"Community - arianism"
Chapter Three: Community; some sociological perspectives
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In the first two chapters of the book we have examined some of the ways
that the term "community" is used in everyday speech, in political
discourse and in the practice of community workers and other community professionals.
So far we have concentrated on values attached to the notion, and activities
carrying the label of community. We move on now to a more descriptive task.
It will be clear that it is impossible to give an agreed or authoritative
definition of such a value laden, ill considered, and contested concept.
One is tempted to look to sociology to provide a clear and objective definition.
However, because sociology as a discipline is of necessity reflexive, in
that sociologists are inextricably part of the object of their study and
the dissemination of earlier sociological study has formed a feedback loop
in the structuration of society (Giddens 1984), it can provide no simple
formulas. Yet there are in the sociological tradition a number of perspectives
which can clarify our descriptions of the concept of community, and sensitise
us in our understanding of particular communities.
A good starting point is Hillery's 94 definitions of the notion of community
(1955). They fell mainly into three categories, which inevitably had considerable
overlap. In the first place were those which had a largely geographical
or local reference, where the main concern was the place, the neighbourhood,
the locality and only as an afterthought the people and their relationships.
This perspective although popular and important (Dennis 1965) is perhaps
best dealt with under headings such as social geography or locality studies
and discussion of such themes is postponed to the next chapter. The other
groups of definitions were more strictly sociological in that they focussed
on relationships, between people which may or may not be centred in a particular
location. One recurring theme was that of solidarity, fellow feeling, "communitas"
which binds people together with a shared sense of identity or belonging.
In some ways this type of discourse belongs more properly in the discipline
of social psychology, although there is within the mainstream of sociology
a long history of searching for the elements which like glue or cement bind
society together. An alternative emphasis is on social interaction as frequent
contact, and the exchange of information, goods and services tends to structure
and transform networks into a self conscious entity. The two approaches
have some resonance with the familiar sociological dichotomy of structure
and action and the traditions associated respectively with two giants among
the disciplines founders, Durkheim and Weber.
The structural functionalist approach derived from Durkheim, which is still
influential in North American sociology, and via that route in communitarianism,
would look for patterns and regularities in community life, and look for
features, many of them below the surface of actors' awareness, that make
for the smooth functioning of society. The emphasis would be on consensus
and social cohesion, and the interest would be on mechanisms of solidarity,
and the role of shared values and beliefs. A more action oriented approach
in the Weberian tradition would be better at explaining relationships, processes
and social change in communities, and would rely more heavily on interpreting
the explicit accounts of actors involved in the society. A third school
using the Marxist framework would bring the economic structures and relationships
underlying social life into the foreground, and explain almost everything
in terms of the relationships of various classes to the means of production.
All of these approaches have something to offer to the study of community.
Yet it is perhaps significant that one of the leading sociological theorists
of our day, Giddens, who seeks in much of his work to synthesise the insights
offered by these schools into one grand theory, studiously avoids the use
of the term "community". In "The Constitution of Society"
(1984) it appears neither in the glossary or index, and in his comprehensive
textbook "Sociology" (1982) it is indexed but once.
The industrial revolution and the urbanisation and political upheavals which
accompanied it were the context in which the founding fathers of sociology
were working, and had a significant impact when they selected their problematics.
Plant (1974) examines the account of German thought given by Nisbet, and
points to the contributions of Herder, Schiller and Hegel in the "rediscovery
of community" at that time. A key notion of these German Romantics,
which we shall pick up later in our discussion of postmodernity, is that
of fragmentation. The whole man (person) is found in the context of traditional
community, while in modernity the division of labour leads to fragmented
forms of human interaction. Plant traces how the theme continues especially
in urban sociology down to the work of Louis Wirth (1938) and Harvey Cox
(1968).
