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| Community
Characteristics |
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For a
community to be whole and healthy,
it must
be based on people's love
and concern
for each other.
Millard Fuller
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| Can
a Community Have a Spirit? |
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| If
sociology is to remain a science, it does not have the mandate to make
theological decisions, such as the existence or not of spirits..
For those questions you need to see your religious advisor..
The phrase "Community Spirit" here does not have a theological interpretation..
There is nothing supernatural about community or any of the social institutions
in society. |
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| What,
then, is Community Spirit? |
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| Community
spirit refers to the ideas that community members have about themselves
and their community. They are usually positive attitudes, optimistic about
its future, and which encourage altruism and the contribution of members
to the welfare of the community..
Loyalty is among these attitudes..
So is optimism..
Those attitudes are then reflected in the behaviour of those members, and
therefore contribute to the good future of that community..
When community members are "spirited" they are not possessed by supernatural
beings; they are active and upbeat..
They are animated. |
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| An
important characteristic of a community is that the people are conscious
of belonging to it..
Their loyalty can be called their community spirit. |
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| The
concept "community spirit" is not a technical sociological term here, but
I mention it as a way of introducing an important, perhaps defining, characteristic
in the nature of community –– which sociologists call "gemeinschaft." |
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| In
the German language, the word "gemeinschaft" simply means "community.".
But because of a German sociologist, Ferdinand Tönnies, we use the same
word, in English, in Sociology, to mean some things which can be called
essential characteristics of communities. |
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| This
concept takes community spirit a few steps forward. |
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| Gemeinschaft
and
Gesellschaft |
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| Tönnies
contrasted "gemeinschaft" with "gesellschaft.".
In German, "gesellschaft" is a noun meaning "society." In sociology
in English, it is used as an adjective to characterize contrasts with "gemeinschaft,"
implying "cold," formal, associated more with urban than with rural life. |
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| What
Tönnies was explaining, is the shift in time, as societies became more
complex, from an informal, personal and "village like" social organisation
to a more formal, rules based, "cold" (impersonal) social organisation..
Where there were "gemeinschaft characteristics," most people knew
each other, and people interacted with each other as whole people, rather
than as mere roles in a social vacuum. |
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| It
is an interesting linguistic shift..
Where community once meant a group of people, with its own culture and
social organisation, within a society as a whole, the German word for community
came to mean the characteristics of communities, informal and personal..
It is a shift rather like from a noun to an adjective. To maintain that
distinction, sociologists have tended to retain the German word (gemeinschaft)
for the adjective, and the English word (community) for the noun..
We look at gemeinschaft as something that is not "either or" but
something that different communities have in varying degrees. |
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| Beware
of Romanticizing Community |
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| Some
people like life in the city..
Others like to live in small rural communities..
We will omit hermits, prospectors and trappers for now..
We all make choices and they are based on our values and attitudes. |
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| Because
we already have ideas about characteristics of different communities, we
are susceptible to idealizing those with more gemeinschaft or those with
more gesellschaft..
Let us remember that, as social scientists, we are more concerned with
"what is" than with "what should be." |
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| Where
a community has more gemeinschaft, it can be miserable to live in
when everybody knows your business, where gossip
is a strong force for keeping people in order, and where there is little
freedom to act or dress in eccentric ways..
For others, they feel the security of being known by everybody they meet,
prefer the absence of having to make decisions about religious beliefs
and political choices, and enjoy the comfort of many shared values and
experiences. |
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| In
contrast, where a community has more gesellschaft, it can be miserable
being anonymous and without friends, where you are ignored most of the
day, where you fear strangers who may hurt or steal from you, and where
you are not sure what the laws are or if you might be arrested..
For others it may be a joy to have the freedom to have fewer controls over
their life styles, freedom to have any religious beliefs without someone
trying to correct that, freedom to support any minority political view
available, and do not have to put up with gossip. |
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| We
have to beware when people speak or write as if the community, in itself,
is ideal..
Some advocates of community participation write as if there is something
intrinsic in a community which justifies its participation. Many authors,
in both fiction and non fiction, write as if rural or small town life is
intrinsically good, while a few others do the same for city life. |
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| Let
us concentrate on "What is" rather than "What should be." |
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| Community
Spirit can be Mean Spirited. |
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| A
small community depends upon informal means of social control, which in
turn relies on gossip..
Sometimes that gossip can be vicious and dysfunctional..
