Understanding Community (Second Edition)

Politics, Policy and Practice

Somerville, Peter

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781447328070
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

This substantially revised edition of a highly topical text draws upon theory from Marx and Bourdieu to offer a clearer understanding of community in capitalist society. The book takes a more critical look at the literature on community, community development and the politics of community, and applies this critical approach to themes introduced in the first edition on economic development, learning, health and social care, housing, and policing, taking into account the changes in policy that have taken place, particularly in the UK, since the first edition was written. It will be a valuable resource for researchers and students of social policy, sociology and politics as well as areas of housing and urban studies.

Part I

This first part looks at the concept of community generally and how it relates to different kinds of actual community, whether experienced or imagined. Community is set in the context of contemporary society, in particular in relation to capitalism, social class, and social and political projects for development and emancipation. Community is seen as in tension and conflict with forces of exploitation and domination focused on social control rather than liberation. It is also emphasised, however, that the projects of the powerful are continually resisted by communities and often fail to achieve their aims – though sadly often damaging communities in the process.

One

The nature of community

This chapter argues that, in spite of numerous different interpretations of the word ‘community’, it has a common core of meaning, namely common attachments (whether material or symbolic) and common recognition of those attachments. Attachments arise in all sorts of ways that are far from being fully understood, and they are associated with dispositions that result in distinct sets of practices. In reviewing literature on attachment to place, the chapter suggests that such attachment does not have to be exclusive. Some place communities, however, are identified as abject, even encapsulated, in ways that are related to the attachments that members of the community have to one another – relationships that need to be more deeply explored by researchers. The chapter also introduces the concept of a beloved community, as an ideal community whose members freely act together in a spirit of love for one another.

The meaning of community

‘Community’ is a much used and abused word, with countless different definitions and interpretations (Hillery, 1955). The more it is mentioned and discussed, however, the more difficult it seems to identify it in real life (Hobsbawm, 1994, 428). This book attempts to clarify the situation. It argues that there is a sense in which we all know what community is but this ‘common sense’ co-exists with a variety of interpretations of how communities are. Understanding community, therefore, requires that we first make a distinction between ‘community’ and ‘communities’.

What kind of ‘thing’, then, is community? It is easier, perhaps, to say what community is not. It is not, indeed, a ‘thing’ at all: it is not a system or structure or relation or network or text or space or object of any kind – all of which have been stated to be characteristics of communities. This does not mean, however, that community is purely subjective, being identified, for example, with a certain kind of feeling or emotion or desire, as some scholars have claimed (for example, Brent, 2004). Rather, community ‘is an ideal and is also real; it is both an experience and an interpretation’ (Delanty, 2010, xii). In short, community is a kind of state of being or existence, which is both subjective and objective, or in which the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity is dissolved.

In the simplest terms, community can be understood as ‘being together’ (or more or less organised ‘convivial consociation’) (Neal and Walters, 2008, 291) – a state of being or set of practices in which people are connected or linked in some way. This can involve, for example, living together, working together, learning together, caring together, acting together, and so on. This is not really enough, however, to distinguish community from looser or thinner forms of interconnectedness – mere associations or groupings or networks (objective) or interpretations (subjective). Arguably, what makes community different from these other forms is the existence of common attachments and the common construction, maintenance and recognition of those attachments. As Clements (2008a, 21) puts it: ‘Community is made of the casual and more intimate bonds that we make and remake every day.’¹

Being attached to something or someone involves caring about (psychological) and for (practical) that object. There is no clear limit on what an attachment could relate to: a place (or field of care – Tuan, 1974), a set of beliefs or practices, an identity, a language, a nation, a class, an ethnic group, a gender, a cause, an organisation. People could also simply be attached to one another, as in a family (though interestingly we tend to distinguish family from community). In every case, however, people recognise one another as sharing that particular attachment (the existence of community therefore depends on the communication of that attachment), and there also exists the possibility (and, in some cases, the necessity) of those people acting together accordingly (collective action). Thus, although different interpretations of community exist, it has a core meaning on which everyone could perhaps agree.²

Some scholars have argued that community can be understood in terms of belonging. For example, Delanty (2010) argues that the basis for community is ‘communitas’, which is ‘an expression of belonging that is irreducible to any social or political arrangement’ (Delanty, 2010, 4). Then ‘community must be understood as an expression of a highly fluid communitas – a mode of belonging that is symbolic and communicative – rather than an actual institutional arrangement’ (Delanty, 2010, 20). And: ‘Following Bourdieu (1990), we can say that community is a set of practices that constitute belonging. What is distinctive about these practices – and this is to move beyond Bourdieu – is that they are essentially reproduced in communication in which new imaginaries are articulated’ (Delanty, 2010, 102).

