Thinking About Community

During my time working within Community Development when I asked people what their community was they would often mention a place, usually a suburb.  However, if I asked who they related with or what groups they were involved with then I got all sorts of responses.  People relate with others through their sports clubs, their church, their art society.  People relate via their ethnic background or cultural identity.  People congregate together to play sport, read poetry or (as teenagers in particular are wont) to hang out at the local shopping mall.

Many join “communities of interest.”  Indeed, it is highly likely that (at least in Western nations) people have a greater sense of participation in a community of interest rather than a community of place.¹

As Community Development workers we must be wary of how we think of community.  It can be very easy to fall into the trap of thinking of community in terms of place, location or neighbourhood.  It can be.  But that is not where our thinking should stop.  Rather, it’s just somewhere to start thinking about community.

Let’s take a step back and look at the roots of the word community.  Before arriving in the English language it passed through French and Old French, and before that, Latin.  It’s Latin source is revealing.

The word derives from two Latin words: com meaning “with” or “together” and munus meaning “gift.”  Thus, at it’s root community suggests “with gift” or “gifting together.”

With this understanding it is possible to find two interconnected features of community that allow individuals to feel a sense of belonging to a community.  First, as individuals we obtain benefits from belonging to communities.  Second, we are able to contribute to communities thus enabling them to develop and flourish.  For us as individuals communities provide us with gifts and we gift back to our communities.²

Two further words often get mentioned when academics and others talk about community: Gemeinschaft and Gesselschaft.  Ferdinand Tönnies coined the terms in 1887.  Gemeinschaft he thought of as community with a cohesive “unity of will”, whereas Gesselschaft was society of self-interest.

It is our role as Community Development workers to think widely about what constitutes community and to facilitate community development so that:

• communities benefit members as well as providing space within which members can contribute,
• communities recognise the unique gift that all members have and allow those gifts to be shared,
• society might move from self-interest (Gesselschaft) to a “unity of will” (Gemeinschaft).

How do others think of community?  Is it even important what we think of as community?  I’d welcome your thoughts.

1. In the city in which I last worked as a Community Development Adviser the annual residents survey asked exactly this question.  Consistently, over 80% of respondents indicated that “community of interest” was of greater importance in their lives than “community of place.”
2. Recognising that within communities are individuals with gifts is a key ingredient of Asset Based Community Development (ABCD).

Democratising The Fourth Estate

In 1787 the House of Commons of Great Britain was opened up to the Press for the first time.  Edmund Burke is reputed to have remarked that, although there were three Estates in Parliament, “…in the Reporters gallery yonder, there sits a Fourth Estate more important by far than they all.”

Since Burke’s time the media (now commonly referred to as the Fourth Estate) has indeed become all pervasive and all powerful.  Until recently the media was viewed as the means by which parliament and politicians were kept accountable.  The Fourth Estate was the checks and balances of democracy.

But the world has changed dramatically since Burke’s time.  Less and less are our public decisions being made by parliaments.  Much of private life and public life have become dominated by big business and economic globalisation.  And the Fourth Estate has joined in.  Not to act as public watchdog, but rather as one of the dogs we need to be wary of.

For example; the market value of Time Warner is $53 billion, of News Corp $70.6 billion and that of Walt Disney over $100 billion.  Through takeovers, mergers and acquisitions media corporations are now amongst some of the largest transnational corporations (TNCs) in the world.  In 1983 there were 50 media companies that controlled 90% of the US media market.  Today (just 30 years later) just six corporations have captured over 90% of the market.  The Big Six: Time Warner, Walt Disney, Viacom, News Corp, CBS and NBC Universal.

The media TNCs are controlling more and more of what we view, read and hear on our televisions, in our newspapers and on the radio.  Furthermore, fewer and fewer individuals control the news.  Just 232 media executives run the Big Six media TNCs – they’re not called “media moguls” for nothing.
Nor is it just media moguls influencing the news.  Increasingly, big business is taking an interest in the media.  In Australia, for instance, the mining magnate, Gina Rinehart (the worlds 2nd richest woman) is now the largest shareholder (at 19%) in Fairfax Media.¹

The Fourth Estate today is part of big business and the domination that is economic globalisation.  Far from being the watchdog on governments and keeping the populace informed, today the Fourth Estate tells and shows us what to think, do and believe.