Sometimes its victims are accused, judged and punished when they are innocent,
because gossip does not have the same set of checks and balances as a formal
court of law. |
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| If
you have had the misfortune to be the object of such gossip, used as negative
sanctions, whether you are guilty or not, you will know how much punishment
it is, and might well wish for a quiet jail cell. |
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| Although
we sometimes use the slang term, "warm and fuzzy," to indicate the qualities
of gemeinschaft, be careful to avoid thinking that it means that
living in a community is necessarily soft and comfortable..
The characteristics of gemeinschaft means that the community is
small enough for most members to know each other, for social control to
be based on informal methods (gossip) rather than formal laws or rules,
and for division of labour and roles to be less rigid and formal..
For some people, that may be hard and uncomfortable. Although "unity" is
a part of the word, "community," there is no guarantee that a community
is harmonious or unified. |
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| Social
schisms may be long and bitter, sometimes lasting many generations..
They can be based on clans, caste, class, age, gender, ethnicity, language,
religion, incomes –– all the stuff of social organisation. |
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| Essentialising:
Identity and stereotyping |
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| Every
community is different. |
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| We,
as humans and how we are socialised, tend to make generalizations based
on a few particular observations..
That is normal, and is how we learn a language. |
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| Sometimes
when we apply this method to some aspects of life we can get ourselves
into trouble. |
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| We
use the word "essentialising" to mean a process where we see the personality
and characteristics of one or two members of a community, then extrapolate
those to stereotype the characteristics of the whole community. |
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| This
is not always a bad thing..
Members of the community are proud of their identity, and sometimes see
some of those characteristics as strengths of which to be proud..
It contributes to the loyalty and pride elements of gemeinschaft. |
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| It
can be, however, a form of ethnocentrism which exaggerates some of the
characteristics of the community, and is then used to lower public esteem
of that community. |
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| A
note about ethnic stereotypes..
Have you noticed that when a comedian jokes about an ethnic group, or a
community, it is acceptable when s/he is a member of that community or
ethnic group?.
If the jokes are made by members of the mainstream society, they may be
treated as offensive. Laugher and what makes some things funny is an important
indicator to sociologists..
It tells us much about what topics are sensitive in a community. |
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| The
traditional and orthodox notion of a community is one that is rural, with
distinct geographic and population boundaries, small and based on farming,
fishing or similar technologies. |
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| Now
it is time to break out of the box, and discard that model which has outlived
its usefulness. New kinds of communities are now being created and
developed. See: Neo Gemeinschaft. |
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| As
societies have become more urban, more formal, more complex, with division
of labour, separation of roles, interdependence, they have sprouted more
of the characteristics of gesellschaft..
Maybe there is a natural need, or at least a strong desire, by humans,
to have much of their daily social interaction to be with known persons
in contrast to strangers who interact with flat or single dimensional roles..
Sufficient here to say that urbanization and alienation have given rise
to constructed communities, where they might not have geographic boundaries,
might not have originated and grown in a natural and unplanned way, and
may be in the cities or on the Internet. (1) |
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| Some
of those new communities consist of voluntary associations of individuals
who may share an interest or a passion, as in model trains, square dancing,
chess, military training, international development, baseball, masons,
civil liberties or fan clubs..
These are voluntary, not for profit organisations, often called NGOs (Non
Governmental Organisations)..
Members are not paid, but donate their time and effort to the running of
the organisations. |
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| The
formation of communes is another deliberate way to create constructed communities. |
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| An
elementary manifestation of the desire for gemeinschaft can be found
in such urban practices as learning the name of a letter carrier, bus driver,
librarian, street person, pharmacist or sales clerk (coffee shop, deli,
video rental shop, post office, restaurant, other service establishments),
and greeting them by name daily. |
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| The
same practice can be found in the work place..
Perhaps there is a formal organizational structure, but people make friends
and acquaintances that may cross official organizational lines..
Apart from the formal requirements of co-operating, a work team may develop
relationships that go beyond what is required..
They may organize an ice skating party, a company picnic, a dance, a joint
visit to a game or a barbecue. |
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| Certainly,
as Bhushan Crossman and Colleen Thompson discovered, in our Sociology 160
class, a class of students and instructor go through a process of starting
out as strangers..
They learned more about each other and, by the end of the course, considerable
socialization had taken place, making it resemble a family, and gemeinschaft
was generated, making it resemble a community. |
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| Many
of the constructed communities are the product of urbanization, where cities
can bring together people of similar interests and values..
This has been going on since the origin of cites.
Long distance relationships between such groups with similar interests
was an extension of each constructed community..
Now, with the advent of the Internet and email, newly constructed communities
are being formed, many which may not call themselves communities, and are
associations of people with similar interests, and others which are deliberately
constructed and formed as on line communities. |
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| To
rephrase Forrest Gump, "Community is what community does." |
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