Building Community What is Community?

The first question really is "what is community?"  What did you think about that word before starting this class? Are these first readings getting you to ask new questions? Are there nagging uncertainties about community that you hope to get to think about over this semester? This is a place to muse and an occasion to tell stories both related to the readings and to other aspects of your life where community flourishes or stifles.

Everyone needs to post one comment and respond to one comment by class-time on Monday morning Jan 30th.

To add a new post click on the word "Add"  on the yellow bar above and then choose "Article", give your article a title in the title box, and once you have typed your thoughts into the bigger text  box below it remember to click "Save" at the bottom of the page.

To comment on a post click on the phrase "add comment" that appears below that passage.

Where is the agency in community?  In class, we struggled over the distinction between communities that are built by self-selecting or selected members and those that are formed because of circumstances completely outside of the community members’ control.  The conversation had touches of the timeless fate versus free will and nature versus nurture debates.  To begin with definitions: chosen communities are often characterized by a common interest, a shared experience, or a unified identity; chance communities, on the other hand, can be the product of genetics, geography, mother nature, or even just blind luck.

But the distinction between the two isn’t always so black and white.  In the case of chance communities, individuals still have choice about the extent to which they participate in the community or whether or not they truly “join” in the first place.  In the case of chosen communities, individuals still lack control in some regards: their experiences within the community they join will vary starkly depending on the strength of the institution that is available to them.  If you’re a singer looking to join an a capella group, you could luck out with an incredibly supportive, active cast or get stuck with a listless group focused solely on the business of producing music.  Worse yet, you could find that no such institution exists.

The reason we belong to communities is agency.  This may be the link that ties together communities of choice and of chance.  Joining a community by choice is an act of self-definition; a member asserts his or her agency.  For communities of chance, members assert their agencies often by or through the formation of their community.  Ethnic groups can use their communities to demonstrate a consolidated political voice.  Another example of a chance community, individuals thrown together in the case of a natural disaster exercise agency when they form a community too because members see that their physical wellbeing as often immediately tied to their neighbor’s.  Individuals can face the world alone – but the world is a big place, and even in matters outside of an individuals’ hands he or she may be best served by forming a community of similar people.  That, in itself, is an act of agency.

Agency is what Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, and Tipton are really talking about in their conversation on institutions.  Often considered behemoth bureaucracies and overly controlling, institutions are still, of course, created by and comprised of individuals.  Bellah et al admit that when a community becomes institutionalized, it means they are now “enforced by laws and mores” (11).  The institution takes on an entitity – and an agency – of its own. But at the end of the day, individuals give institutions their power and individuals can take their power away, often through acts of trust and mistrust, as Bellah et al explain.   Institutions are created to serve the people of a community; they are formed and maintained by people of the community.  When an institution fails to serve its function or the people believe it needs new direction, the people of the community can reclaim and redirect even the largest of institutions.  I’m interested in following this theme as I study Holyoke’s history and culture within the context of Alex Morse’s recent election.

         When I first entered the class, I thought that community is a group of people who help one another to foster a sense of belonging and cohesion. And I've believed that the process of community building is always a process that requires great amount of time patience. But after reading about the Creek Community, I've learned that a community, under pressing circumstances, can come together and bond with each other in a relatively short period of time. However, I still believe that a well-built community that has survived a long period of time is stronger than a one that has just been constructed; yet, that being said, I've come to realize through Erikson's reading that there could be factors - e.g. a disaster - that can quickly bring together a group of people, and create a community. I'm sure there are other factors - one that is within our control, and is more constructive than a disaster - that help create and strengthen communities; I would really like to study in-depth about those factors. 

         I am particularly interested in learning more about community building, as I would like to apply the knowledge to help develop strong communities back in Myanmar. Recent changes in Myanmar have inspired me to develop interest in this area. It's interesting that I am not originally from Korea, but because I've grown up in the place for twelve years, I feel much more attached to the place, and identify myself as someone "from" Myanmar. While I am also interested in social issues concerning Korea (esp. education-related issues), I feel a stronger pull towards where I've spent my childhood and teenage years. 