It’s not all bad news though.  Perhaps ordinary citizens and local communities are taking back control of information.  The Internet has provided us all with the opportunity to share stories that give alternative takes to those provided by the media TNCs.  We can now get local stories via YouTube, alternative analyses from independent bloggers and from networks such as Indy Media.  Then there are the myriads of small, local newspapers being produced in communities world-wide.  The Fourth Estate may be giving way to a democratised media.

What of the other three Estates?  In Burke’s time they were all contained within Parliament:  the Lords Spiritual, the Lords Temporal and the Commons.

The next democratising step on the ladder towards true democracy must be parliaments and governments themselves.

1. Fairfax Media own two of the largest daily newspapers in Australia: the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age (Melbourne) along with a number of radio stations.  Gina Rinehart has notoriously used her media status to imply that Australians could work for $2 a day.

Can’t Buy Me Love

“Can’t Buy Me Love” the Beatles sang in 1964.  Maybe not, but can it buy happiness, or life satisfaction?

Many commentators and social justice writers have suggested that, above a certain level of income, increasing income has very little bearing on well-being or happiness.

A recent paper by two researchers at the University of Michigan¹ purport to refute this thesis. They claim that although the thesis is “… intuitively appealing, it is at odds with the data.”

Their paper is 24 pages long, with 30 graphs, 3 tables of statistical data and a page of references.  It looks scholarly, and impressive.

But wait!  Hang on!  Let’s be careful about how their conclusion is used by those of us working in the field of social justice.

It is easy to imagine that the conclusions of this paper will find enthusiastic supporters amongst those who would claim that increasing incomes is the way to happiness.  What is disturbing about this possibility is the potential claim that it is acceptable to continue to make higher and higher incomes because this will bring more and more happiness.  Some may even argue that this research shows that widening income gaps are reasonable and that all that is required is for those on low incomes to “catch-up.”

Let’s look at the paper – particularly at the graphs.  The researchers have chosen a logarithmic scale for the income axis and a linear scale for the “life satisfaction” scale.  The effect of this is to make it look as if a degree of difference in life satisfaction corresponds to a similar degree of difference in income.

Using the logarithmic scale gives the impression of a steady and regular correlation between life satisfaction and income – a straight line correlation.  What happens, however, if we plot the data so that the scales are linear on both axes.  See the two graphs below.

Graph 1 shows the graph as portrayed in the paper.  The x-axis shows GDP per capita (in thousands of dollars) and the y-axis shows the satisfaction ladder score (as determined in World Gallup Polls in 155 countries).  The red line is the regression line – think of it as the “line of best fit".  The x-axis uses a logarithmic scale (as can be seen by each regular interval calibration being a multiple of 2 times the previous one.)  The y-axis uses a simple linear scale (the scale that most people would be familiar with),

Graph 2 is the same regression line, but this time plotted using linear scales for both axes.

Graph 1.

Graph 2.
  As can be seen, the two graphs give a very different visual picture.  looking at Graph 2 we can see that as income rises from below $10,000 to around $35,000 satisfaction levels also rise fairly rapidly from around 3.7 to around 6.7.  That’s significant.  But then, things begin to flatten, just what the researchers are wont to claim does not happen.

The paper goes on to analyse similar data for the US itself.  The results are similar, and so is the alternative picture.

If anything the data from the US are much more disturbing, as the income levels range from under $10,000 to over $500,000. 

No!  This research does not convince me that the disparity between an income of $10,000 and one of half a million dollars is warranted because higher incomes lead to greater life satisfaction or happiness.

Indeed, there is evidence to show that greater social well being is facilitated by reduced income inequality.  The greater the inequality the less the social well being.²

It just goes to show that we must be careful when dealing with statistics and graphs.  Sometimes the choice of presentation style can hide an underlying reality.

1. Stevenson, Betsy & Wolfers, Justin. Subjective Well-Being and Income. Is There Any Evidence of Satiation? University of Michigan, April 2013.
2. See Wilkinson, Richard & Pickett, Kate. The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone. Penguin, 2009, 2010.

When Community Engagement Slips A Gear

For quarter of a century from the 1970s onwards many local governments in the UK, Australasia and other parts of the Western world employed Community Development workers because community development was thought to be a means of dealing with some of the social ills.

