It is notable that all these extensions of Simmel's ideas by Park's students—in their studies of social distance, social isolation, and individuation in the metropolis—deal with social relationships, not with social process. In Park's scheme, the study of social processes was usurped, as we have seen, by the rather non-Simmelian concerns about the dynamics of collectivities and the natural histories of their growth. Given an established social order, however, one could study social relationships either as representing stable patterns of social accommodation or in terms of relative distance from a presumed social consensus.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 136