Unfortunately, there is a certain circularity to this analysis. Community is understood as an expression of belonging, while belonging is interpreted as an effect of community. The nature of belonging itself remains strangely unanalysed, and communication seems to be confused with what is communicated. The linking of belonging to communication does not help (‘Belonging today is participation in communication more than anything else’ – Delanty, 2010, 152), for two reasons. Assuming that belonging means something similar to attachment, first, it is possible for people to communicate without belonging, for example, mere association or interaction; and second, it is possible for people to belong to the same community without communicating with one another, for example, attachment to something to which unknown others are also attached (for example, a national community). Communication is required to enact or perform community, since community members must recognise one another as having the same attachments, but attachment (or belonging or communitas) exists prior to this communication. Esposito (2010, 6) also argues that what is shared in communities is ‘a debt, a pledge, a gift that is to be given’ – which suggests that ‘belonging’ is not the right word.

Another scholar who conceptualises community in terms of belonging is Savage (Savage et al, 2005a; Savage, 2008; 2010a). What he actually identifies, however, on the basis of research on Cheadle by himself and his colleagues, are three ‘narratives of attachment’ (to place), namely, ‘dwelling’ (in place), ‘nostalgia’ (for a remembered or imagined past community)³ and ‘elective belonging’. Dwelling in place seems to correspond more or less with the attachment to place found in traditional local communities (see below), which often overlaps considerably with nostalgia for how the community used to be in the past (as evidenced by many studies, for example Watt, 2006, 784–6). The narrative of elective belonging, however, is quite different. According to this idea, people become attached to places through conscious choices (for example, to move and settle in those places). Whereas dwelling in place is narrated in terms of ‘being thrown into place’ (Savage, 2010a, 132), involving what could be called belonging to place, elective belonging is understood almost as the antithesis of this, in terms of ‘the place as belonging to them’ (Savage, 2008, 152) or ‘a possessive concern over place’ (Savage, 2010a, 132) (see also discussion of gentrification in Chapter Eight, in particular Butler, 2008). Here too, however, nostalgia can come into play – for example, in the notion of the rural idyll (Bell, 2006; Short, 2006), which evokes pastoral and romantic images of community life in bygone days, and which rural gentrifiers attempt to recreate (see, for example, Tyler, 2003; Somerville, 2013b).

For Buonfino (2007) belonging is a human need, like food, water or shelter. The nature of this need, however, is not entirely clear. It may be a need for contact with other human beings, and few people would disagree that such a need exists. She seems to mean more than this, though – specifically, a need for recognition from other human beings that they have certain qualities in common such as ethnicity or nationality. Her concept of belonging is therefore identical with community, understood as a collectivity with common attachments (for example, to ethnic group, nation, etc) and common recognition of those attachments.

Community, therefore, involves common attachments, bonds, ties or commitments, and different kinds of community are associated with different objects of attachment. These common attachments are then what make it possible for society to exist and to be reproduced. Essentially, community has a spiritual meaning – hence the use of the term ‘community spirit’, which refers to the unseen force that activates the set of practices that constitute community.⁴ This may sound deeply mysterious but actually we have all experienced the operation of this force – it is no more (or less) mysterious than the forces of gravity or magnetic attraction. We also have some (albeit limited) understanding of how community is generated and maintained, which will be explored in the rest of this book. For example, we know that attachments originate in families but they can also be forged in a complex variety of other ways, for example, through seduction (Bauman, 2001), enchantment (Bourdieu, 1997; 1992), interpellation (Althusser, 1970), discipline (Foucault, 1977), and above all through recognition of having in common a valued (experienced or imagined) quality to which they are attached (such as kinship, social position, nationality, cultural tastes, sexual orientation, or the very qualities of sharing and caring themselves). Brent (2009) talks of community in terms of a process of conjuration, which involves people coming together for a common (typically creative) purpose – community as a state of becoming rather than being (see also Latour’s, 2010, concept of composition) – what Mulligan (2015, 347) calls ‘a projection of community’. In this sense, to use Mulligan’s terms, communities can be ‘projected’ rather than ‘grounded’ (see Chapter Four).

