Georg Simmel, perhaps still the theorist of urban experience, argues in The Stranger (1971) that society is not an external object that precedes the constellation of interactions between human beings. Society, according to Simmel, does not exist before ‘sociality’ takes place through it. If relations of sociality are taken away society simply disappears. As such, Simmel sees a generalised conflict in society, a contradiction between ‘life’ and ‘form’, between life as mere value and relatively stable forms that life takes. The formal structure of sociality, Simmel argues, is a continuum between two limits; human life is a permanent struggle between life and form (1971: 375). Premised upon sociality, the whole history of society and culture ‘is the working out of [the] contradiction’ between life and form (ibid. 375). For Simmel, in other words, sociality and togetherness are fundamental ingredients of society and life where the subject …