Terms introduced into social science by the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies in 1887. Most commonly translated as ‘community’ and ‘association’, the concepts refer not only to idealized types of society but also more broadly to forms of social organization and social relationships. The movement from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft indicates the idealized transition from small, rural, tightly knit communities in which kinship ties and traditional values predominate, to an associational impersonal industrial society based on the rational pursuit of self-interest and contract characterized by heterogeneity and diverse belief-systems.
The spread of industrialization in the nineteenth century made such binary divisions appealing and similar distinctions are found in the work of Maine (from status to contract), Bagehot (from custom to law), and most famously Durkheim (from mechanical to organic solidarity). Although such distinctions are often represented in terms of evolutionary societal development, the concepts can also be applied to characterize relations within a society. In this way family relations can be thought of as pertaining to Gemeinschaft whilst commercial and legal dealings assume more the character of Gesellschaft. Within international relations, theorists interested in developing the notion of international society have recently drawn on Tönnies' distinction to help explain the origin of the society of states.
— Peter Burnham
