.. Farnham, England; Burlington, VT:
Ashgate.
Cowan, B. 2012. Public spaces, knowledge and sociability. In F. Trentmann Ed., The Oxford Handbook
of the History of Consumption pp. 251. Oxford: OUP Oxford.
Davis, M. S. 1997. Georg Simmel and Erving Goffman: Legitimators of the sociological investigation
of human experience. Qualitative Sociology, 203, 369-388.
DiMaggio, P., Hargittai, E., Neuman, W. R., & Robinson, J. P. 2001. Social Implications of the Internet.
Annual Review of Sociology, 271, 307-336.
Elias, N. 2000. The civilizing process : Sociogenetic and psychogenetic investigations. Translated by
Edmund Jephcott with some notes and corrections by the author 2nd rev. ed., Eric Dunning,
Johan Goudsblom and Stephen Mennell ed.. Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Germain, A., & Radice, M. 2006. Cosmopolitanism by default: Public sociability in Montreal. In J.
Binnie, J. Holloway, S. Millington & C. Young Eds., Cosmopolitan urbanism pp. 112-130:
Psychology Press.
Goffman, E. 1956. The presentation of self in everyday life. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, Social
Sciences Research Centre.
Goffman, E. 1983. The Interaction Order: American Sociological Association, 1982 Presidential
Address. American Sociological Review, 481, 1-17.
Gordon, D. 2017. Citizens Without Sovereignty: Equality and Sociability in French Thought, 1670–
1789. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Jacobs, J. 1977. The death and life of great American cities. Harmondsworth [u.a.: Penguin Books.
Kant, I. 1963. Idea for a universal history from a cosmopolitan point of view. In and with an
introduction by Lewis White Beck Ed., On History pp. 11-26. New York: Macmillan.
Mehta, V. 2014. The street: a quintessential social public space. New York: Routledge.
Mumford, L. 1961. The city in history : its origins, its transformations, and its prospects. New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Putnam, R. D. 2001a. Bowling alone : the collapse and revival of American community. New York, NY:
Simon & Schuster.
Putnam, R. D. 2001b. Social Capital: Measurement and Consequences. Isuma: Canadian Journal of
Policy Research = Revue canadienne de recherche sur les politiques, 21, 41-51.
Schaffer, H. R. 1971. The growth of sociability. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Schroeder, R. 2016. The Globalization of On-Screen Sociability: Social Media and Tethered
Togetherness. International Journal of Communication, 10, 5626–5643.
Simmel, G. 1949. The sociology of sociability. American journal of sociology, 553, 254-261.
Southworth, M. 2016. Learning to make liveable cities. [doi: 10.1080/13574809.2016.1220152].
Journal of Urban Design, 215, 570-573.
Stanley, D. 2003. What Do We Know about Social Cohesion: The Research Perspective of the Federal
Government's Social Cohesion Research Network. The Canadian Journal of Sociology /
Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, 281, 5-17.
Todorov, T. 2001. Life in Common: An Essay in General Anthropology: University of Nebraska Press.
 The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies Page 6 of 12

Uhlaner, C. J. 1989. "Relational Goods" and Participation: Incorporating Sociability into a Theory of
Rational Action. Public Choice, 623, 253-285.
Wolff, K. H., & Simmel, G. 1950. The sociology of Georg Simmel: Translated, edited and with an
introduction by Kurt H. Wollf. N.Y.: Free Press.
Zeldin, T. 1995. An intimate history of humanity. London: Minerva.

Suggested Reading
Jacobs, J. 1977. The death and life of great American cities. Harmondsworth [u.a.: Penguin Books.
Putnam, R. D. 2001. Bowling alone : the collapse and revival of American community. New York, NY:
Simon & Schuster.
Schroeder, R. 2016. The Globalization of On-Screen Sociability: Social Media and Tethered
Togetherness. International Journal of Communication, 10, 5626–5643.
Simmel, G. 1949. The sociology of sociability. American journal of sociology, 553, 254-261.
Page 7 of 12 The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies

Headword/Title

Sociability

ID Number: EURS0483

Your Name Marisol García and Michiel Tegelaars

Email Addresses marisolgarcia@ub.edu Michiel.Tegelaars@EUI.eu

Word Count of Abstract plus Article: 2011

Abstract

Sociability refers to different forms of social interaction and human association. The
concept, in both descriptive and normative senses, can be found in many branches of study.
In sociology the concept occupied a central place in the work of Georg Simmel who
developed and presented it as a sociological ideal type. He saw sociability as a pure form of
association in which individuals interact with their material interests and passions held in
abeyance for the sake of the mutual enjoyment of each others’ company. After him a good
many scholars have elaborated on the concept, either extending, criticizing or attempting to
measure it. In cultural and social historiography the concept of sociability has been used to
focus on the many places and occasions and ways in which people have come together,
spontaneously and voluntarily, outside the formal institutions of their societies. Modern
views of sociability incorporate the concept in the study of Internet-mediated social
relations, in urban planning, and in the formation of newer concepts such as social capital
and social cohesion.

In daily parlance the term sociability indicates an individual quality: the ease or inclination
for interacting with others. In Psychology this trait has received ample attention for both
adults (Argyle, 2014, pp. 149-150) and children (Schaffer, 1971). In other academic
disciplines the concept of sociability is used differently and refers rather to the social forms
that individual sociability gives rise to. Among these are Philosophy, History, Sociology,
Economics, Political science, and even Urban planning. Each of these approaches highlights
different aspects of the overall concept.
Within western philosophy since the Renaissance the idea of sociability figured in the
larger debate on human ontology: whether human beings are innately drawn to one
another or are self-interested individuals first and members of society second through some
version of a social contract (Kant, 1963;Todorov, 2001). In his fourth thesis in his essay Idea
for a Universal History Kant finds in man’s “unsocial sociability” the very germ of civilization
(1963, p. 15). In modern philosophy the “Ethics of sociability” explores the ethical dilemmas
and implications of being social.
The idea of sociability also manifested itself from the early modern age onwards and
especially during the period of the Enlightenment when thinkers sought to outline a sphere

1
 The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies Page 8 of 12

separate from both State and Church where people would meet as equals (Gordon, 2017).
The very term “society” entered the lexicon during the sixteenth century to denote this
idea. Interestingly, in the Muslim world where mercantile values and religion were not in
opposition, “trade … was a branch of sociability, to be savoured as much for the pleasures of
human contact, conversation and haggling as for the monetary profits “ (Zeldin, 1995, p.
156)
Much more recently sociability became an important theme for historians when
social and cultural historical research started to address the many forms and methods of
human associations at all levels of society and the changing behaviours that people adopted
among themselves. In England, Germany and France the works of three historians have
greatly influenced this field. Peter Burke describes how from the 15th to the 17th century
the upper classes withdrew from the popular gatherings of festivals, fairs and games of
popular entertainment to private spaces of sociability (Burke, 2009, p. 375). . In the 17th
and 18th century the salon became the socially intimate place where European sociability
occurred and where good manners (civilité) were considered essential. Already in the
sixteenth century this idea appeared in the short treatise by Erasmus of Rotterdam, De
civilitate morum puerilium. This didactic book spoke of the rules for bodily behaviour and
proper manners to be shown in society. These were crucial elements in the “civilizing
process”, a term coined by Norbert Elias who tells us that Erasmus’ treatise comes at a time
of social regrouping in between the loosening of medieval hierarchy and before modern
times (Elias, 2000, p. 45ff.) First, the salon supplanted the public squares, later on, cafés,
social clubs, academies and museums emerged as the spaces of sociability in most European
countries in relation to the consumption of culture and goods. Many of these institutions
required membership, others like cafés, opened up the opportunity for equalising
sociability. But in all places bodily and social behaviour, self-restraint and decorum became
part of the individual self and were practiced in company. Unlike Elias, the German
philosopher Jürgen Habermas located the origins of modern sociability and civil society
outside of the realm of court society (Cowan, 2012).
For France Maurice Agulhon has analysed manifestations of sociability over centuries and
chronicled, in a series of works, many instances of people coming together voluntarily and
collectively without being motivated by legal, political, professional or family reasons
(Agulhon, 1966, 1977, 1984, 2012).
The German sociologist Georg Simmel presented his analysis of the concept of
sociability in a German sociology conference in 1910. His contribution was later translated
into English, published in the American Journal of Sociology in 1949, and cited ever since
(Simmel, 1949). He later included a chapter on sociability in his late work, Grundfragen der
Soziologie 1917, translated by Kurt Wolff (Wolff, 1950, pp. 40-57). His concept of sociability
is an ideal type of a specific sociological structure in which participants come together, not
for instrumental motives, but simply for the satisfaction of being with others. If real
interests, whether aligned or clashing, do not determine the participants’ behaviour any
restraint comes through self regulation, i.e. tact, discretion and manners, regardless of
riches, position, fame, learning or other merit. Neither do deeply personal qualities,
intimate feelings, or mood impinge on the relationship. Thus interests and passions are the
upper and lower boundaries of this type of association. The intrusion of either changes the