Around the end of the 20th Century a new methodology began to be incorporated into the way in which local governments and other agencies worked with communities; Public Participation, also known as Community Engagement.  It was the “new kid on the block” and local governments shed Community Development advisors and sections in favour of Community Engagement officers and teams.

A recent post on Facebook by a friend in Scotland reminded me just how easily Community Engagement can be ignored or misused.  And, why Community Engagement is insufficient.

The city of Edinburgh recently invited citizens to comment on draft proposals for Leith Walk.  Hundreds of them took part in the consultations.  Initially the Council indicated that it was “delighted with the quality of feedback received…”  One Councillor said that “we had some very useful feedback…” and noted that people wanted better accommodation for cyclists and pedestrians in the plan.  It all sounded very encouraging.

But it was not to be.  First, the Council was reluctant to publish the consultation responses; only the threat of a legal review encouraged them otherwise.  Second, the final design turned out little different from the draft design – leaving it “dangerous and unpleasant for both pedestrians and cyclists.”  (Greener Leith, 4 May 2013)

Similar scenarios are played out far too often around the Western world.  Under the guise of community consultation local governments are still reluctant to be totally transparent and are far too quick to ignore the feedback they receive from the consultation process.

Let us not allow the wool to be pulled over our eyes.  Community Engagement or Public Participation (call it what you will) has it’s place, but it is of limited usefulness when what is needed is greater transparency and for citizens and residents to be honestly listened to.

Furthermore, from Scotland to New Zealand, from Canada to Australia, what is being demanded by communities, more and more, is participation in the decision-making process itself.  And there is a profession that works with that as a goal.  It has a name:  Community Development.

Community Development: Vocation, Profession or Occupation?

When I stumbled across the term “community development” in the 1970s it was exciting.  Here was a collegial group with a body of knowledge, a strong sense of community values and the espoused goal of social change.

Community Development workers and theorists unashamedly advocated for and worked with those sectors of society that were disadvantaged, disempowered or marginalised.  Community Development was a vocation in the sense of a calling.  From the Latin vocatus (calling), a vocation originally was applied to the likes of a “religious calling.”  It has a sense of life’s purpose or at least a sense whereby what one did, one did for the betterment of society, for something greater than oneself.

As Community Development grew it became a profession.  In common with other professions, Community Development established a cognitive base, collegial support and mentoring, professional training and a commitment to excellence.

Profession derives from the Latin professus – “arrived”, or “having declared publicly.”  Community Development workers publicly professed a commitment to equity, community empowerment and social change.

With the training came qualifications and the emergence of community development “experts” along with salaried positions in government departments and other bureaucracies.  In and of itself, this development was not too contentious.  What did cheapen and undermine the vocation of community development though were two attendant phenomena.

Over the past decade or two there appears to have been a shift in the motivation of some of those entering the practice of community development.  Many still enter with a sense of a calling, there are many who are true professionals.  But, what is alarming is that for some Community Development is nothing but an occupation.

Allied to this, and possibly stimulating it, is the take-over of Community Development by a management or business mentality.  This mentality reduces Community Development to nothing more than a means by which communities are presented with some semblance of engagement yet remain excluded from resources and power.

So what sort of activity is Community Development?  Is it a vocation, a profession or an occupation?

Let’s re-discover our calling.

The Age of Wars

During World War 1 Hermann Hesse wrote that “…peace is nobler than war, this exactly is what this unholy World War should burn into our memories, more so than ever before.”  Following that war and as a protest against German militarism, Hesse moved to Switzerland in self-imposed exile where he lived until his death in 1962.

In his final, futuristic, book The Glass Bead Game¹ he has his central character looking back on “the Age of Wars … which began with … the First World War.”

This year (2013) is the 100th year since that First World War began in 1914.  Let’s see what happened in those 100 years since that war, trumpeted as the “war to end all wars.”

Well – it didn’t.  Wars did not end after 1918.  There was a slight hiatus during the following decade (the 1920s), but during those 100 years there was hardly a year that went past without a major war or armed conflict somewhere in the world.  The timeline below shows just a small proportion of the wars and armed conflicts that occurred from 1914 to 2013.


