|
Where
Are You Comin' From, Where Are You Goin' To:
Structuralist Conceptions of Community Community has been a core concept in sociology for more than 200 years, and it is within this discipline that it was first described from a structuralist perspective (Bell & Newby, 1971; Cohen, 1985). During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, sociologists attempted to explain structural dimensions of the industrialization affecting formerly agrarian, traditional societies (Baumann, 1989). During this time, Ferdinand Tönnies proposed the categorizations of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, or community and society. This frame of reference proved to have a profound effect on how social life was interpreted within the intellectual tradition. Gemeinschaft--community--is associated with tradition, emotions, warmth, intimacy, personal ties, and the "natural" (versus human-made) (Bell & Newby, 1971; Chekki, 1989; Hummon, 1990). Gesellschaft, on the other hand, is aligned with innovation, rationality, formality, business, segmentation, the industrial and impersonal (Chekki, 1989; Hummon, 1990). This approach posits that the society, not the community, is supposed to be the place of conflict and competition (Bell & Newby, 1971). According to the Gemeinschaft conceptualization, community is inextricably tied to space; community is the neighborhood or place to which people are bound (Bell & Newby, 1971; Fuoss, 1995; Keith & Pile, 1993; Kramer, 1970). It is a place stable in time and space, where change and difference are not allowed because they are associated with the society of Gesellschaft. Plotkin (1991) explains that according to the Gemeinschaft ideology, "externally induced changes in the community are suspect and the wider society is seen to have no justifiable reason for ever changing things" (p. 17). Emile Durkheim, one of the founders of structuralism, dichotomized
these two types, and his Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft dichotomy was adopted
by the influential Chicago School of sociology. The Chicago School used
Tönnies' categorizations as a theory to develop a unilinear and typological
model of historical social change, development, and decline (Chekki, 1989;
Cohen, 1985; Hummon, 1990; Wellman, 1988). Sociologists who subscribe
to this model tend to look for community in territorially-based human
settlements and locales, and to focus on local phenomena and stability.
A typical structuralist definition of community is: This typology distinguishes communities by the institutions associated with them. Community (Gemeinschaft) is assumed to be lost in the shift to the more technological, impersonal city (Gesellschaft). In the ideal Gemeinschaft community, members interact face-to-face and subscribe to communal values and behavioral prescriptions (Bell & Newby, 1971; Chekki, 1989; Cohen, 1985; Wellman, 1988). Each member of the community has a specific, formally defined role (Cohen, 1985; Kramer, 1970). "In [the Gemeinschaft] community everyone is known and can be placed in the social structure," comment Bell and Newby (1971, p. 24). For instance, during slavery in the United States, the community was supposed to function smoothly when enslaved Africans accepted their roles as workers and property and when White women remained in the private space of the home in the roles of wife and mother. Implicit in the structuralist approach to community is an assumption of equality among community members, despite the fixing of members in particular roles (Cohen, 1985; Kramer, 1970). Accordingly, members can "speak for" or "speak on behalf of" the community. Egalitarianism is the dependent variable in "an index of structural poverty" (Cohen, 1985, p. 35), which determines whether "community" still exists in a particular area. If conflict occurs, it is the function of community to resolve it and to incorporate change and to restore equilibrium (Kramer, 1970, p. 44). The structuralist emphasis on form corresponds with the
analysis of community as if it were a homogeneous unit (Bell & Newby,
1971; Citrin, 1995; Cohen, 1985; Kramer, 1970). This naturalization of
space (Smith & Katz, 1993) led sociologists within the Chicago School
to use the concept of ecology to explain the relationship (if not the
determination) of community structure based on its geographical and spatial
location. The assumption was that human behavior within a community could
be explained by the community's location (Bell & Newby, 1971). Early theorists of the structuralist genre tended to refer to community as a limited, threatened resource, something that could be lost (Mercer, 1956; Wellman, 1988). The city is the "consumer" of residents of local communities, so proposed one scholar of the mid-20th century (Mercer, 1956). Americans, she argued, "have taken the community for granted, have neglected it, and abused it" (p. 290). The perception that social and sentimental ties to community are eroding has also led social theorists to warn against a "decline in community" (Hummon, 1990; Wellman, 1988). Indeed, Wellman suggests that "loss of community" fears, which prevailed in the aftermath of World War II:
The "decline" in community has also been represented through claims that a particular community is dysfunctional or lacks "adequate social organization," as one structuralist described the Black community (Kramer, 1970, p. 234). Kramer (1970) claimed that the Black community "takes the form of a Black ghetto," (p. 234) and is evidenced by high rates of personal disorganization and social pathology. She concluded that violence and militarism were the only ways in which the Black community might be able to "crystallize a sense of community" (p. 250). Her description implies that the Black community is not normal or healthy, and her assumptions about pathology and violence define Blacks as dangerous, and lacking in the moral values that represent true Gemeinschaft. The perception that community was something that could be lost led to a nostalgia for the past, for the idealized village of the past where everyone "just got along" (Mercer, 1956; Revill, 1993; Wellman, 1988). Revill (1993) calls this a "post-industrial nostalgia for an industrial and pre-industrial past" (p. 129). "Below the surface of many community studies," claim Bell and Newby (1971), "lurk value judgments, of varying degrees of explicitness, about what is the good life" (p. 16). The good life, however, does not exist in the present; it is represented as a symbolic utopia of the past or the future. The structuralist conception of community has been appropriated most recently in reaction to the articulations of communities based on race and ethnicity. In conservative political discourse especially, the Gemeinschaft community is idealized as a moral utopia, and differences within the "American community" are represented as a threat (Citrin, 1995; Hummon, 1990, Mercer, 1956). "No wonder nostalgia reigns," remarked one conservative political commentator (Citrin, 1995) "and so many observers contrast a gilded 'then' with a tarnished 'now,' (p. 22). The politics of difference and the politics of assimilation are represented as oppositional forces, much like society (Gesellschaft) versus community (Gemeinschaft). This ideology of nostalgia for Gemeinschaft is exemplified in recent political commentary, where the words "wistfully" and "sentimental" were used to describe the past, in a stark contrast to warnings against the "politics of tribal identity" and "poisonous identity politics"(An elegy for integration, 1995, p. 108). Citrin (1995) argues, likewise, that "The revival of ethnic and racial consciousness poses a political challenge that may strain the capacities of democratic institutions" (p. 23)--implying that racial consciousness is not compatible with democracy. This ideology promotes assimilation and meritocracy, an ideal of harmony in diversity (Citrin, 1995; Cohen, 1985; Revill, 1993). Idealizing community is a means to congeal and smooth over a multiplicity of objectives and expectations, a means to contain (and conceal) difference. A proponent of this ideology, Citrin claims (1995) that Americans are "optimistic about achieving a community in which people share common ideals, speak the same language and advance as a result of individual effort rather than group entitlement" (p. 26). In response to the Million Man March, the gathering of thousands of Black men in Washington, D.C. on October 16, 1995, the anonymous author of a Time magazine essay (1995) titled "An Elegy for Integration" urged a "return" to "the old moral order," and "an ideal of an individualist, integrated, color-blind society" (p. 108). The Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft ideology is also evident in the association of the stable community versus the chaotic, disordered space of the city, where difference reigns. This dichotomy is represented in material ways in cities such as Los Angeles, where gated communities inhabited primarily by Whites stand in stark contrast to the inner city spaces of South Central and Watts, so often represented in the media as the location of wildness and danger not unlike the jungles of Vietnam (Davis, 1992; Soja, 1993). Community is idealized as the place of social and moral stability, where residents have no need for a lecture on values. The enclave of gated communities is the physical manifestation of what Plotkin (1991) calls "enclave consciousness," which he claims has much in common with Gemeinschaft ideology. He suggests that enclave consciousness arises when members focus on external, "alien" threats rather than internal contestations. Like the officers at the security gate, attention is directed outward in an effort to protect and control private interests and property. Community is truly place-bound, to the point where it is difficult to determine whether gates (actual or symbolic) exist to keep others out or keep members in (Davis, 1992). Accordingly, access to other communities is restricted, reinforcing the dichotomy of "us" versus "them." Since the 1970s, structuralist conceptualizations of community have been sharply criticized by scholars from other theoretical genres (Cohen, 1985; Hummon, 1990). The structuralist unilinear and typological model of change and decline has been denounced as too simple and inadequate. Sociologist Cohen (1985) charges the Chicago School of sociology with subscribing to a number of "myths" based on the Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft dichotomy:
In the following section, these structuralist myths are deconstructed in order to lend insight into how interpretivists have conceived of community. Next: Interpretive Conceptions of Community
Placing and Black Students' Discursive Construction of Community Copyright (c) 1996, Corinna J. Moebius
|