The most influential statement of these ideas for subsequent discussion
of the concept of community is Tonnies' duality between Gemeinschaft (community)
and Gesellschaft (association) which appeared in 1887. The popular version
of the account goes like this. In the idyllic (but perhaps imaginary) village
life of two centuries ago community (Gemeinschaft) was a natural state of
affairs. Interaction was on a human scale and people largely lived with,
worked alongside, married, worshipped with, traded with, quarreled with
and were even oppressed by, people who they had known face to face all through
their lives. Inevitably status was ascribed rather than achieved and there
were therefore many constraints on the ability of individuals, especially
the poor, females and outsiders to achieve prosperity, power and personal
fulfilment or a chosen lifestyle. Relationships between people were multiplex,
i.e. the same people were linked by a multi-stranded pattern of roles. The
Romantic argument is that this produces intimacy, social cohesion and sympathy
between the participants. To be fair to Tonnies it is important to point
out that he saw Gemeinschaft not as a disappearing historical situation
but as a quality and style of human interaction, that it is the intimacy
of home and hearth, of religion and neighbourliness, and that even in modern
urban settings it is not totally absent.
Industry, urbanisation and improved transport gradually eroded this pattern
of community life, so that increasingly people resided in one place, worked
in another and took their leisure in another. The appropriate description
of modern urban society was associational (Gesellschaft); here people might
be in contact with far greater numbers of people, but each contact was likely
to be fleeting, instrumental, and only involve a single role relationship.
In the city people would live in one neighbourhood, travel to work in another,
take leisure in another and make contact with different sets of people in
each. Organisational life would also be segmented, limited companies and
unions for the work place, residents associations and groups for women,
children and the retired in the neighbourhood, with special interest associations
such as sports clubs, arts and drama groups, religious groups, disability
support groups, serving a "community of interest" often spread
over a wider catchment area.
For Tonnies the concern with the loss of Gemeinschaft betrayed a conservative
set of values and their fears about the problems of social cohesion and
social control in an urban world increasingly divided by class conflict.
In this he has been accused of introducing the fundamental confusion of
community sociology, the conflation of facts and values. For example he
wrote that it is impossible to speak of bad Gemeinschaft, and described
it as the more genuine form of living together. He described it as a living
organism and Gesellschaft as a mechanical artifact. Contemporary sociology,
being less wedded to positivism and pseudo objectivity, may be more forgiving
to Tonnies here than that of the mid twentieth century. It is perhaps more
unfortunate that two other confusions were introduced by the tendency to
equate Gemeinschaft with Gesellschaft with two other dualities, rurality
- urbanism, and traditional - modernity.
An important, though much neglected critique of this duality comes from
the German sociologist Schmalenbach (Hetherington 1994). Crucially he introduces
another (usefully elastic!) term "Bund", often translated into
English as league or federation, to cover a conceptually (but not necessarily
historically) intermediate form of human association. Here individuals chose
or covenant to bind themselves together into a collective unit which takes
on far greater significance and develops greater levels of solidarity /
communion than the transitory associations of Gesellschaft. Unlike Gemeinschaft,
status and role relationships are not based on birth, tradition or ascription,
but tend towards either radical egalitarianism or dependence on charismatic
leadership. The concept of Bund has been applied to communities as diverse
as kibbutzim and the Hitler Youth, and clearly has some value in the description
of religious sects, orders and "intentional communities", and
of collectivities such as street gangs, military units or Japanese style
industrial work teams. While Bund structures have been known in both pre
modern and modern periods of history, they seem by nature to have only short
term stability, resolving towards Gesellschaft if they break up in the earlier
stages or Gemeinschaft if they can be sustained into the second and third
generation. Hetherington cites Schmalembach to argue that the Bund as an
ideal type of grouping has particular relevance for the postmodern period,
in which social fragmentation, de-centring of identity, and the wide range
of options for lifestyle, combined with romantic nostalgia for past times,
push many people into experiments with alternative forms of community.
