"Community - arianism"
Chapter One:Community; ideology and utopia
Meanings of community
Community is a common concept, a word with multiple meanings. It has a common
ownership and is surrounded by "common-sense" assumptions. Everyone
uses the word, and most people seem to like the idea. Therein lies the danger,
for it is a plastic word, fresh out of Wonderland, where any word can mean
what you want it to mean. It is a spray can word, useful to graffiti artists
and slogan writers in politics, the media and the professions. It is also
a contested concept in that it is used ideologically with different connotations
by people with contrasting underlying philosophies. The definition is also
contested at the applied level in that the definition or boundaries of particular
"communities" are often the focus of conflict in the world of
politics and social life. For social scientists, philosophers, policy planners
and managers, and for anyone who seeks to be a responsible and thoughtful
member of society, the discourse of community warrants closer scrutiny.
Definitions of community according to Butcher et. al (1993) can be grouped
into three types, which might be better described as three perspectives
on community. Descriptive definitions are typically those of social scientists
giving an account (however abstract) of social forms, structures, interactions
or relationships which can be observed in the world as it is. Secondly there
are value descriptions of community; statements from philosophers, politicians
and ordinary people about the way people ought to relate to each other.
These are often normative or ideological propositions, for example the communitarian
claim that the essential nature of humankind is to be in social relationship
with other human beings, which implies responsible and neighbourly behaviour
as a moral imperative. Butcher et al's. third grouping is perhaps less clear
and sustainable, but focuses on the notion of active community and the process
of community development. The focus here is on participation in the networks
and interactions of civil society, and the perspective is that of policy
makers and representatives of state institutions in their need to work alongside
voluntary and community sector organisations. Although the perspective of
this book is that of social science, and therefore needs to concentrate
on descriptive definitions of the concept of community, it will inevitably
need to deal with value positions, particularly in the discussion of communitarianism,
and with the perspective of active community when dealing with issues of
policy and community development. It is to be hoped that by bringing greater
clarity to the description of community the philosophical and policy debates
will be better grounded than they often have been.
As long ago as 1955 George Hillery listed some 94 definitions of community
he had found in the social science literature, and concluded that the only
thing they all held in common was a reference to people. It was possible
to arrange them in groupings such as those that were closely related to
neighbourhood or territory, those that focused on social interaction and
those that highlighted feelings of belonging and solidarity, and to detect
differences between definitions based on rural and urban experience. However,
where sociologists cannot supply a single clear definition, (and the diversity
would be even greater today among those who have not totally discarded the
term) the range of usage by ordinary speakers of the English language is
even wider. For a taste of what is on offer the reader is referred to the
anthology compiled by Pereira (1993). It would be unwise therefore at the
start of this book to add yet another definition of our own to the surfeit
already available, or even to catalogue and criticise the definitions in
the literature.
Common themes in the discourse about community
Although the term community arises from sociology, its enthusiastic adoption
by the wider public operates as a feedback loop into society itself, the
term shaping and being re-shaped by social reality. As such the word itself
is an important piece of sociological data. There are, therefore a number
of common themes or connotations in the language of community in everyday
speech, which it is necessary to consider. It is possible to do this from
a variety of angles; for example Raymond Plant's essay (1974) on community
and ideology in the context of the politics and practice of community development
contrasts with the anthropological approach to the symbolic construction
of community developed and illustrated by Cohen (1985). Both Plant and Cohen
note that philosophers since Wittgenstein moved from providing us with normative
definitions of concepts to describing and exploring the way in which terms
are used. Plant advises against attempts such as Hillery's to pin the notion
down empirically, but to recognize that value judgements and ideologies
are implicit in every use of the word.
The first theme in everyday speech is the reification of the notion of community.
By this we mean that most people talk as if there is a real entity corresponding
to the label "the community". There is an inbuilt assumption that
the drawing of boundaries is both possible and desirable. Sometimes these
boundaries are to be drawn on the map, in other cases they are categories
of people or characteristics of members. There is in this view little doubt
about where the community begins or ends, be it at the borough boundary,
or at a physical boundary such as a canal or railway line, or at a social
boundary as for example in the case of ethnic communities or the "gay
community". As Cohen (op cit.) suggests boundary marking processes
and rituals are a vital tool for defining community, identity, belonging
and exclusion, and give a sense of reality to specific communities, although
in fact they are merely mental or social constructs of insiders and outsiders.