Communities can be most simply understood as distinct groups of people who embody and express community in their practices. Consequently, communities vary according to the nature, function and strength of their common attachments. Bourdieu’s concept of habitus is useful here. For him, a habitus is a set of dispositions to act in certain ways, typically based on past experiences and current capabilities. People (as individuals and in groups) act to some extent out of habit – but they are not entirely creatures of habit, as their capabilities and resources (which Bourdieu calls ‘capital’) enable them to choose different courses of action. They operate like players in a game (what Bourdieu calls a ‘field’) in that they work within particular sets of rules but they can have different strategies and tactics for winning the game.⁵ According to this interpretation, communities are sets of practices within habitus in which the dispositions of the community members are determined specifically by their shared attachments (which are likely to be produced by past experience but not necessarily so). A complicating factor here is that people are typically members of more than one community and their practices are also shaped by their positions in different fields (as the rest of this book attempts to explain). Although communities exist within habitus, therefore, habitus themselves exist in relation to fields of different kinds.

To avoid any possible misunderstanding, it needs to be stated here that the use of terms such as ‘attachment’, ‘bond’ or ‘tie’ does not necessarily signify any constraints or restrictions on human freedom. Admittedly, communities can be experienced as oppressive and stifling, but Žižek, for example, paints a more positive picture:

the bond that holds a given community together is the way in which we share our enjoyment. What we fear most is the theft of that enjoyment by others. Our enjoyment is made up of all kinds of things, ways of life, mythologies. It is the way in which we imagine our community to be and therefore is often based on a nostalgic attraction to another way of life that never really existed or has been lost. (Žižek, 1993, as reported in Clarke et al, 2007, 99)

According to this interpretation, then, community is typically based on the joys of shared experiences and imaginings, as remembered, retold and typically embellished over the years. (It is precisely the exercise of the imagination that also gives rise to visions of utopian community, such as that of the beloved community – see below.)

Attachments vary in strength. This was perhaps first noted by Granovetter (1973) in his distinction between ‘strong ties’ and ‘weak ties’ and later by Turner (2001, 29) in his distinction between ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ communities.⁶ Strong ties (and thick communities) are more permanent and involve relationships of intimacy (Misztal, 2000), deriving mainly from kinship (so-called ‘traditional’ kin-based communities) but also, increasingly, from close friendship – for example, strong ‘personal communities’ (Pahl, 2001; Spencer and Pahl, 2006). Weak ties (and thin communities), on the other hand, are more temporary and transient, having more of the character of acquaintanceship and ‘thin’ sociability (Somerville, 2009a), and derive from contacts or connections through work (for example, collegiality) or residence (neighbourliness) or other kinds of everyday activity. Tie strength can perhaps be represented most accurately in terms of a continuum from intimate family ties at one end to loose forms of association at the other (see, for example, Buonfino, 2007, 11 – ‘the spectrum of belonging’⁷). Communities commonly involve combinations of strong and weak ties – for example, strong attachment of community members to the same object plus weak attachment to one another. This is most likely to occur in the case of imagined communities such as nations in which the members are strongly attached to the nation but weakly attached to most fellow nationals.⁸ Without the strong attachment, a nation would not be a community; on the other hand, an absence of weak attachments would suggest a lack of mutual recognition, which is essential for community, so in this case the result would be an imaginary (as distinct from imagined) community, a community in name only.⁹

Community studies

Early community studies, mainly in the UK and US (in the 1950s and 1960s) noted the significance of attachment to place¹⁰ or locality in people’s lives, with the result that ‘community’ came to be identified with ‘local community’ (for a comprehensive review of this literature, see Bell and Newby, 1971; and perhaps most famously, Dennis et al, 1969). Later studies continued to find plenty of evidence of this strong ‘dwelling in place’. Scherer (1972), for example, identified an attachment to place in Harlem that was strong enough to over-ride cultural differences within the community; this attachment arose from a shared experience of living in a particularly distinct area, with open access to community resources, reinforced by regular mutual recognition. Similarly, Wallman’s (1984) study of Battersea showed how shared attachment to a locality can overcome the potential barriers posed by differences of language and skin colour (see also Atlee, 2007, on Cowley Road, Oxford, and Lichtenstein, 2007, on Brick Lane in Tower Hamlets – but contrast Dench et al, 2006, with their narrative of nostalgia and racialized class conflict, and Putnam, 2007, who argues that rates of ethnic diversity are inversely related to social solidarity both within and between different ethnic groups).¹¹

From the 1970s onwards, various studies showed that even the most remote and inaccessible local communities were not completely self-contained and functioned within a wider economy and society (see, for example, Fox, 1978; Cohen, 1987). These studies explained how communities were socially constructed and how the terms of their membership were negotiated. Partly in response to this, many researchers rejected the identification of community with locality and instead emphasised de-localised networks of personal communities (W...