Gesellschaft

plural Gesellschaften · plural Gesellschafts · alternative gesellschaft

1. human sciencesA hypothetical mode of society, made up of self-serving individuals linked by impersonal ties; as opposed to Gemeinschaft.

   Seven years later, Hernández wrote a Return of Martín Fierro in which the Gaucho sells out: assimilates back into Christian society, gives up his freedom for the kind of constitutional Gesellschaft being pushed in those days by Buenos Aires.

   1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow