Introduction

As late as the 1990s, an effort in an American theory journal aimed at reviving some of the neglected classics in sociology included a paper on the work of Ferdinand Tönnies (Adair-Toteff 1995). Not only has Tönnies's oeuvre been relatively neglected, most available discussions have concentrated almost exclusively on his perspective of Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (society). While the theory of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft is indeed central to Tönnies's sociology, the sheer volume of Tönnies's work, containing some 900 published writings (Fechner 1992), indicates that his thought cannot be justifiably restricted to these concepts.

Next to theoretical contributions, Tönnies's work also includes many empirical and methodological investigations, a considerable part of which dealt with the sociological study of crime. Tönnies published no fewer than 34 works on crime (22 papers, 3 books and 9 review articles), as well as 17 related methodological papers on criminal statistics (Deflem 1999, 105–10). But modern sociology and criminology have almost completely ignored Tönnies's contribution to the study of crime. This chapter will review this aspect of Tönnies's work and analyze the conditions of its neglect.

This discussion of Tönnies's work on crime will suggest its relevance within Tönnies's general sociological project and its distinct characteristics as an approach in criminological sociology. It will be shown that Tönnies's crime studies should be taken into account to challenge some often held simplistic interpretations and unfounded criticisms of his work. To develop this argument, it will prove useful to situate Tönnies's criminological work in the context of his theory of society.

Tönnies on Society and Law

Tönnies's theoretical perspective on the transformation of society from premodern to modern—which in some form or another occupied all classical scholars in sociology—is based on a specific conception of the human will on which social formations are based. The human will Tönnies argued to be either of the type of essential will (Wesenwille) or arbitrary will (Kürwille) (Tönnies 1935a [translation 1935b]). The essential will is the spontaneous manifestation of a person's nature inasmuch as it readily springs forth from one's temper and character.