        Moving to States has been a great learning experience for me - not only in terms of academics, but also in terms of culture. From the limited exposure to America that I've had here so far, I peronsally have noticed myself the difference in atmosphere between American low-income neighborhoods and those in Myanmar. The latter tends to be usually more gloomy, downhearted and disconnected, whereas, a lot of the poor neighborhoods in Myanmar sustain a hopeful, if not merry, atmopshere. I was discussing about these differences with a friend of mine from Indonseia who is majoring in Sociology; she said that she sees the fundamental difference between the two communities is the absence/presence of the sense of isolation and marginalization. According to what she has learned from her Sociology classes, a lot of poor neighborhoods in U.S lack a geunine sense of community, and thus people often feel isolated and not cared for. Whereas, in places like Myanmar and Indonesia, the people interact with one another much more frequently: there are teashops all around the city, where men come together every morning to enjoy coffee and breakfast, talk about politics, harships of living, and more. In villages, people come together to the town center (where there is TV and electricity) watch soccer and Korean dramas together at night. Indeed, I want to better understand the nature of the differences that I see between where I come from, and where I would be living in the next four years. Throughout the class, I want to raise various questions to what builds a community, how it affects the individuals who are part of it. 

My definition of “Community” at this class’ first meeting was something to the effect of “ an organization of social institutions and relationships to facilitate its citizens’ utmost mental and physical health.” As the class went around and shared their definition, I was surprised to find that I was the only one to mention “mental health” explicitly as a pillar within the definition. As a psychology major,  my understanding of any intellectual interaction I engage in seems to ultimately relate in one way or another in psychological (social, biological, environmental) influences and motivations. I had assumed for years as a psychology major that I was set on a Ph.D/Psy.D clinical route, but my life and community engagement experiences intertwined with my psychology study since then have driven me to look beyond the individual psychic health of individuals to psychic health of communities; what social interventions incite healthy communal change instead of what clinical interventions incite individual, positive change. This change in my life’s path is partly what brought me to this class, I want to better understand how to change communities for the better using similar scientific thinking and discourse as my psychology education has provided. Given this lens, I was excited to find of Kai Erikson in “Everything in Its Path” on the buffalo Creek Community’s destruction and post-Katrina New Orleans touch upon community mental health through her description of communal trauma and its effects.

Erikson describes effects of trauma within the community, commenting how in the face of destruction, people “watch a part of themselves die” as their relations to familiar physical space and belongings are upended. This had me begin to begin to add to my definition of community as a group of individuals with psychic tie to a time and space.  Community is fluid. It changes with the historical moment, as Erikson later comments about how each historical era having its own particular problems, its own “particular strains on the human nervous system.” To me, the use of the creative-mind, individually and collectively, to confront the present, ever-changing needs of a community is alluring and inspiring. This itself could be a anchor around which the human community unites; a philanthropy-rooted drive to understand that as a global community ( which “The Good Society” touches upon) we do have commonalities to unite around constant change and obstacles; we all have a set of culturally-specific skills and strengths to utilize and solve our culturally-specific conundrums, but we organize for the similar end-goals - peace and equity. Communities need goals to work towards and unite around, though I can imagine the complexities that go into defining and publicizing them for productive means.
 
I also enjoyed the general theme within the readings of people’s innate tendency to come together in a disaster’s wake . However, there the readings acknowledge that dark side of the media's incitation of fear in the general populace when they emphasize the few poor, desperate actions of expection within disaster to attract public attention and dollars. This has me consider the importance to which community's frame the conflict or disaster that confronts them on their end-goals and the possible cultural differences that must be considered within these choices.

This leads me to my first few question inspired by these articles that this course will hopefully explore: how can the positive aspects within community building be most emphasized and how much influence does the media have in citizens’ decision to engage? There seems to be a primal instinct to facilitate and hold together one’s specific community, but how can communities with, at times, opposite goals come together? What social institutions/interventions can facilitate larger communal health the diverse micro-communities within it? What are the specific hierarchies within the US (internationally?) to discuss and facilitate this type of change for communal, national, global harmony?

During our first in-class exercise, I responded that "building community", to me, meant that connections between individuals of some group are strengthened, and that these connections help to empower those individuals. Leaving out the "building" aspect of this thought, community itself, then would be the connections between people and the ability granted to those individuals through those connections. It's certainly a broad definition, and I guess I still think it serves well. After considering these readings, I still stand by my original thought, but have added insight into why this idea of connections between people (as nebulous as that is) is what I think community really is. 