As we shall see later in our discussions of ethnicity and social network
analysis the reality is often more flexible and ambiguous still. It may
be far more helpful to see community as a process, with changing patterns
of conflict and collaboration, openness and closure, free action and structural
constraint.
Yet out of this reification fallacy a number of political consequences flow.
The first is that of representation in that one person or a small elite
are taken to speak for the community as a whole. Even in cases where representation
is based on widely participatory democratic elections the possibility of
speaking on behalf of a whole community is questionable. This is a particular
problem when white academics or politicians seek to define the boundaries
of "the black" or other ethnic minority communities, and deal
with "community leaders" whom they choose or who are self appointed.
Secondly the reification of communities can lead to "turf wars"
over the allocation of resources, for example where a facility is provided
to serve the needs of a single electoral ward, or where a grant is given
to an organization serving only one religious or ethnic community.
A second common feature of talk about community is that it is often seen
as a small scale collectivity, occupying the semantic space between household
or family and city or nation. In sociology it falls in the middle of the
continuum between small or primary group and society as a whole. However
as Scherer (1972 p34-35) points out "the concept of community (in contrast
to group) implies inherently the intention of longevity and permanence"
There are, inevitably a few exceptional usages such as the "community
of nations" or the "world community". Generally, however,
a community is small and specific enough to evoke a sense of identity and
personal belonging, a sense that one is part of a meaningful web of face
to face relationships. This sense of the word is especially potent in a
world where markets for consumer products are global, and where the penetration
of the mass media ensures a universally shared diet of news and popular
culture.
Thirdly community is almost always portrayed as morally good. It elevates
the speaker to the moral high ground, and as a "purr" word or
"motherhood" concept produces a warm glow in the listener. (Donnison
1993). That the concept is "sacred" and beyond contradiction resonates
with the etymologically linked concept of "communion" in the Christian
tradition. In the Mass, Eucharist or Lord's Supper the breaking of bread
symbolizes a mystic union of the believer with Christ, and the sharing of
a meal at a common table speaks of a united fellowship that transcends social
divisions on earth and even includes the "communion of saints"
in the world to come. The metaphor of the body of Christ, applied both to
the communion bread and to the church as company of believers, speaks of
community as an organism. The Islamic tradition of the "ummah"
and the Sikh brotherhood of the "khalsa" carry some similar connotations,
although the frequent association of "caste" with communal conflict
and discrimination has placed Hindu notions of community in an unfavourable
light. Despite occasional critiques by radical individualists, including
those writers within the Christian church (Norman, 1995), even among unbelievers
the organic life motif remains important in discussions of community. Community
is a living breathing and self sustaining being. To destroy it would be
tantamount to taking life.
The metaphor of organism leads to the portrayal of community as intrinsically
and normatively harmonious. Community is seen as a unifying entity in which
men and women, old and young, black and white, rich and poor have a common
purpose and unproblematic relationship. Power differentials and conflicts
of interest are set aside, or more likely covered over. The marginalisation,
exclusion or persecution of minorities, or of individuals who are considered
"abnormal" through disability, mental illness or eccentricity
is ignored. The coercive nature of communities, where mechanisms of social
control ensure a grudging compliance with cultural norms is rarely admitted.
A final inescapable connotation of the concept of "community"
is the aura of nostalgia. Even though nostalgia "ain't what it used
to be", people look back to images and stories of a golden age, when
everybody helped each other, and when front doors were left open without
fear of crime. In Britain a common variant is the image of the terraced
streets of Northern mill towns and mining villages, in the USA the urban
equivalent often has an ethnic dimension, such as Chicago's Italian quarter
or New York's Jewish ghetto. On both sides of the Atlantic rural images
are also common, Merrie England or Hardy's Wessex, alongside the Pilgrims
in Massachussets or communal barn-raisings. In a mass media culture where
these nostalgic images are common place, and where history and the natural
world are often packaged by theme parks and museums as consumer products,
the longing for escape to another lifestyle is widespread. As increasing
numbers of people relocate to find their rural tranquillity, or historic
urban neighbourhood, the very process of gentrification tends to transform
the traditional modes of community into something more transitory and fragmented.
The common connotations of community sit alongside a rich diversity of applications
of the term. At one end of the spectrum are types of community that are
clearly intentional. People join of their own free will and covenant themselves
to an intense life together, for example in a monastic order or hippy commune.
