Catchword: gecyberschaft

Filed under: English, German

Part of speech: n.

Quotation: Mary Ann Allison of the Allison Group coined “gecyberschaft.” Here’s her idea: sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies described village society before the Industrial Revolution (gemeinschaft) and urban society afterwards (gesellschaft).…So if your unit of community in gemeinschaft was the village, it became “friends and family” in gesellschaft, and it’s now your “primary attention group.” You pay attention to that group (or groups, I’d hope she’d say) and to “groups of purpose”—groups neither bound to a place nor to a particular bureaucracy. In gemeinschaft, your status was ascribed (based on birth); in gesellschaft, it was achieved; and now, in gecyberschaft, it’s assessed.

Article or document title:
“Gecybercshaft” (URL)

Author:
Susan Crawford

Article, document, publication, web site:
Susan Crawford blog

Publishing location:
New York City

Date of publication:
Jan. 5, 2005

This catchword has yet to be researched.