“All kinds of social co-existence that are familiar, comfortable, and exclusive are to be understood as belonging to Gemeinschaft. Gesellschaft means life in the public sphere, in the outside world. In Gemeinschaft we are united from the moment of our birth with our own folk for better or worse. We go out into Gesellschaft as if into a foreign land. A young man is warned about mixing with bad society: but ‘bad community’ makes no sense in our language.”
Ferdinand Tonnies, Community and Civil Society. Reprinted and translated by Jose Harris. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 18.
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