Community, history, power

Originally presented at the Meaningless Meanings seminar, Gray's School of Art, Aberdeen (June 2013). In political, social and cultural discourse, the term ‘community’ is wielded and appealed to as a central concept of democracy, conjuring a sense of common experience and mutual interest. However, it frequently passes without critical scrutiny or inquiry into its essential value. Its authority, meanwhile, is compromised by a capacity to serve purposes on alternate sides of any given debate. It is an adaptable term, delineating social, geographical, religious, political, professional or even online groupings; in each case, however, it implies a consciousness of collective identity not necessarily experienced by members. Community also carries a misleading implication of solidarity and singularity of outlook. Any community must, by definition, be formed of individuals, but in many discussions the independence and diversity of individual viewpoints become subsumed in the homogeneity of community characterisation. Presented as fundamentally integrated, harmonious and indivisible, community carries a positive moral charge into policy and academic literature. In its many compound uses, from ‘community care’ to ‘community theatre’, it connotes local commitment and cohesion, opposing only discord and isolation. With nothing substantive to push against, though, does the idea of ‘community’ provide any firmer basis for social action than a banal suggestion of ‘goodness’? This paper proposes that the term ‘community’ can be better understood by exploring how and in whose interests it may be opposed, either directly or indirectly, in positive and possibly persuasive ways. It argues that this approach offers a differentiated and more value-specific sense of what it is that is proposed or defended when community is invoked as a concept. Revisiting an obsolete definition of the term which opposes ‘the commons’ to ‘the privileged classes’, it traces activist uses to fault lines in democratic representation which are more suggestive of difference than commonality, and explores tensions between community and the individual.

1999

Traditionally, historians have preferred to rely on "common sense" approaches to the meaning of community, but such definitions, emphasizing the ideas of a shared place and a static, self-contained entity, are simply inadequate for historical research and writing. Three elements are fundamental to understanding the historical significance of community: community as imagined reality, community as social interaction, and community as a process. An interdisciplinary approach to this question takes into consideration the thinking of social scientists and humanists on the importance of space and networks in social life. The historical study of community, one that embraces both cultural and spatial perspectives, has much to benefit from and much to contribute to this ever-growing and evolving body of work. As they have done with such concepts as "the family" and "the nation", historians must make "community" a problem to be studied, discussed, and debated. * John C. Walsh is a student in the Tri-University Doctoral Progam at the University of Guelph. Seven High is a doctoral student in the Department of History at the University of Ottawa. We owe much to Chad Gaffield, who, in his role as teacher, challenged us to think critically, creatively and later cooperatively about the concept of "community". We are grateful to all the various people who have taken the time to read drafts, discuss ideas, and provide helpful comments:

Turtle Island Journal of Indigenous Health

We open this issue, Strength in Community, with a few words from the editors. While the past two years have made significant changes to all communities, we emphasize that some challenges have always persisted but were only brought to the forefront recently for Canadians. We honour and acknowledge the voices and individuals who continue to push colonial boundaries, including through the resurgence of traditions, culture, and language. On this basis, we highlight strength in community, in its essence, as the existence, resistance, and survivance of Indigenous communities.

1998

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Sociology in India: Intellectual and Institutional Practices , 2010

2006

I will attempt to present a new inquiry that begins with Georges Bataille and follows through Jean-LucNancy and Giorgio Agamben who all attempt to redefine community against its tendency of totalitarianism. They also mostly, belong to a generation of French thinkers who, following Marx, were attempting to define the superstructure in as much in explaining how the capitalist means of production defines and affects a society where profit acts as its primary driver. Bataille had lived through the horrors of the Nazi occupation of Europe and saw parallels with capital in defining society as well as the reported totalisation of the anti-capitalist USSR. His project was to create a plane where conflict would be theoretically impossible. He was not positioning a solution, but a recipe for the possibility of a life without certain devastating conflicts. Specifically, war, but also leaving open the possibility of the hope of what a community could bring, without any expectation that it will bring it. The foundations of such a community would rely on a simple premise. That the heart or basis or essence of a community is heterogeneity. Later in this essay I will attempt to apply some of the ideas expressed in relation to Northern Ireland.

Educational Theory, 1999