Stranger

Lore & Background

The word stranger derives from the Middle French word estrangier, meaning a foreigner or alien. A stranger is commonly defined as someone who is unknown to another. Since individuals tend to have a comparatively small circle of family, friends, acquaintances, and other people known to them—a few hundred or a few thousand people out of the billions of people in the world—the vast majority of people are strangers to one another. It may also more figuratively refer to a person for whom a concept is unknown, such as describing a contentious subject as 'no stranger to controversy,' or an unsanitary person as a 'stranger to hygiene.' A stranger is typically represented as an outsider, and a source of ambivalence, as they may be a friend, an enemy, or both.

The state of being a stranger may be examined as a matter of degrees. For example, someone may be a partial stranger in cases where they are unable to communicate, or another is unable to understand aspects of an individual, their perspective or experiences. Alternatively, one may be a moral stranger to another who acts 'out of fundamentally divergent moral commitments,' even though the person may be a close friend or family member. A stranger with whom a person has previously had no contact of any kind may be referred to as a 'total stranger' or 'perfect stranger.' Some people who are considered 'strangers' due to the lack of a formally established relationship between themselves and others are nonetheless more familiar than a total stranger. A familiar stranger is an individual who is recognized by another from regularly sharing a common physical space such as a street or bus stop, but with whom one does not interact. First identified by Stanley Milgram in the 1972 paper The Familiar Stranger: An Aspect of Urban Anonymity, it has become an increasingly popular topic in research about social networks and technologically-mediated communication. Consequential strangers are personal connections other than family and close friends. Also known as 'peripheral' or 'weak' ties, they lie in the broad social territory between strangers and intimates. The term was coined by Karen L. Fingerman and further developed by Melinda Blau.

Reader's Guide

The concept of the stranger is significant in sociology and philosophy because it challenges established social orders and boundaries. As noted, the stranger is neither friend nor enemy, and may be both, introducing ambivalence into social interactions. The distinction between strangers and foreigners is important: a stranger is not necessarily a foreigner, though a foreigner is highly likely to be a stranger. Foreignness implies passports and questions of citizenship or national belonging, while strangerhood is generally more weighted toward the affective—the 'stranger in our midst' may carry the same passport and still be considered not belonging. Adopting a statist view, strangers may be seen as a chaotic challenge to the order imposed and sought by the nation-state, which is then faced with the challenge of assimilating the stranger, expelling them, or destroying them. The legacy of the concept includes practical applications such as 'stranger danger' education for children, despite statistics showing that most abductions are by acquaintances or family members. The concept also informs research on social networks, urban anonymity, and the nature of weak ties in modern societies.

Did You Know?

• The word stranger derives from the Middle French word estrangier, meaning a foreigner or alien.
• A familiar stranger is an individual recognized from regularly sharing a common physical space but with whom one does not interact, a concept first identified by Stanley Milgram in 1972.
• According to one estimate, 'classic stranger abductions' accounted for only 0.014% of total missing children annually in the United States.
• Consequential strangers are personal connections other than family and close friends, also known as 'peripheral' or 'weak' ties.