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.