The Future of Community has been reviewed on CultureWars.org.uk . http://www.culturewars.org.uk/index.php/site/article/what_makes_community/
The reviewer makes some interesting points, but the discussion about community today takes a different form, as opposed to the way that the subject has been discussed classically. For example, the Future of Community does not contain a definition of community, because 'community' primarily takes the form of a policy discussion. The Department for Communities and Local Government, for example, does not exist to study existing communities, but to come up with initiatives, which are intended to facilitate community creation. The book critiques this because it inserts a layer of bureaucracy between relations between individuals. Similarly, the book does not contain a blueprint for future communities because this would constitute the same kind of imposition and wishful thinking that we criticise state institutions for.
So why do we argue for people being left to their own devices? The reviewer argues that this constitutes a contradiction because distrust of other people already exists between people, it is not created by official discourse. This is true, but it is not as though winning the argument for free association would leave the prevailing mood as it is now. This is primarily a political argument that involves changing the conceptions of other human beings as untrustworthy.
The government is incapable of leading such a challenge because it doesn't have strong roots in the population, so tends to assume the worst. So when it tries to encourage people to interact over something as simple as a football match, it immediately becomes consumed with fear that people might be violent and misbehave http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4221729/Park-football-could-be-banned-over-fears-of-fights.html . Similar contradictions exist in other areas, as in the drive to encourage volunteering being undermined by CRB checks.
The Future of Community is an argument for free association and this must begin in civil society itself. It is an argument against people being treated like children, and this argument must assume that people can behave as adults. By being treated as adults, people will begin to behave as such
Monday, 2 February 2009
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2 comments:
The point that winning the argument for free association could create the social conditions necessary for real communities to flourish when people are left to their own devices is a fair one. It is not made in the book - certainly not explicitly and I don't believe implicitly. The chapter on immigration in Ireland seems to imply the exact opposite - that people could be left alone right now and mediate their relations better and recreate communities. Maybe that is true - but if so it sits uneasily with the emphasis on fearful individuation in the book as a whole, and with your response that a wider political argument would be necessary first.
I really don't know what book Lee has been reading. The argument for political association - free from intrusion by the state and third party interventions - is writ large throughout the book.
It is true that we don't argue for people to be left "to their own devices" in order to help generate "real communities" (I for one, don't advocate the former and don't understand what is meant by the latter)
Without political engagement, community merely represents a common geography. More problematically, community is usually used as a socially-specific moral construct serving to provide a loaded commentary on the state of the nation.
Lee's is a political disagreement about the essence of the book. The book suggests that we should challenge - rather than accomodate to - the concept of "community" as it is currently formulated. This includes those that are doing the formulating. It is not however, eulogising "community". Community is a purposive device that allows the book to analyse the state of politics - and political engagement - today.
Finally, just to say, the so-called "chapter" "on Ireland" (presumably Lee means the "vignette" about one small specific village in Galway!!) is not there for crass generalisations. You can draw wider conclusions if you want to, but this light-hearted and thoughtful essay is meant only to provide a historically specific scenario to some of the broader themes in the book. It specifically references the impact that a dynamic economy has on racial tensions. For example, given the Irish recession, any number of tensions may be now be surfacing. But the essay serves simply to show that so-called "difference" is no bar to social engagement.
While we are constantly chided about "the other"; the foreigner in our midst these days, this vignette raises important questions about the lack of engagement with reality as it manifests itself on the ground. It would help if Lee read more than just this short essay.
Austin
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