Rethinking Community through Transdisciplinary Research

Bettina Jansen

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9783030310721
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030310738
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Politica sociale

This book offers the first interdisciplinary survey of community research in the humanities and social sciences to consider such diverse disciplines as philosophy, religious studies, anthropology, sociology, disabilities studies, linguistics, communication studies, and film studies. Bringing together leading international experts, the collection of essays critically maps and explores the state of the art in community research, while also developing future perspectives for a cross-disciplinary rethinking of community.

Pursuing such a critical, transdisciplinary approach to community, the book argues, can counteract reductive appropriations of the term 'community' and, instead, pave the way for a novel assessment of the concept's complexity. Since community is, above all, a lived practice that shapes people's everyday lives, the essays also suggest ways of redoing community; they discuss concrete examples of community practice, thereby bridging the gap between scholars and activists working in the field.

© The Author(s) 2020

B. Jansen (ed.)Rethinking Community through Transdisciplinary Researchhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31073-8_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Bettina Jansen¹

(1)

Institute of English & American Studies, TU Dresden, Dresden, Sachsen, Germany

Bettina Jansen

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

‘Community’ is a key term for our understanding of human sociality. At present, the idea of community enjoys great popularity in private, political, and academic discourses as people invoke, appeal to, debate, protest, and feel the need to defend communities. Gerard Delanty links the contemporary resonance of the idea of community to the current ‘crisis in solidarity and belonging that has been exacerbated and at the same time induced by globalization’ (2010, x). Present-day appeals to community express people’s ‘search for belonging in the insecure conditions of modern society’ (ibid.). These evocations of community articulate our ontological need for belonging or Mitsein (Heidegger [1927] 1977, 161, 167), and at the same time, they point to a perceived deficiency in many Western societies. They suggest that our neoliberal, postmodern societies and their fluid matrix of values have created an unprecedented freedom for the individual at the expense of social cohesion and a sense of community. Thus, far from being ‘lost’ as a result of the transformation from an agrarian, premodern to an industrialised, modern society—as the founding fathers of sociology like Ferdinand Tönnies and Max Weber had predicted at the end of the nineteenth century (Delanty 2010, 7)—the idea of community has a particular appeal to our contemporary age. ‘[T]he question of belonging has become more acute’ (ibid., 156) because of the processes of globalisation, the digital revolution, the surge in global migration since the turn of the millennium, postmodernism and its radical challenge to preconceived notions of individual and collective identity, the advent of neoliberalism as guiding ideology promoting ‘competition, commodification and privatisation in individual and public life’ (Emejulu 2016, 6), as well as the connected dissolution of the welfare state.

But despite its ubiquity, ‘community’ is a notoriously elusive concept whose meaning often remains vague.¹ ‘Community’ is evoked in terms as diverse as village community, British Asian community, LGBTQ community, Muslim community, academic community, community of interest, community of goods, online community , community college, community radio, community theatre, community singing, community garden, community investment, community service, European Community, African Economic Community, or international community. Community may denote people living in the same area and/or having something in common like their ethnicity, faith, gender identity, occupation, property, a specific interest, etc.; community can describe an activity or an event in which a large number of people participate; it can refer to a political association or, as in ‘international community’, mean all the countries in the world; and community can be used to speak about the general public at large. In either case, the term ‘community’ seems to appeal to our emotions and create a range of positive images. Zygmunt Bauman famously observes that community ‘feels good: whatever the word “community” may mean, it is good “to have a community”’ (2001, 1). For, community is associated with ‘a “warm” place, a cosy and comfortable place’ (ibid.). Similarly, Raymond Williams stresses that ‘unlike all other terms of social organization (state, nation, society, etc.) [community] seems never to be used unfavourably’ ([1976] 1990, 76).

Yet, there is also a ‘dark side’ to community. The horrific appropriation of the term as Volksgemeinschaft by Nazi Germany had revealed how easily a vague concept like community can be charged with ideological meaning and misused for totalitarian purposes. And it had shown that the notion of community lends itself to (racial) bigotry and the illusion of a homogeneous and eternal union of descent. This negative side of community is very prominent at present as we witness a growing hostility against others and differences. The term ‘community’ is increasingly used to delineate borders and define those who do not belong to one’s community because of their nationality, ethnicity, religious creed, gender, sexuality, disability, or age. This is most apparent in the contemporary resurgence of ‘patriotism and ethnic-absolutism’ (Gilroy 2005) that is observable across the globe, i.e. in Europe’s anti-immigration policies just like Trump’s declaration to ‘make [white] America great again’, Erdoğan’s intention to develop Turkey into a strong Muslim nation, or Narendra Modi’s implementation of a Hindu-nationalism in India. The recent rise in hate crimes clearly illustrates that essentialist, ethnocentric notions of community such as these have fatal consequences for those excluded.