2
Page 9 of 12 The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies

pure essence of association and makes it about content rather than form. Contact, speech
and exchange would then become instruments of objective or subjective purpose.
Sociability is therefore marked by radical equality, with each person’s pleasure in it
contingent on that of the others. Perhaps consonant with the time in which he wrote,
Simmel asserts that sociability is difficult to bring off across class divides (1949, p. 257).
Later authors have looked for common human traits that might yet lead to disinterested
sociability, perhaps somewhat stretching the concept, such as in multiethnic
neighbourhoods (Germain, 2006). Simmel briefly traces the emergence of this type of
association back to medieval aristocratic circles. Through time the concrete ends of such
gatherings were replaced by mere forms, a court-society etiquette without reference to any
reality outside the group. This reduction could have become a caricature were it not for the
esthetic quality of a symbolic performance exhibiting the “sublimated dynamics of social
existence and its riches” (1949, p. 261). Simmel sees parallels with the fields of art and of
play in which form rather than content is central.
The study of sociability and the play of human association and its role in human
experience was carried forward by Erving Goffman who saw, differently from Simmel, the
realm of sociability as subject to outside pressures (Davis, 1997). He locates social
interaction within the frame of an “interaction order” (Goffman, 1983). In such order there
are established standards known by the individual. Participants in social gatherings are
normally well aware of attributes that are created outside the specific gathering status,
merit, etc.. Moreover, the individual perceives the premises that regulate and constrain the
social interaction, such as the moral standards or the rules of decorum (Goffman, 1956, p.
66ff.).
Goffman’s analysis developed a detailed method in which the context of social
interaction is highly relevant to understanding what happens in social situations. There are
restrictions of time and space in situations of interaction. He refers to the region, where
individuals develop scene resources defined as the medium. The individual can move
between regions, some of them more ritualised than others and with a variety of
limitations. For Goffman all social interactions are meaningful and express the complexities
of social structures. In sociability the individual is fundamentally concerned with the “self-
image” as he experiences vulnerability: “In the presence of others we become vulnerable ...
and command the resources to make others similarly vulnerable to us”. This vulnerability is
both physical and psychological (1983, p. 4). In fact, the world of sociability, although it is a
world in which “a democracy of the equally privileged is possible without frictions” in the
words of Wolff (Simmel, 1950, p. 48) it is, at the same time, a world in which the individual
invests more in the preservation of the “self-image” than in the “self”.
Goffman’s emphasis on the interrelation between the interaction order and macro
structures goes even further. Not only can the workings of the interaction order be seen as
“the consequences of systems of enabling conventions” where social control is exercised
collectively. In ceremonial gatherings and celebrations, such as public festivals, further
consequences for macrostructures can ensue. For example, what started as the Notting Hill

3
 The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies Page 10 of 12

multi-ethnic carnival became a space for political organization of West Indians in London
(1983, p. 10).
Goffman is not the first observer of this double function of public space. As Mumford
reminds us, the Athenian agora was not only a market place, it was “above all a place for
palaver” (1961, p. 149). The open space of the agora served as a an “informal club” where
Athenians found their friends casually if they waited around long enough. Thus the agora
combined many important urban functions – citizenship, commerce, religion and sociability.
Since then public spaces of sociability have existed in all cities, whether as Mediterranean
plazas and piazzas, or public parks in northern cities.
In the United States Jane Jacobs has given a good description of what may be called
“street sociability” in which a number of the features singled out by Simmel can be
recognised: “…it is possible in a city-street neighbourhood to know all kinds of people
without unwelcome entanglements, without boredom, necessity for excuses, explanations,
fears of giving offence, embarrassments respecting impositions or commitments, and all
such paraphernalia of obligations which can accompany less limited relationships. It is
possible to be on excellent sidewalk terms with people who are very different from oneself,
and even, as time passes, on familiar public terms with them.” (Jacobs, 1977, pp. 72-73). She
emphasizes the importance of the human scale of public spaces. Modern urban planners
have made the concept of sociability their own and are concerned with the physical aspects
of public spaces that make them conducive to human contact and meaningful interaction
(Mehta, 2014). With urban growth accelerating all over the world the experiential quality of
city life is becoming ever more important, in which sociability figures largely (Southworth,
2016).

A new type of public space has come into existence with the creation and spread of
the Internet, the devices to access it, and the emergence of social media. Sociologists were
quick to see the need to study this new field of social relations (DiMaggio, 2001) and online
sociability is one of the areas they addressed as “distinct from information seeking,
commercial activity, and the use of online media for politics” (Schroeder, 2016, p. 5626).

The discipline of economics has also discovered sociability. The value that people
receive from associating with their fellows has been given the name of Relational Goods
defined as “local public goods which need to be co-produced in order to be enjoyed
together” (Becchetti, 2011). The positive payoff from sociability helps to understand why
“rational individuals” would want to associate with others (Uhlaner, 1989).

The notion of Social Capital, embraced and promoted by academics and policy
makers alike, has people’s participation in voluntary groups as one of the elements that
make up this complex concept. The attempt to quantify the concept is one of the
distinguishing features in the work of Robert Putnam who lists sociability among the
indicators in his Social Capital Index (Putnam, 2001a;Putnam, 2001b). Likewise, sociability
enters into another concept used in urban policy making: Social cohesion, reflecting the
“willingness of members of a society to cooperate with each other in order to survive and
prosper” (Stanley, 2003).

4
Page 11 of 12 The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies

Cross references
EURS0444
EURS0214
EURS0472
EURS0473
EURS0478
EURS0482
EURS0484
EURS0300
EURS0519
EURS0524

References

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Mehta, V. 2014. The street: a quintessential social public space. New York: Routledge.
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Suggested Reading
Jacobs, J. 1977. The death and life of great American cities. Harmondsworth [u.a.: Penguin Books.
Putnam, R. D. 2001. Bowling alone : the collapse and revival of American community. New York, NY:
Simon & Schuster.
Schroeder, R. 2016. The Globalization of On-Screen Sociability: Social Media and Tethered
Togetherness. International Journal of Communication, 10, 5626–5643.
Simmel, G. 1949. The sociology of sociability. American journal of sociology, 553, 254-261.

Short biographies

Marisol Garcia is professor of Sociology at the University of Barcelona (PhD in Sociology and Social
Anthropology, University of Hull; Dr. in Geography and Anthropology, University of Barcelona). Her
scientific work on cities, citizenship, urban social justice, European identity and governance in cities.
She has published widely on issues related to citizenship, cities and social innovation in journals such
as International Journal of Urban and Regional Studies, Urban Studies and Citizenship Studies. Her
latest co-edited book in Spanish, The Time of Citizenship (El Momento de la Ciudadanía), La Catarata,
2018.

Michiel Tegelaars, read Political Science at the University of Amsterdam and Information Science at
University College London. He worked at the University of Amsterdam and at the social science
research institute and doctoral school, the European University Institute, at Florence, Italy as
research and reference librarian and taught information retrieval and bibliographic management.
Co-author (with Marisol Garcia) of “European citizenship in the making: from passive to active
citizens” in The Good Society, PEGS. 2003.

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