Notes:

1. Japan-Manchuria
2. China-Tibet
3. Chinese Civil War
4. Korean War
5. Soviet Union-Ukraine
6. Stalin purges (Soviet Union)
7. India-Pakistan
8. China (Great Leap Forward)
9. China (Cultural Revolution)
10. Cambodia (Khmer Rouge)

In a previous post I wondered whether we had learnt anything from history.  The graph below suggests that we may, finally, be turning the corner on our use of violence to solve political or social issues.



Early in the century it appeared that the “war to end all wars” may have done just that.  The 1920s saw few wars and a much reduced number of deaths.  But it was short-lived.  In the following four decades well over 100 million people were killed as a result of war or other armed conflicts.  Those four decades saw some of the most horrific armed conflicts of the century – WW II, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, Stalin’s pogroms in the Soviet Union.

Have we learnt then?  Have we discovered that the use of violence in any form does not solve our socio-political issues?  Have we realised that violence only creates more violence?  Maybe.

There are, however, a couple of blips that stem the optimism of a peaceful future.

First, warfare is becoming depersonalised and remote with more and more innocents bearing the deadly cost.  The use of drones is but the latest example of this.  The proportion of civilians amongst the dead has increased dramatically.  At the beginning of the century 9% of armed conflict fatalities were civilians.  By the end of the century this had sadly risen to 90%.

The other blip is that the threat of violence seems greater.  Terrorism was rarely a part of our vocabulary until the latter half of the century.  It wasn’t until the first decade of the 21st Century that the “War on Terror” became one of the phrases of the decade.  Therein lies the danger ahead.  The idea that terrorism can be overcome by declaring war on it is seriously flawed.

Peter Ustinov has said that “Terrorism is the war of the poor.  War is the terrorism of the rich.” So true.  Violence by any other name will still be violence.

Was Hermann Hesse right to prophetically label it the Age of Wars?  Labelling it thus suggests that war is what distinguished the age, and that future ages would be peaceful in contrast.  Let us hope so.

1. The Glass Bead Game, first published in German in 1943.  Quote from the Vintage edition, 2000, p 332.

Learning From Experience

Myles Horton

In 1986 I had the good fortune to meet and attend a talk by Myles Horton, then 81 years old.  Even at that venerable age he beamed and smiled with bright and twinkling eyes.

Myles Horton was one of the most effective and influential community educators the world has seen.  Horton had studied theology but discovered that oppressed peoples needs went beyond those of religion.  People wanted to make sense of their lives, understand their environment and learn how to make changes for the good.

Horton became an educator – but not a traditional one.  He decided, much like Paulo Freire (with whom he had a friendship), to begin with peoples’ own stories.  He went on to establish the Highlander Research and Education Centre in his native Tennessee.  One of his pupils, Rosa Parks, went on to spark the Montgomery Bus Boycott and thus play an important role in the American Civil Rights Movement.

Back to the story of attending a talk by this remarkable man.  In a room of about 60 people Myles spoke engagingly.  Halfway through his talk he stunned me with these words:

“You know, people say that we learn from our experiences.  I say that we don’t.  We only learn from the experiences we learn from.”

What on earth was he saying?  Was it just hyperbole?  As he spoke further I began to understand his meaning.

Of course – we don’t learn just because we’ve had an experience.  Otherwise why would we often repeat bad or misguided experiences?  Horton was saying that in order to learn from our experiences we had to do so in a conscious manner.  In other words, we must ask ourselves: what did I learn from this experience?  Then we have to be open to what that critical enquiry is really telling us.

The skill, or art, of critical thinking must be in the toolbox of any Community Development Worker or Educator.  If community development has a goal of a more just, more equitable, more sustainable world then we must learn to reflect critically upon our experiences.

Three questions allow us to consciously reflect upon our experience:

• What happened?  (physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually)
• How did it happen?
• Why did it happen?

Today, learning from our experience is of utmost importance.  “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it” Sir Winston Churchill once quipped.  As I watch the news, with it’s reports of bombings, wars, famine and disease, it seems that we continue to repeat history.

“… people say that we learn from our experiences.  I say that we don’t.  We only learn from the experiences we learn from.”

Thank you Myles Horton. 

Myles Horton died in 1990 at the age of 84.