I think the readings made me think of two main questions to think about. First, what is a meaningful community, and what is the structure like in a community with significant meaning? I ask this because with a definition like mine , nearly anyone is in some kind of community, because we all share connections. Being human, for example, is a connection that fits under my definition, but in day-to-day life is that as impactful a community tobe part of as, say,  being a Republican, an Amherst College student, or a Jew? I'm interested in finding some characteristics of community which make it significantly impactful and meaningful. I think this may be exemplified when the people of Buffalo Creek are put into groups they wouldn't normally be in. I would argue that those groups (likely geographic groups) are communities in their own right, but ones that have not been significant or cultivated before. Is community necessarily  impactful?

Building off the question of a community's impact, I now look towards my second question - What drives impactful community? What keeps a community  together and healthy? What actions do active communities take? From the readings, I learn that the communities that people seem to strive for are the ones where people have a shared goal. I see this when I read about communities that show impactful and celebrated characteristics when people have a clear common goal. This is apparent in the many instances of crisis that we read about, from New Orleans to all of Solnit's examples of people banding together to survive. When people have a clearly defined cause, they seem to work better and are more impactful.  Bellah et al. describe this point's negative when describing the kind of society (ex-crisis) that tends to separate and individualize people - the kind that gives people separate goals and maybe leads to the stratification and other social issues that are identified in communities. But Behal et al. also point out that some communities are too large and complex to share a clear consensus on. Can we create common goals and that sense of deliberate community outside of something like the clear  goal of banding together for survival?

Main thoughts: Communities are everywhere , so what makes a community significant/impactful? And secondly - Are we able to create clear common goals in larger more complex contexts in society?

Before this class, I had never spent much time thinking about community.  It was a vague concept that I never took the time to clearly define.  On the first day of class, I wrote that building community was a process of fostering bonds between subsets of a geographical community and forming a common history.  After the readings thus far and our discussions in class, I see many faults with this definition.  For one, a community need not necessarily be geographically defined.  While I originally defined building community as the process of encouraging the formation of a common history, I think that it might be better defined as the process of recognizing a common history.  As empathy is one of the forces with the most power to bring people together, the foundation of community is shared experience.  

I believe that the larger a community is, the more difficult it is to effectively employ.  The smallest communities, like families or groups of friends, are the most likely to function well and provide their constituents with the support they need.  However, the larger a community gets, the more likely it is to be divided.  I consider Amherst College to be a community as well, but there are entire groups of people with whom I never seem to associate.  You could say that each large community is made up of smaller ones.  Combined, they become more and more powerful--the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  However, people withing a geographic community do not necessarily feel any affinity for each other.  They might pass each other in the streets or between classes, but they do not see themselves as bound to each other.  As many of the readings note, we live in an increasingly individualistic society.  We feel more separated by differences than bound by similarities.  Many of the readings discuss the reactions of communities to disaster, and with good reason.  Disasters make our differences irrelevant and connects people in an urgent plight.  I was about to write that natural disasters do not discriminate.  They certainly have no will power, but as the readings pointed out, their victims are often institutionally herded into the regions where they will be most vulnerable.

I appreciated Ophelia's comment at the end of the last class--it seems true that meaningful transactions within a group require intention.  For this reason, communities purposefully formed are strong.  Their members have chosen to bind themselves to each other, to lean on each other and offer support, to write a common history.  The victims of a disaster choose to band together in the initial stages to fight for survival.  A labor union fights for the rights of its workers, and they bond over their common fight and common plea.  It seems, then, that the question at hand is how to inspire such an intention in potential communities that lie dormant, and how to direct that intention in a way that will effect lasting change.  In the absence of disaster, how do we teach people to work together?  How do we go about changing the institutions that tend to separate us rather than join us?