In order to challenge reductive explanations of community and combat the term’s current populist abuses and misuses, we need to develop a critical, transdisciplinary approach to community. The complexities of the concept can only be understood if, as Delanty rightly argues, we ‘[take] a broad and interdisciplinary look at the idea of community’ (2010, xiii). While Delanty’s study of Community (2010) is concerned with ‘modern social and political thought’ (ibid.) and contemplates the findings of sociology, political philosophy, anthropology, and history, this essay collection considers community on a much broader canvas. Rethinking Community through Transdisciplinary Research maps and explores the findings of community research in disciplines as wide-ranging as philosophy, psychology, linguistics, migration studies, sociology, music, and literary studies. That is, the edited collection seeks to offer a truly interdisciplinary account of community scholarship that combines research in the social sciences with the knowledge produced in the humanities. It brings together leading experts in their respective fields of research who are located at universities in the USA, Canada, the UK, Continental Europe, and Singapore. But the book does not simply map the state of the art in contemporary community research. Through the book’s overall design and cross-references between contributions, the essay collection also seeks to offer a framework for a critical, interdisciplinary approach to community that has the potential to advance the field in the future. Since community is, above all, a lived practice , all contributions to this volume provide in-depth discussions of concrete communities. In addition, the final section of this book offers examples of experimental, intentional communities in order to illustrate the ways in which community building activities may effect social change.

1.1 The Idea of Community in Western Philosophy from Aristotle to the Present

‘Community’ derives from the Latin adjective communis, which, in turn, may be a combination of com (together) and mūnis (bound, under obligation) or com and unus (one, singularity), expressing a dutiful connection or simply the being together of singularities (OED 2019a, b). This etymological origin of the term continues to shape its meaning until today. For, the diverse uses of ‘community’ in private, public, and academic discourses are united by ‘the idea that community concerns belonging’ (Delanty 2010, xiii).

The Western discourse about community begins in Greek antiquity with Plato’s observation in The Republic (approx. 370 BC) that the individual necessarily requires fellow human beings and the organisational structures of the polis (Rosa et al. 2010, 18).² Following in the footsteps of his teacher, Aristotle elaborates on this idea in Politics (approx. 325 BC), where he famously defines the human being as a zōon politikon (Aristoteles [325 BC] 2006, ch. I 2, 1253a2f.), i.e. a being that constitutes and lives in communities (Rosa et al. 2010, 19). Articulate, sensible, and ethical as the human being is, Aristotle argues, it can only realise itself fully in the political community of the polis (ibid., 19). Thus, the Greek polis stands at the beginning of Western thought about community and ‘provided the basic ideal for all subsequent conceptions of community’ (Delanty 2010, 5). An urban community, the polis was local and particularistic, characterised by immediate relationships and direct participation in public life (ibid.). That is, the Greeks ‘did not know the separation of the social from the political’ (Delanty 2010, 5), of ‘community’ from ‘society’, that only came into existence in the nineteenth century (Williams [1976] 1990, 76).

Aristotle’s notion of the zōon politikon has been of fundamental importance to the history of the idea of community in the West. According to Rosa et al. (2010), it has given rise to two distinct discourses that continue to shape our understanding of community until today. Those who have translated zōon politikon as ‘communal being’ have treated community as an ontological category, while those who have understood zōon politikon as ‘political being’ have used community as a political-ethical category (Rosa et al. 2010, 20).³ The first discourse has been shaped by thinkers like Cicero, Seneca, Thomas Aquinas, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Wilhelm von Humboldt, G. W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Luc Nancy, who have argued that sociality is a primordial and ahistoric ontological feature of all human beings (ibid., 22). The second discourse has taken its cue from Aristotle’s analysis of the Greek polis and used the term ‘community’ to describe concrete political-ethical examples of human coexistence, spanning from small communities like the family or the circle of friends to large communities like the state or the transnational union (Rosa et al. 2010, 27–28). The simultaneous existence of two distinct discourses on community underlines the term’s complexity. And it helps to explain some of the convolution surrounding the notion of community as several authors, like Aristotle, have explored community both as a more abstract, ontological and a concrete, political-ethical concept.

Importantly, up to the early modern period, the terms ‘community’ and ‘society’ were interchangeable (Delanty 2010, 2). Both were used to describe direct, immediate social relationships (ibid.). Since the seventeenth century, the notion of community acquired a critical edge and came to articulate an opposition to the distant and ‘alien world of the state’ (ibid., 3). In the age of the Enlightenment this critique was directed against the absolutist state. From then on, community has functioned as a ‘utopian concept’ and an ‘emancipatory project’, expressing ‘a vision of a pure or pristine social bond that did not need a state’ (ibid.).

By the nineteenth century, the idea of society had lost its sense of immediacy and direct relationship (Delanty 2010, 2) and came itself to be viewed in opposition to community. In contrast to the ‘direct’, ‘total’, and, as Raymond Williams argues, ‘more significant relationships’ characterising community, the notion of society, like the state, came to be associated with ‘formal’, ‘instrumental’, and ‘abstract relationships’ ([1976] 1990, 76). This opposition between ‘community’ and ‘society’ was systematically theorised by the Ge...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• Part I. What Is Community?
• Part II. The Digital Age and Communities in Flux
• Part III. Community between Social Empowerment and Exploitation
• Part IV. Community in the Arts
• Part V. Redoing Community
• Back Matter