"The Stranger" is an essay by Georg Simmel, originally written as an excursus to a chapter dealing with the sociology of space in his book Soziologie.
He differentiates the stranger both from the "outsider" who has no specific relation to a group and from the "wanderer" who comes today and leaves tomorrow.
[4] The Stranger is close to us, insofar as we feel between him and ourselves common features of a national, social, occupational, or generally human, nature.
[6] Objectivity may also be defined as freedom: the objective individual is bound by no commitments which could prejudice his perception, understanding, and evaluation of the given.On one hand the stranger's opinion does not really matter because of his lack of connection to society, but on the other the stranger's opinion does matter, because of his lack of connection to society.
[citation needed] The concept of the stranger has found relatively wide usage in the subsequent sociological literature and it is utilized by many sociologists ranging from Robert Park[7] to Zygmunt Bauman.