Another thought: the case studies we have examined so far have mostly dealt with communities reacting concertedly in the face of a crisis--that is, they all pull together or the community falls apart.  However, we have yet to examine conflicted communities.  I think of this because while I was away last semester, a group of high school boys in my small, generally uneventful hometown organized a Thanksgiving celebration in the local Chinese restaurant during lunch break.  They hung a sign on the door that included a racial slur, and when a group of girls tried to enter, they verbally assaulted them and threw condiments at them.  The girls called the police, and the boys were dispersed, but not punished.  While this is certainly not on the same scale as a natural disaster, it certainly is a sudden rupture in the day-to-day happenings in my uncontroversial little town.  The community response has been furious, with parents, students, and other community members calling for decisive action on the part of the school board and the brand new principal.  However, the wealthy parents of many of the boys who participated in this event are some of the most influential members of the town, and they have used this influence and the threat of legal action to prevent action on the part of the schoolboard.  All this is a longwinded way of saying that I think it would be interesting to explore the dynamics of communities that have been fractured, and possible strategies for reuniting them after the formation of strong divides.

As a New Yorker, I really enjoyed Solnit's readings.  Every year on 9/11 (and especially the 10 year anniversary in 2011) I feel a strange sense of longing.  As Solnit discusses, even the most horrifying day of many of our lives managed to produce some good.  Literally and figuratively, my town joined together to support the families of the Towers' victims.  I remember buying an American flag for our front door, watching the President throw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium, and the WANTED: OSAMA BIN LADEN posters from the Post and the Daily News.  I remember listening to sports talk radio with my dad, but every caller had a story to tell - the people who were stuck in an elevator and managed to escape, the employees who were the last ones out from their floor.  These memories hinge on the communities that developed that fall - I was an American, a New Yorker, and a resident of my town.

The topic of homelessness, raised in "The Good Society," is part of what drew me to this class.  I've heard Amherst students ask, confused, why people beg on the streets of Amherst, as if our suburban enclave is a utopia without any poor people.  As the writers of this piece allude to, which institutions that will step up and help people in need?  The town, the College, the Survival Center, the state, individuals... or no one?  Like Morton and Enos discuss, how can we build a society where people can be given a helping hand, without making it feel like a handout?  This is one of the Survival Center's goals, but I've seen a lot of people in town begging who I haven't seen in the Survival Center - what's responsible for this disconnect and how can we bridge it?

Finally, I really enjoyed the website on Holyoke's history.  Driving through Holyoke, the buildings' structures suggest that the city was once home to vibrant industry.  I've heard about the problems plaguing Holyoke today, like joblessness and low graduation rates.  As residents of western MA, and motivated college students, sure, we should help – but are we members of the Holyoke community, or intruders?  I think that we absolutely should help in any way that we can, or any way that is needed, but I’m not sure about the intellectual justification, and I’m looking forward to reading more!

I think that it is as important to note the extent to which communites exist through the process of imagining as it is to discuss them as real social organizations.  I think that the idea of community has come to dominate the non-profit world and also, to some extent, mainstream conventional politics and academia.  In the past 10 years it has become very popular to talk about communities.  A telling example of this is the growing preoccupation of grants with communities, especially "local communities," the result of which is the move of the non-profit and organizing world (who often depend on grant money) to define themselves in those terms and with that language.  

The presentation of community as a defined, knowable entity exists in stark contrast to the reality of differences of position and opinion within even the smallest groups.  Even the smallest communities, such as a block of a street or a nuclear family, contains a variety of responses and agendas, and often conflicts.  

At the same time, I don't want to reject the idea of community, becuase I do think that the imagination of community creates real solidarity, power and action.  Identification with certain communities has been the foundation for identity politics and group politics and many successful anti-oppression campaigns.  And naming and describing communities has led people into really powerful exhibitions of their power to enact change.  Community-based activism has been really succesful in demonstrating this power.  

Trying not to fall into a semantics trap, I do think it's important to note a difference between communities as the existence of numerous and complicated relationships between many people and communities as an imagined entity with a policial dimension.  I think that the imagionation of community has the potential to empower individual and mutual liberation, and is thus useful, but also has the potential to constrain and limit our actions and relationships.

Initially I thought community included "all those with whom one engages each day." Purposefully non-commital, this definition sought to exclude the least amount of persons possible. But in my aim to widen the scope of community, I ignored the word's more nuanced connotations of spirit.

