Tönnies’ Gemeinschaft as a Community
Viewed from the Perspectives of General and Particular Tasks of Social Pedagogy
Keywords:
Ferdinand Tönnies, Gemeinschaft, yhteisö, sosiaalipedagogiikan yleinen ja erityinen tehtäväAbstract
Community is considered to be a very important educational factor, and it is often parallelized with Tönnies’ Gemeinschaft. Gemeinschaft being translated as community, is seen as a warm and more desirable educational environment compared to a cold and calculating society (Gesellschaft). In this article Gemeinschaft is scrutinized in order to find out what kind of a community it would be, and if it was desirable as an educational environment. The research material consists of Tönnies’ Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, as well as two English translations and earlier studies of it. This is a hermeneutic study, and the interpretation is made from the perspective of the general and the particular tasks of social pedagogy.
According to the interpretation, Gemeinschaft is an ideal concept which describes social entity based on spontaneous will called Wesenwille. From the perspective of the general and the particular task of social pedagogy, Gemeinschaft appears to provide holistic education and socialization, on the other hand it prevents criticality and emancipation, thus individual’s autonomy needs to be supported in Gemeinschaft. A desirable community may be considered to be an equal entity consisting of individuals who participate in reciprocal relationships, thus unequal and exclusive Gemeinschaft does not appear to be one. According to Tönnies, Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft are analytical tools designed to explicate the general character of a social entity and the rationalization process of the human will. These mental constructs cannot be found anywhere in reality.