At the other extreme on this dimension are communities of limited liability
(Janowitz 1967), neighbourhoods where the threads of common life rarely
extend beyond using the same post box or paying local taxes for the municipal
refuse collection service. Rather more common are neighbourhoods or localities,
which for a sizeable proportion of the residents do provide functions of
loyalty, belonging and identity, a locale in which the delivery of consumer
services takes place and in which significant networks of social relationships
are made and maintained. Willmott (1989) speaks of these as communities
of attachment and documents research which shows the types of people and
neighbourhood where localism rather than dispersed community is more likely
to be the norm. Population stability, local employment, isolation, homogeneity,
high proportions of young families and active community organisations maintained
by educated middle class residents are likely to strengthen local attachments.
The term is also applied to non-residential communities, focussed on a school
or work-place, best described as institutional or organisational communities.
A further variation is community based on a social club or sports group,
on a religious meeting place or an ethnic minority group. Loosely these
can be called communities of interest, in the sense that members find some
topic interesting and organise around it. There are also communities of
interest in the stronger sense, which often only emerge as a result of an
outside threat to territory or property (e.g.. Neighbourhood against the
Motorway). In the absence of an external threat many communities of interest
would remain latent unless pro-actively organized. For example women victims
of domestic violence, or disabled people and their carers or homeworkers
in the garment industry would find privatised isolation a more common experience
than organised networks of solidarity.
The context of Communitarianism
It is out of this sea of meanings plus a specific political context that
communitarianism as a popular idea is born. In very broad brush terms the
Western world in recent decades has seen large pendulum swings in the field
of social policy. The 1960s and early 1970s was the era of radical liberalism,
of anti-war protest of the Civil Rights movement and of Lyndon Johnson's
war on poverty. In the U.K. similar trends could also be observed, if in
a minor key, as the Welfare State flourished and urban renewal and community
development was sponsored by the state. Global economic restructuring, triggered
by the oil crises of the 1970s, coupled with the emerging hegemony of New
Right economic and political ideas made the 1980s the decade of the free
market, and the rolling back of the "nanny" state. In the USA
it was the decade of Reaganomics and Star Wars, while on this side of the
Atlantic Margaret Thatcher led nationalist rejoicing at the recapture of
a distant island colony, subdued the "enemy within" after the
year long miners' strike and declared that "there is no such thing
as society". The intellectual underpinnings of these policies were
found in the work of "New Right" academics and Think Tanks such
as the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Adam Smith Institute. Their
philosophy was one which saw men (sic.) as individuals making rational choices
according to the economic laws of the market place, and which had little
place for government regulation or moral constraints. (Frazer & Lacey,
1993). Throughout the western world the rich got richer, and the poor struggled
to survive as welfare provision was cut and inequality grew. By the end
of the decade the Berlin wall had fallen and the Soviet Empire had dissolved,
and petty nationalisms were on the march across Europe. Capitalism, it was
alledged, had won.
For the Left at this point there were two key problems. First the hegemony
of the Right and the irreversible changes of economic restructuring and
global competition, meant that traditional welfarist policies and state
ownership could no longer be expected to deliver economic growth or political
power. Secondly the collapse of communism ensured that no version of Marxist
ideology, however democratic and contemporary, was likely to be taken seriously
by the electorates of Europe, still less in North America where socialism
had never taken root. For the Right the triumph was short-lived. A sharp
recession set in the early 1990s and it became clear that unregulated market
forces had some dysfunctional effects. Instead of wealth trickling down
to the poor, inequalities widened, and social polarization was evident,
with the risk of uprisings especially by unemployed youth in ethnically
divided cities. The global scale of economic forces meant that national
governments seemed out of control, while some localities, even whole regions
were in inexorable economic decline. Statistics for violent crime and drug
misuse were rising and repressive law enforcement measures were proving
ineffective. Despite commitments to public expenditure cuts, budgets for
social and national security continued to rise. And despite the emphasis
on deregulation and subsidiarity, the philosophy that decisions should be
taken at the most local level possible, there was clear evidence of growing
bureaucracy and of a centralization of power at the national and supra-national
level.
The Communitarian platform
The time was right for some new ideas in politics and it was around Amitai
Etzioni and his colleagues in the Communitarian Network based in Washington
DC that the movement came together and drew up a manifesto, the Communitarian
Platform. Etzioni is a keen publicist, writing in popular as well as academic
journals, speaking in public and on the mass media, as well as ensuring
that the communitarian documents were available electronically on the Internet.
(Etzioni 1994). The ideas were introduced to the U.K. by the slightly Left
of Centre think tank Demos who sponsored a London lecture by Etzioni in
the spring of 1995, which received full coverage in the Times (Etzioni 1995)
and published other titles such as Atkinson's "The Common Sense of
Community" (1994). In the UK there has been one attempt to replicate
the Communitarian Network in the USA, as yet without much impact by Henry
Tam (1995). More significantly, many key principles have been endorsed by
the Labour Party's new leader Tony Blair and his colleague Jack Straw (Times
8/11/95) and have been more radically expressed by Boswell (1995). For the
Liberal Democrats in Britain the communitarian emphasis in politics was
already familiar. But surprisingly, these ideas also found favour in certain
sections of the Conservative Party, for example in Green's attempt to supersede
the individualism of the 1980's by a welfare regime based on a "reinvented
civil society" (1993). In the USA likewise they have been received
with interest in both Democratic and Republican circles, and are clearly
influential in the policies of the Clinton administration.
However it would be wrong to suggest that all the ideas of communitarianism
are completely new; as Etzioni himself write they are as old as the Old
Testament. Ed Schwarz (1991 WWW) traces some of the debates back to Plato
and Aristotle claiming the latter as a proto-communitarian, as well as citing
St. Augustine and Toqueville. Plant (1974) traces the development of communitarian
thinking in the German and British philosophers and sociologists of the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, mentioning for example Hegel,
Marx, Tonnies, Carlyle, Arnold, Ruskin, Eliot, Leavis and Lawrence. Plant's
book is particularly useful in focussing the philosophical issues in the
area of community work, albeit a style of community work that now seems
rather dated. In more modern political philosophy references to Macintrye's
"After Virtue" (1981) often feature in the literature along with
Sandel (1982) and Bell (1993), although it should be pointed out that Macintyre
explicitly denies being a communitarian. The debate between liberalism and
communitarianism is extensively covered from a sympathetically critical
feminist perspective in Frazer & Lacey (1993).
It would also be misleading to attribute the impact of communitarianism
to Etzioni and his group alone. A number of similar streams of thought and
policy development are observable on both sides of the Atlantic. In Philadelphia
the Institute for Civic Values headed by Ed Schwarz is developing thought
and practice in community development in Urban Renewal, and as an Internet
mailing list and Web page which is far more active than the Communitarian
Network in Washington. There are also some interesting links to be made
with the debate about "Asian values", which has been triggered
recently by the evident economic growth in Asia, and the introduction of
"Japanese work practices" into Western industry. It has been argued
by Dr. Matathir, the prime minister of Malaysia (in a BBC TV interview with
Julian Pettifer broadcast on 18.11.95) that the traditional communitarian
values of Asia are superior to the individualism of the West in producing
team-work, sacrificial commitment to the common good, and well ordered societies
all of which promote economic prosperity. The questions, which were voiced
by Pettifer remain important. Can the Asian achievement be sustained without
political repression, and does it actually work or are Asian societies also
suffering the anomie so easily recognized in the West, as they too are affected
by drug abuse, HIV/AIDS and family break up?.
In Britain too there are a number of well established streams of independent
communitarian thought and action. The whole project of community development
launched in the 1960's remains significant in some parts of academia, in
local government, in thousands of neighbourhood projects and in the social
interventions of the major churches. Following the Faith in the City Report
(ACUPA 1985), attempts have been made to develop a theology of community
work (British Council of Churches 1989). The work of the Jubilee Centre
on the importance of sound relationships in family and community life is
another Christian initiative which ventures into similar territory (Schluter
&. Lee 1993). A radical Christian Socialist version of communitarianism
centred on themes of equality and mutuality is represented by the life and
writings of Bob Holman (1993). Holman critiques the top down think tank
approach in social policy development, and points out the irony that "since
the London Think Tanks have discovered community, policy ideas about the
community are voiced by unrepresentative intellectuals, who are far removed
from the hard end.... ... the essence of community must be local residents,
taking control over services and suggesting policies for society".
(personal communication 1995).
What then are the key ideas in the Communitarian Platform? A document with
this title, endorsed by a large number of a academics and politicians (available
as the appendix to Etzioni 1994) appears to be the foundation statement
of the movement. A similar British charter statement is the Citizens Agenda.
(Tam, 1995). The key ideas centre around the relationship between citizens
the wider society and the state. They are presented below together with
an initial critique and setting of questions which will be the focus of
more considered evaluation in the final chapter.
Communitarianism seeks to promote a healthy balance of rights and responsibilities
and to suggest that the state and the citizen have mutual obligations. Since
they see the pendulum to have swung too far in the direction of rights rather
than responsibilities, they mount a critique of over zealous legislation
for individual civil rights. Naturally this issue is more salient in the
USA with its written constitution cast in Enlightenment thinking about the
rights of man, than in the UK. For example says Etzioni, if we want the
protection of the courts we should be willing to give our time to serve
on juries when required. Civic participation is seen as essential for a
healthy democratic society; citizens should vote, lobby their elected representatives,
run for office, get involved in local organizations, become school governors
and take responsibility for their community instead of just blaming the
government or the Council, or pursuing litigation over violation of personal
rights.
Underlying the communitarian platform is a strong concern for values and
morality. This emerges in several areas, in the call for integrity and honesty
among politicians and public servants and in generalized concern for social
justice. There is a moral tone too, in the insistence on democratic persuasion
and freedom of speech. Communitarians do not wish to impose their values
or policies on others, but they are zealous to convince others in the battle
for hearts and minds. There is therefore a strong emphasis on education
for citizenship, and a wish to identify shared core values which can be
taught, and caught, in schools from a very early age. In the USA where the
tradition of separation of church and state has traditionally kept religion
out of the education system and where prayer in schools is a keynote issue
for the religious Right, the issue of moral education has particular salience.
Etzioni makes much of this notion of underlying common core values which
are (to be) shared by everyone within the national polity. In the American
context these centre on personal responsibility, democracy, and respect
for the constitution. (One is tempted to add, motherhood, apple pie and
the American way of life!). Although Etzioni denies that he is majoritarian,
and claims to accept pluralism, there is an obvious problem in a diverse
and plural society. With a normative view of mainstream values and harmonious
and homogeneous local communities, it is hard to see how groups with marginal
or divergent value systems can be given space to participate in the "community
of communities" which is national life. Can "fundamentalist"
Islamic or Christian groups, other religious sectarian groups, New Age travellers,
or homeless street dwellers be given equal human dignity, let alone equal
economic, political and social rights?
It is in the area of family values that the moral tone of communitarianism
is most evident, and despite all the qualifications made by Etzioni (1994)
it is here that controversy has been sharpest as many feminists and others
on the left have made a knee jerk reaction to such terms as "the parenting
deficit". The assertion that children benefit from growing up in a
secure and stable family environment where there are two caring parents
who have a quantity of quality time to spend with their offspring is unlikely
to be controversial to the majority of people in Middle America or Middle
England. After all it is still a lifestyle that many people aspire to, and
many couples with small children stand in awe and amazement that single
parents, especially those on a low income and without strong extended family
or friendship networks, even survive. Etzioni has expressed his sadness
at what he sees as the hostile misinterpretation of his ideas by some feminists.
The family values he advocates are not those of the conservative Christian
right and the domestic oppression of women, but support the notion of serious
responsibility in parenting equally shared between father and mother.
However three objections still need to be answered and worked out in policy
proposals that enhance families without oppressing women. Family life in
Western society no longer conforms to the norm of Dad, Mum, 2.4, children
and granny living round the corner. Increasing proportions of people live
alone, in lone parent families, as gay or lesbian couples and in extended
families or shared households, and most mothers go out to work at least
part time. We may bemoan rising divorce rates and family breakdown, but
there is no simple policy, or moral revival that can turn back the clock.
Secondly feminists would argue that the traditional family is inevitably
a setting for the oppression of women, that unpaid domestic and caring labour
is exploitation, and that domestic violence needs to be addressed politically
and culturally rather than treated as a private matter. In contrast alternative
forms of family life and child rearing may have liberating potential. Thirdly,
the poverty lobby would be suspicious that the moral panic about single
parents, especially about young single mothers with absent fathers, is based
not so much on concern for their welfare as on the imperative to reduce
taxes by cutting back on welfare payments.
Other concerns of the communitarian movement include community safety and
public health. Rising crime statistics across the Western world seem to
produce a disproportionate sense of panic. But in some North American inner
cities violent crime linked with drug trafficking results in a situation
where young men are more likely to be murdered than survive into old age.
Communitarians are anxious to address this issue and work for legislation
to restrict firearms, to mobilize local communities against drug dealers,
and to change the moral climate. Generally they would be in favour of more
pro-active police measures, favouring random stop and search, or breathalyser
tests to detect drunken drivers and would argue against the civil liberties
lobby that such minor inconveniences for the law abiding citizen, and the
risk of abuse of power are a price worth paying for public safety. In public
health they would argue that known carriers of disease, such as those who
are HIV positive, have a responsibility to disclose their condition and
to take precautions to prevent transmission, and would probably advocate
a programme of voluntary screening for those in high risk groups. On the
other hand they would want to ensure that people with HIV/AIDS are not discriminated
against in terms of housing or employment.
Communitarians claim to have a concern for social justice including minority
rights, but the working out of these principles appear to be sketchy, especially
when set against other contemporary documents such as the Borrie commission
report on social justice (Borrie 1994). In particular there appears to be
little discussion of the economic aspects of social justice, and the Communitarian
Platform is almost devoid of any reference to economic policy and the just
distribution of resources. There is little trace in the document of a serious
grappling with class analysis. One suspects that the American antipathy
to anything other than free enterprise prevents any serious analysis of
the causes of and remedies for poverty. Certainly redistribution of wealth
through tax and welfare policies is not on their agenda. One suspects a
similar fudge over minority rights, resulting from the current hostility
in the USA to the affirmative action legislation introduced in the 1970s.
It is possible that communitarians in the UK with our stronger socialist
tradition, and greater open-ness to Marxist ideas may give issues of social
justice greater prominence, although the work still remains to be done.
Communitarianism also places an emphasis on the notion of subsidiarity,
a doctrine originating in Catholic Social teaching, and appropriated in
recent years to defend perceived national interests in arguments within
the European Union. No social task should be assigned to an institution
that is larger than necessary to do the job. Only when an individual and
family cannot do something should a local group, a school or church take
responsibility. Only if it is beyond the local group should responsibility
be passed up to city, state or federal government. While for communitarians
there is an empowering role for the higher levels of government, and some
recognition that vulnerable local communities might be helped out by more
affluent ones on a one to one relationship basis, it is at this point of
inequality between localities that the communitarian position is at its
weakest.
Furthermore there seems to be little recognition of the global nature of
economic forces, and the way that local communities may be devastated by
fluctuations on a futures market on the other side of the world. While it
is recognized that no person is an island and that at the personal level
we are responsible for each other, it is not so clear in communitarianism
that no city or country is an island either. Etzioni's picture of a nation
or even the world as a pluralist "community of communities" does
not seem adequate to deal with the complex conflicts, interconnections and
interdependencies of the contemporary world. One waits for example to see
a communitarian analysis of the global pressures which bring economic migrants
to the cities of Europe, where they settle in model communities of mutual
responsibility.
The communitarians also make some well meaning noises on environmental issues
and ecology. However the focus on the local seems to limit the action to
the citizen's responsibility not to drop litter and the city's responsibility
to provide recycling banks. One waits for discussion of the pollution caused
by motorways for commuters from suburban communities who bring breathing
difficulties to fellow citizens in inner city neighbourhoods, and depletion
of the ozone layer which may bring climate change and starvation to the
people of Africa. A green critique of communitarianism might have much to
offer by way of refinement, as the philosophy of small is beautiful already
seems implicit in Etzioni. However there might be a more radical challenge
to be met on key issues such as the global limits to economic growth.
The discussion of communitarianism set out above has been critical, and
perhaps too harsh. As a relatively new school of thought, or rather a network
for discussion, communitarianism can be forgiven for not having all the
answers. There are many attractive ideas which appeal to people across the
political spectrum. At the local level there have been some real achievements,
although it should be pointed out that these are often the result of previous
community work, or a culture where community spirit is already important,
rather than of communitarianism as a philosophy, or the adoption of its
manifesto. An example often quoted by Etzioni is the training programme
in first aid for a large proportion of the citizens of Seattle. As a result
of widely available new medical skills, resuscitation and survival rates
of heart attack patients in that city have improved beyond recognition.
Such initiatives at the community level are self-evidently a good thing,
and there are thousands of other examples of community development, empowerment
and participation that have proved beneficial in neighbourhoods across the
world. One can only argue about priorities, relevance, style and cost effectiveness
of individual schemes.
Community, Right, Left and Centre
With the notion of community so universally praised, and with the ideas
of communitarianism firmly on the political agenda we shall conclude this
chapter by sketching the attraction of the idea for a number of different
political groups. David Lyon pointed out some years ago (1984) some of the
ways in which the term community was used in both ideological and utopian
ways. Community has much invested in it by policy makers, and therefore
needs to be discussed in a spirit of (de)constructive critique, and ideological
suspicion.
Even if we accept the sincerity of those who espouse the tradition of civic
conservatism, the "one nation" Tories for whom communitarianism
is attractive, it is still obvious that governments of the Right have used
"community" ideologically to soften welfare budget reductions.
This effectively masks the harsh reality of growing inequality in fragmented
societies where there is little sense of solidarity, belonging or mutual
care. Right wing politicians have made populist statements coded in communitarian
terms, maximizing the political advantage of prejudice against welfare scroungers,
single parents, ethnic minorities, drug pushers and criminals. They have
often spoken of moral responsibility and family values, while in many cases
leading personal lives not marked by financial probity and sexual fidelity.
They have set up schemes to "involve the community and the voluntary
sector" in partnerships for urban regeneration and social welfare,
while at the same time ensuring that the dominating forces are those of
capital, central government or unelected quasi-governmental agencies, rather
than those of local residents or democratically elected local authorities.
Elements in the communitarian platform are easily co-opted for these purposes,
and the absence of concern for economic justice is very convenient.
Public expenditure restraint and in particular welfare cutbacks have been
high on the Right's agenda. By pushing responsibility for social care back
into the "community", and in practice onto unpaid family members,
capital, the state, and the tax payer can save money in a politically acceptable
way. The notion of "community" was even used to sanitize the most
unpopular most individualized local taxation scheme that Britain had seen
for centuries. However, in this case the ideology was unmasked as the "community
charge" became almost universally known as the "poll tax",
provoked massive unrest and non payment, and became a nail in the coffin
of Margaret Thatcher's political career.
At the other end of the political spectrum community is also used as an
ideological weapon. Community can easily (and in many cases correctly) be
defined and mobilized as the opposite to the coercive state, or exploitative
big business. Community or neighbourhood resistance to major planning decisions
about the siting of new roads or industrial plants is often self organizing,
but is frequently supported by left wing politicians, as well as extreme
Greens and anarchists. More strategically Leftist Labour Councils in Britain
in the earlier 1980s consciously used community development strategies and
funding for radical and minority community groups in an attempt to further
equal opportunities practice, anti-poverty schemes and empowerment of inner
city residents. The British coal strike of 1984 was seen in many quarters
as an attack by the state and capital on the traditional mining "communities"
(Gemeinschaft ; sic!). The solidarity and support networks it generated
in the coalfields was portrayed by many as a triumph for community development,
despite the eventual defeat of the strike and the annihilation of the industry.
Lyon (op cit.) comments that the warm liberal collectivist glow of "community"
is powerful enough to be used by radicals on the left to justify almost
ANY form of local political action. But it is also useful beyond the confines
of the Right/Left divide to underpin the attempt to build almost any type
of alternative, utopian collective life. From the medieval Franciscans,
through the Amish and Hutterite Brethren, to the Hippies and New Age travellers
of today, utopian alternative communities abound. They are perhaps especially
attractive to the new social movements of our times, to new religious movements,
Green activists, feminist collectives and the peace movement. Many of these
streams coalesced for example in the women's peace camp at Greenham Common.
(Dominelli 1995). Of course for every utopian example of community one could
collect matching examples of the failure of the community ideal, of communes
which dissolved in bickering, of religious communes such as Jonestown and
Waco where people crossed the boundaries of sanity and tragedy ensued. Nonetheless
"community" remains a powerful utopian ideal, especially for people
who feel psychologically ill at ease within mainstream capitalist society.