Durkheim who was in his early years far more progressive ideologically and
optimistic about the potential of modernity than Tonnies, engaged in debate
with Tonnies over some shared concerns, and reinforced the dichotomy between
traditional and modern societies. However he turned Tonnies terminology
on its head by suggesting that mechanical solidarity was typical of traditional
society and organic solidarity of the modern world. Durkheim's discussion
was set in the context of his thesis of the division of labour, (1933) where
he explains how a relatively simple form of economic and social linkages
comparable to the machine evolved over time to become an immensely complicated
network of social and economic interdependencies, a system with a life and
strength of its own. Yet Durkheim recognised that this complex urban industrial
world had a devastating impact on many individuals, that its numerous fragmentary
relationships failed to provide social support and meaning for the whole
person. He developed this notion of anomie to the full in his work on suicide,
where he showed how such ultimate personal despair was most common in settings
where community solidarity was weak. (1951). However, Durkheim's concerns
were mainly around the relationship between individuals and society as
a whole, the nation state in the Europe of his age, or the self sufficient
tribe in the case of indigenous peoples of the European Empires. Thus he
had relatively little to say about local forms of community, other than
that the "patriotism of the parish has become an archaism that cannot
be restored at will" (1933). His suggested remedy for modern social
ills revolved around guild socialism and national social cohesion constructed
from the building blocks of a wide range of secondary groups. His vision
for such organisations in which people would work co-operatively in the
common interest, would appear thoroughly communitarian in spirit.
Weber (1964) in contrast went beyond the dichotomies of Tonnies and Durkheim.
As might be expected from a sociologist who was interested in human action,
he began by describing four ideal types of social behaviour (Freund 1968).
Associative behaviour depends on a mutually agreed and explicit set of rules
and is typical of voluntary sector organisations and political parties.
Behaviour based on mutual consent is governed by implicit social rules such
as the practices of the market place or the code of politeness. However
it must not be assumed that this implies solidarity since open or secret
competition or conflict can still take place within the unwritten rules.
Institutional behaviour takes place when rules are explicit and imposed
from on high rather than by members themselves. Typically this form is that
of the state and similar bureaucratic organisations. Weber's final type
is that of group behaviour. Here people enter of their own free will and
rules remain uncodified. Yet there is a clear submission to authority, and
the group can exercise sanctions or coercion if necessary. Typically this
form is that of a sect under charismatic leadership. Weber goes on to categorise
social relationships and organisations and it is here that he uses the terms
communal and associative, which are closely related in German to Gemeinschaft
and Gesellschaft. However in Weber there are different shades of meaning.
Communal is taken to be relationships based on a subjective sense of belonging,
of solidarity. Association in contrast refers to more rational forms of
social organisation, based either on shared values and goals. A common form
of associative relationship is the Verband or corporate group, a closed
group with clearly defined rules and authority and/or representational structures.
Sub types of corporate groups are enterprises, associations and institutions.
Weber also distinguishes between closed and open groups, an important concept
to bear in mind as we explore the notions of communities, boundary marking
processes, and networks in later chapters. Weber's study of organisational
life produced important insights into the process of bureaucratisation of
society and it is easy but probably an oversimplification to contrast the
formal rational organisations which developed with traditional "natural"
forms of "community".
Weber relates much of his analysis of social interaction to the economy
and develops a quite sophisticated analysis of social class, which he distinguishes
from status (1970). Persons of the same income and with the same relation
to capital may be ascribed or achieve different statuses on the basis of
their education, culture, religion or ethnicity for example. Here there
is a clear controversy with Marx whose economic reductionism portrayed class
as an objective and given category. Weber insisted that classes could not
be equated in any sense with communities. Mobilisation of class interests
for political and social action was not the result of an infallible economic
law, but the probabilistic outcome of multiple decisions by largely rational
actors. In contrast Weber saw status groups as communal, if often amorphous.
Concerns of honour, lifestyle, behaviour and values can override economics
in determining who deals with, befriends or marries whom. Numerous attempts
have been made to draw up a universal status hierarchy on a single dimension,
and most survey and census research analyses class on an occupational status
basis. Weber's approach to status allows us to go beyond this and is helpful
when dealing with the fragmented communities and networks of the postmodern
world. It underlies for example Rex and Moore's illuminative account of
housing class and ethnicity in Sparkbrook in the 1960's.
It would be impossible to complete this chapter without more than a passing
reference to Karl Marx who was undoubtedly the most influential social scientist
who has ever lived. His emphasis on the economic determinants of social
life has already been mentioned. He saw clearly how the capitalist and industrial
system of production produced workers who were alienated from the process
and product of their labour, and in conflict with the owners of capital.
