Simmel. The Stranger.

Simmel. The Stranger.
The stranger is the one that unify the wanderer in movement and escaping any possible fixation. To be a stranger is a specific form of interaction that implies remoteness and closeness, indifference and involvment. When considering mobility in relation to trading the position of the stranger becomes relevant. Because the primary producer tries to sell within his short circle and is attached to his land, the stranger intervenes in the sphere of trade as an outside force who cannot be “owner of soil”. She is a stranger in the eyes of the other. Usual restrictions to intermediary trade and finances give the stranger her feature of mobility. Although she is outside the social rules that condition local social relations (does not have ties of kinship, locality, occupation) she gradually knows every individual of the specific place. The objective situation of the stranger (always in-between near and close) makes she freer practically and theoretically. The stranger is close to us (common features: national, occupational, social, human) and is also far to us (we are connected but we are part of greater group). There is also strangeness when possibilities (for instance the love between a couple) become real, when this realization brings the awareness that this relationship has no inner and exclusive necessity. Strangers are near and far at the same time and at different levels. And in spite all they are an organic part of the group, but a “special proportion and reciprocal tension produce the particular, formal relation to the ‘stranger’” (3).