However, it is among the poor and oppressed that community becomes a necessity
rather than a luxury, as group solidarity and mutual help are one of the
few resources they possess in the battle for survival. Many of the traditional
nostalgic images of community are drawn from this source, in what has been
described as "the mutuality of the oppressed". Early Trade unions,
retail co-operatives, building societies, friendly societies and funeral
clubs represent the organizing of this impulse in Victorian Britain (Green
1994). The traditional Cockney East End and the spirit of the Blitz evoke
the back to the wall communitarianism of a more recent period. The myth
of Bethnal Green (Young & Willmott 1957, Cornwell 1984) also dates from
the immediate post war period of austerity.
It is not insignificant from a policy perspective that community development
initiatives of recent years have been concentrated in neighbourhoods of
urban deprivation (Miller 1989; Halsey 1989). However when observed from
the grass roots it is not so clear that community life, as opposed to community
work, flourishes or withers in such localities. One hypothesis is that in
the midst of growing inequality it is among the poorest sections of society,
among single parents, disabled people and refugees that mutual help flourishes.
In contrast more affluent, busy people lead more privatized lives, and relate
to others mainly as consumers, even buying the services which in poorer
communities would be exchanged outside the money economy. However there
is another hypothesis that the poor are less able to maintain support networks
than the affluent, that poverty or social exclusion is the denial of the
possibility of social participation and that a compounding factor in deprivation
is the absence of community. The empirical evidence is ambivalent as we
shall discover in a later chapter.
A special case of the necessity of community is that of ethnic minorities.
The language of community, ethnicity and nationalism is often employed by
the Left, both to describe the pluralism of multi-ethnic societies, and
in mobilizing excluded groups of people from below, in their struggles for
social and economic justice. For the people within these groups community
does often play a poverty alleviation or politically mobilizing role, but
it can also be important as a conservative cultural defense strategy, in
helping to maintain the traditions, language, religion and social structures
of the homeland. Recently the ideology of community has emerged to bolster
far right nationalism in Europe, and to attack the liberal individualism
which usually forms the philosophical underpining of Western Capitalism
(De Benoist & Sunic, 1994). The potential value of the language of community,
for a sociobiological, genetically determined racist ideology is yet to
been seen, but the prospect is alarming, not only in Eastern Europe, but
in ethnically diverse urban areas in the UK, and across the world. Recent
political events and conflicts in the Isle of Dogs, East London show the
outworkings of racialised notions of local community. (Keith; 1995, Cohen,
Quereshi & Toon 1995) There are already similar discourses to be found
in the emerging debate about the racialized "underclass" of the
USA. One's worst fear about communitarianism is that it could be highjacked
by a white male backlash movement.
Structure of the book
It is clear from the preceding discussion that "community-arianism"
is far from a common-sense notion. It is neither easy to define nor self
evidently good. However, the notion is far from vacuous, and does have the
potential to offer some useful guidance for social and political life in
the post-modern Western world. It is an important problematic, a sensitizing
concept on which to build our subsequent discussion. It is therefore as
a problematic rather than as a manifesto that we shall consider and evaluate
it.
Having introduced the key issues it is now time to lay out in more detail
what this book seeks to do. Chapter 2 introduces the notions of community
development and community action and describes and critiques the policy
and practices of various institutions that bear the label "community".
Chapter 3 looks at neighbourhood and community life, ways of describing
and understanding localities, and at the role of voluntary sector and community
groups in shaping civil society. Chapter 4 seeks to locate our understanding
of community within the major traditions of sociological theory. Chapter
5 considers what we can learn from the tradition of community studies, and
the reasons that sociologists rejected the genre. Chapter 6 tackles head
on the assertion that community spirit has been lost, and that people today
live isolated privatized lives. The method of social network analysis is
introduced as a way of exploring a much more complex reality, which communitarianism
must take into account. Chapter 7 considers in greater depth the notion
of fragmentation and multiple identities, looking at questions of ethnicity
and pluralism in a post-modern world. Chapter 8 brings us back to the global
scene, where telematics technologies are said to have potential for building
"communities without propinquity". But is such virtual reality
leading us to anywhere but Disneyland? The final chapter returns to the
philosophy and policy of community. Is there a solid basis for building
community in a post-modern world? What are the steps that policy makers
and citizens need to take if they are seriously committed to developing
community in the next millenium?
Key books for Chapter One
Etzioni A (1994) , "The Spirit of Community; the reinvention of American
society" New York Touchstone/ Simon & Schuster"
Frazer E. & Lacey N., (1993), "The Politics of Community; a feminist
critique of the Liberal-Communitarian debate" Hemel Hempstead Harvester
Wheatsheaf