It is not enough to say a community is the sum of its parts. My original idea of community--one of a well-defined space within which people live and work and play--ignores the interdependence of all peoples on this earth, whether or not we  identify with each other. Set criteria for membership do not determine communities alone. Community is, to an extent, a recognition of interdependence. "We are all in this together." The farmer in Chile who cultivates my coffee is as much a member of my community as the local postmaster or my dearest friend, for I rely upon each of these persons to provide me with the support I need for basic living.

Reading of those first immigrant communities that settled the Pioneer Valley, I thought of how much the blacksmith needed the painter who needed the tailor who needed the teacher. Communities foster autonomy, but always with the recognition that people need other people. "There is no 'i' in 'team'; no 'me' without 'you'."

The maxim "no man is an island" falls short in its gloss on interdependence, failing to recognize the successes of the Japanese archipelago or the Hawaiian state. Perhaps the metaphor is a stretch, but to view men as islands of a larger group is the more accurate--albeit clunkier--observation.

Community is what you carry forth. There is no community without the individual or vice versa. The one and the many are as much complementary as they are contradictory. Implicit in "community" is the recognition of the Other beyond the Self. Now I eagerly desire the greater gifts only the body community grants.

Prior to my involvement in this course, I had left the notion of community largely unexplored.  I knew I was a part of my hometown, which seemed like the most obvious community to me, with its clear geographic boundaries and specific population. Reflecting on community in my life, my graduating class of forty-six girls seems to me the most positive demonstration of community, one that was mutually supportive, clearly defined, and where each member was known and appreciated. After getting into the readings for this class, however, my conception of community has become more complicated. Whereas before I understood communities to be concrete and easily recognizable, I have come to realize their true nature as fluid and constantly evolving. I found this quality particularly illuminated in the contrast between Solnit and Erikson’s writings on community. The two pieces illustrated divergent faces of community in the wake of disasters—for Solnit, the amazing warmth and sense of belonging that emerges as the strains of everyday life are forgotten, forming a sense of a ‘disaster utopia.’ On the other hand, Erikson addresses the chronic trauma that creeps in post-disaster, not just the immediate physical destruction but the ongoing cultural erosion, the sense of hopelessness and isolation that comes with having both your physical home and sense of safety and security associated with your home destroyed. To me, their seemingly opposing interpretations of disaster and community were not truly at odds; instead, their distinction is rooted in differences of time. Whereas Solnit focuses on the immediate communities formed post disaster, Erikson investigates the long-term effects.

In this contrast, I realized that communities are not the static constructions I once believed they were. Instead, they are dynamic, active in a process of continual transformation. I think this is an important factor to recognize as we start off in this discussion of building community, as we must remember that a community, once established, will not remain the same for long. Instead, they must be continually reinvested in and reevaluated. My previous understanding of community was one defined by the physical—the boundaries of my town, the buildings of my high school. In reality, it is the intangible—the thoughts and actions of the constituents, the relationships between the members, and influence of external forces—that makes a community what it is, and grants the community its dynamic nature.

In continuing my exploration of the concept of community, I’ve come across some areas I’ve found problematic and have been left with questions. Currently I’m grappling with the differing states of belonging and acceptance within a community. I feel that the readings as well as most rhetoric concerning community as an abstract notion seem to address belonging as black and white—either you’re flourishing within it or you’re struggling on the fringes. I wonder, what about the in-between? From my personal experience entering a new community, I’ve felt it to be more of a slow transition, where belonging is achieved slowly over time after several shared experiences. Shouldn’t the hierarchy of belonging be recognized by those attempting to build community? We should be asking not just “who belongs?” but “to what degree do they belong? how enmeshed is this community is this individual? On this spectrum of acceptance, how has this individual progressed or evolved over time?” To complicate this, there are certain communities where belonging is conferred at birth—I wonder, how does this sense of belonging compare to that where acceptedness has to be earned? As the course progresses I’m interested in seeing how different programs and authors we encounter address this spectrum of belonging within a community. 

Looking back now, I realize my notions of community were rather limited before we began this class. I'd always imagined a community to be a network of relationships confined between certain spatial boundaries--a neighborhood, a school, a town. I'd also imagined that a community is a naturally-occurring phenomenon. I thought the very idea of building community implied that an already existing community was falling apart and in need of help. I never considered that a community has to be actively built in order to even come into existence. But I'm starting to believe that this is in fact the case. 