Traditional community belonged to an earlier period of economic development
and was lost for ever under capitalism. Marx longed for and predicted (misguided
as it turned out) a revolutionary transformation of society to a form where
common ownership would produce a universal solidarity between people. In
his own time it appears that he struggled with the contradiction between
the shared economic interest that should have brought exploited groups together
with a shared consciousness, and the current historical reality. In the
case of the French peasants that "the identity of their interests begets
no community, no national bond and no political organization among them,
they do not form a class." (Marx 1852).
Marx as an internationalist, with his call for class solidarity, and faith
in economic laws, had little time for localism or other aspects of "community".
He tended to see society in terms of a simple dichotomy between the sphere
of market individualism and the sphere of the state. Even when he made use
of Hegel's term "civil society" to fill the middle ground, he
saw this "burgerliche Gesellschaft" as a form of economic association
appropriate to a limited historical juncture in early capitalism (Kumar
1993). However, later Marxists have developed the notion of civil society
as the autonomous mediating structures between the individual or family
and the state. Thus Gramsci (1988) develops a form of Marxism in which
cultural institutions play a role outside the economy, although he shows
how the hegemony of the ruling class is served by a civil society which
only appears to be independent of the state and free from coercion. There
as been renewed interest in the notion of civil society in recent years,
most clearly in the analysis of events in Eastern Europe and the former
Soviet Union, and in the role of the independent Polish trade union Solidarity.
Recent studies in the Marxist tradition such as Castells (1977) have also
begun to explore the role of community groups and urban social movements
in political and social struggles.
The basic sociological themes in the discussion of community have changed
little in the past century. As we shall see in later chapters many studies
have been conducted and many insights gained. Methods for studying both
local and non-local communities have become more diverse and more sophisticated.
Insights into the nature of communities within institutional settings such
as Asylums (Foucault 1971) have made important contributions to social theory
as a whole. But no convincing grand theory of community has emerged, and
has rarely been attempted. Bell and Newby (1971) underline this point several
times when they characterise community studies as atheoretical and non-cumulative
in the production of knowledge. They prefer to see community studies as
a research method rather than a sub discipline of sociology. Frankenberg's
(1966) attempt to synthesis a theory from the findings of the mid century
community studies brought together aspects of functionalism, class and status
analysis and social networks but was unconvincing in its eclecticism. It
also confused the issue of community with that or the rural urban continuum.
Chicago school sociology, as we shall see in the next chapter, was similarly
eclectic, and wedded to a conception of the urban neighbourhood as a community.
The late twentieth century has seen a reluctance among social theorists
to grapple with the concept of community. Marxists tend to reject it as
an ideological construction of capitalism, and as not soundly based in economic
materialism. A further reason for denying any theoretical status to community
is it's inextricable link to the local and parochial, which prevents a serious
analysis of the global factors impacting on localities. This is the logic
behind a framework for local studies which focus on economic processes and
change and their impact on social life at the regional, district and neighbourhood
level (Cooke 1989; Harvey 1973; 1989). Others reject the notion of community
because the term itself is so vague, and despite the numerous attempts incapable
of precise definition. However, the enduring popularity of Tonnies paradigm
in popular discourse about social change ensures that "community"
remains as an important element in the social construction and representation
of society. This influential discourse is worthy of analysis in its own
right as an important feature of postmodernity. It is not necessary to define
the term, as we can usefully describe its usage by various actors in society,
the political power invested in the term, and the way its usage, matches,
fails to match or even shapes social reality.
A second reason for hanging on to the concept of community is the nature
of contemporary social change itself. Globalisation and social fragmentation
mean that in the social sciences the old simplicities of class analysis
have succumbed to a diverse range of critical theories from various perspectives,
and/or to a plurality of perspectives making no claims to be metanarratives.
Most of these intellectual streams of postmodernity have in some sense a
place for, or a relationship to, the notion of community. They need a middle
level term between society and the individual to capture the experience
that people do interact and find identity and belonging in small groups
and personal networks which usually share or construct for themselves a
sense of place, common heritage or values or interests. It is hard to see
why the everyday term community, so frequently used to describe this feature
of social life should be discarded or how it can be replaced. A grand theory
of community may be for ever unattainable, but as a problematic or sensitizing
notion it is here to stay.