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Association
Georg Simmel developed a rich theory of everyday life in which he studied the seemingly trivial forms of association and interactions among people. Simmel argued that because there is so much going on in social life, people regularly simplify the world into a limited number of forms of interaction, and types of interactants. Humans are able to continually develop new forms and types because they are endowed with a creative consciousness. This creative consciousness allows people to overcome limits imposed by external structures, but it can also impose limits on action when it reifies the social world. Simmel was also interested in the way that group size affects everyday interactions. He believed that the most important group differences are observed between two-person (dyad) and three-person (triad) groups. It is with the addition of a third group member that objective social structures can emerge and control individual behavior. Finally, Simmel was interested in the issue of distance. He analyzed the "stranger" as an important social type that is defined by its combination of closeness and distance. As an alternative to Marx’s labor theory of value, Simmel argued that value is a function of an object’s distance from a person. Thus, objects that are further away from a person acquire greater value for that person.