Around the world, there are groups of people who have shared interests, shared experiences, shared family ties, shared faiths and ethnicities and nationalities. But I don't think that sharing these things automatically turns a group into a community. In the excerpts we read from A Paradise Built in Hell, Solnit showed us that in the wake of the San Francisco earthquake, neighbors, for the first time, began to care for one another. Individuals who had barely paid attention to each other before were suddenly ready to share food, clothing, and companionship. They developed a concern for one another's well-being and united to work together in a way that would benefit them all. What they created, I think, is a community.  But the love and friendship the earthquake survivors shared, their interdependence, their sense of responsibility to one another, their desire to work towards the common good--these things do not come naturally in all networks of human relationships. We have to believe in these things, want these things, work towards these things. So in that sense, I think we also have to believe in a community, want a community, work towards having a community, in order for one to truly exist. 

But as the authors of The Good Society suggest, we live in a rather individualistic society, where we are constantly encouraged to be autonomous and to strive for personal success and fulfillment. As a result, we don’t actively put effort into turning our networks of social relationships into communities. I once thought that my neighborhood in Chicago was a community, but in many ways it is not. The men who head to work with polished shoes and briefcases do not show much solidarity towards the men begging for spare change on the street corner. Neighbors have friendly conversations with one another but they do not feel comfortable coming together in times of need. We all smile as we pass each other on the street but we are all wrapped up in our own worlds, not overly concerned with the other’s well being. This, to me, is not a community.  It can become one, if we want it to, but it is certainly not there yet.

I realize that there are already many efforts to create a sense of community where none exists. But aside from the efforts of non-profit organizations and devoted volunteers, how do we get people involved? How do we get people to think beyond their personal well-being and consider their responsibilities to others and to society? How do we get people to come out of their small network of friends and family and seek meaningful, interdependent, constructive relationships with those who surround them? How do we overcome the individualistic ideology and realize that beyond just ‘making it’ on our own, we also need to learn how to ‘make it’ together? How do we go about not only building community where it stifles, but creating it where it has never existed? Is it possible to get Americans who are divided in terms of ethnicity, gender, faith, class, and political ideology to want to bridge all of those divides and want to come together to create community?

            I have always associated a community with the specific groups of people that I find it easiest to connect to.  This can include, but is not limited to: family, schools, friend groups, religious community, sports teams, city, country, ect…. However, in thinking about it, I find that I more closely connect myself with the communities that continually surface in my daily life. In reciting the pledge of allegiance every day at school and in singing the national anthem before sports games, I have gained a sense pride in the “red, with and blue” and our American community.  However, I find it difficult to closely associate myself with my Indiana community (I can name you the fifty states, but I cannot name you more than four counties Indiana). 

            In addition, I think that it is obvious that I find a close connection with my home as well as my friends community.  These are the people the I see/talk to most regularly therefore, even though I may not always identify my family or friends group as a “community.”  I have a strong connection with these people, a connection that is undoubtedly stronger than with any random member of the American community; therefore, I think that because I spend more time with these specific groups of people, I can more closely identify myself in these specific communities. 

            I believe that these communities, whether on a small scale with family, friends, institutions, and churches, or a larger scale consisting of the state, national, or even global connections, are formed for mutual support and protection.  We rely on the strength of a community to foster hope and responsibility, which continues to strengthen the connections we have with other people.  This, in turn, provides an array of networking that helps people in times of need, joy, or sorrow. 

            However, with the reading and in class we have talked about the various communities that can be formed despite our deliberate decision to be a member of a certain community.  These could include gender, generation, nationality, ethnicity, race, family or communities based on disaster or relief situations.  These communities may or may not be a significant part of our lives based on how often we acknowledge them, or if we even acknowledge them at all.  One type of community in this category that can become a significant source of support includes the type of community formed due to disaster.  In the reading, I thought of why these new communities thrive and I suggest that main cause is due to the disregard of differences that separate individual members and the emphasis on a common uniting factor that brings all people together.  Through a common desire to work together and help each other, communities such as these can form a “utopia” as mentioned in the reading.  A question I have in relation to these communities is what separates the communities that thrive in disaster to those that do not succeed in helping everyone.  Is there a specific element that needs to be present in the disaster or the formation of these communities that allows for successful participation and selflessness?