OK, folks, so what do those obscure German words in the title mean? A German sociologist named Ferdinand Tonnies coined these terms in 1887 to refer to two normal human association types. Roughly speaking, gemeinschaft refers to "community" and gesellschaft refers to "society." What does this mean in theory?

Gemeinschaft is a system of social relations where everybody knows everybody else, decisions are made through informal (as in not written down in law) though traditional and often ritualistic forms. The most important relationships are kinship networks; who your daddy was and what group he belonged to mattered more than what you ever did. Insiders control things; outsiders mean nothing (and the definition of outsiders is strict). Gemeinschafts are often highly inegalitarian, with social structures determined by "organic" notions of economy, family organization and religious grouping. Think small town, pre-industrial, Old South, Appalachian, feudal, high school, etc. These are all different kinds of gemeinschafts - some are more egalitarian (Appalachian) than others (plantation Old South) but they share the same sense of organic "community."

Gesellschaft is a system of social relations characterized more by formalized, bureaucratic, individual-driven processes. Law and money matter more in a gesellschaft than traditional social position or kinship networks. Gesellschafts accept change very easily, but they tend to be more alienating as "nobody knows anybody" outside their small circle of co-workers and friends. Insiders vs. outsiders matters little in a gesellschaft; but there is little sense of local tradition, heritage or pride. It's more possible to achieve success and "move up" in a gesellschaft, but neighborhoods are more likely to be segregated by class, architecture more generic, and people are more likely to be crassly materialistic. Think of a major city, new suburbs, the North, modernity, large university, etc.

These two sociological formulations are not static. And quite often one type morphs into another. After the US Civil War many Southern communities underwent this sort of transformation from plantation-driven gemeinschafts to capitalist-oriented New South cities like Birmingham, Atlanta and Dallas.

But here's where it gets interesting. To smooth the transition from gemeinschaft to gesellschaft, editorialists in favor of the new order - like Atlanta's editor Henry Grady - threw a major cultural bone to the old order in the form of the Lost Cause. The same newspaper that celebrated industrialism in late 19th century Atlanta (the Constitution) printed Uncle Remus stories celebrating the Old South and offered editorials in favor of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. To smooth the way for the new bourgeois order, capitalists had to pay their respects to the plantation lords of the past.

Why do I bring these sociological terms up? Because I think the best way to understand changes in Blount County these days is to think of our community as one changing from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft. You can even think of Jerry Cunningham and the County Commissioners as the sort of bridge. They're sold out to the developers who are profiting off the transformation even as they lament the loss of their own traditional authority (think of the complaints about the "new" Daily Times). I see evidence of this painful shift all the time, including: complaints about traffic and "rude" drivers, outsiders not being totally excluded but not sure if they're really accepted either, a pending Director of Schools decision pitting an insider against an outsider, a revitalized downtown received with some ambivalence by old-timers, etc.

Anyway, I wanted to put this out there because I think this website is a progressive response to the tensions over transformation from gemeinschaft to gesellschaft. Some posters here are old-timers who never liked the traditional, Republican power structure, but also don't feel comfortable with the way the county is changing. Others (like myself) are outsiders who want to help the community develop in a progressive direction but are unsure about how hard to push for fear of being labeled an interloper.

I'd love to hear other thoughts on this from BlountViews members. Sometimes it's helpful to step back and look at all the changes from a sociological perspective. At the very least, Cunningham's rants make more sense in this context.