The concept of community was introduced, at least partly, as a means of expressing anxiety about the social effects of industrialisation in the 19th century (Nisbet, 1967). The two key advocates were Tonnies and Durkheim. Durkheim’s ideas of societies were based on ‘mechanical’ and ‘organic’ solidarity and Tonnies community (gemeinschaft) and association (gesellschaft) were part of this process. Durkheim believed that society was developing progressively towards a complex society based on organic solidarity (Durkheim, 1988). In contrast, Tonnies’ framework was perhaps the most pervasive and addressed the social relationships most directly:
‘All intimate, private and exclusive living together, so we discover, is understood as life in Gemeinschaft (community). Gesellschaft (society) is public life - it is the world itself. In Gemeinschaft with one’s family, one lives from birth on, bound to it in weal and woe. One goes into Gesellschaft as one goes into a strange country. A young man is warned against bad Gesellschaft, but the expression bad Gemeinschaft violates the meaning of the word.’ (Tonnies, 1955, p.33)
16 Here, Hillary is utilising Redfields’ (1947) development of Tonnies original ideas - a rural-urban continuum upon which social settlements could be placed.
Tonnies thesis concerning the loss of community has been quite influential in romanticising a world that was lost, investing a moral superiority in the rural past. With the rise of industrialisation came the development of mass society with an unstable social order. Wirth (1938, p.12) described these new types of urban relationship as ‘large-scale, dense and heterogeneous’, and the urban patterns of behaviour as ‘impersonal, superficial, transitory, and segmental’. The loss of community also included a decline in associations between family and neighbours, traditionally geographically bound by tradition and solidarity. This type of analysis helped community to gain its connotations of ‘motherhood and apple pie’ (Fulcher and Scott, 1999, p.408). A view supported by Elias (1974, p.xi) who stated that ‘community was a symbol of a simpler, warmer and more homely society, easily contrasted with the discontent and suffering associated with urbanization and industrialization, a symbol of a past and a better age.’
Like Tonnies, when investigating the effects of industrialisation, Durkheim introduced a dichotomy between traditional and modern societies. Durkheim (1988) was interested in what held society together establishing a division between the old type of society and the new, mechanical and organic solidarity. The former is based upon ‘similarities and shared location, the latter upon differences and shared interests’ (Allen, 2010, p. 123). For Durkheim (1988) there are two key ideas in society: similarity (mechanical) and difference (organic). Pre-industrial society was defined by similarity, or mechanical solidarity, characterised by a set of common values, which included very few personal differences, little competition and high egalitarianism. From this commonality, or community, is developed by people sharing and reinforcing each other's feelings (Allen, 2010). As society progressed and became more complex through an increasing division of labour, mechanical solidarity gave way to one based on difference, or organic solidarity. Here, ‘differentiated social units (people) are held together through shared need and abstract ideas and sentiments’ (Allen, 2010, p. 123). As such people become mutually dependent on each other.
It is through the work of Tonnies and Durkheim that the idea of solidarity has been viewed as central tenet in the definition of community and is still popular in sociological literature17. Parsons (quoted in Fulcher and Scott, 1999, p.107) refers to community as a ‘wide-ranging relationship of solidarity over a rather undefined area of life and interests’. Solidarity, in this sense, could be viewed as relationships between people who acknowledge that they have something in common; that they feel a sense of camaraderie and solidarity. As a result community can be related to terms such as social cohesion. Etzioni (1993) captures the essence of this in his description of community as the positive connotations of togetherness and community spirit. He defines community as ‘webs of social relations that encompass shared meanings and above all shared values’ (Etzioni, 1998, p.13).
Many writers continue to stress the importance of solidarity in contemporary society18. For example, Willmott (1986) defines three types of community: place (or locality defined by where we live, our neighbourhood); attachment (a measure of the level of interaction with others, and the sense of identity); and interest (a group of people with common interest). Willmott’s first definition, the community of place, implies physical boundaries and the definition of the community by geography. Most people, if asked, would think of community as their immediate neighbourhood, their block of flats or housing estate (Young and Willmott, 1962; Willmott, 1986). These are usually physical artefacts such as large roads, rivers, or specific buildings. Alternatively they may be socially or politically defined divisions such as church parishes or council boroughs (Willmott, 1986). Place can also be explained as a small or large community; a village, town, region, nation and even a group of nations such as ‘the European Community’ (Gellner, 1983). However, the larger the ‘place’ becomes, the more questionable the definition becomes. Moreover, this was the starting definition for community used by the UK government in its pilot network connectivity project ‘Wired-Up Communities’ (Johnston, 2001).
17 For example, see Hillary (1955), Lee and Newby (1983) and Etzioni (1994). 18 For example, Willmott (1986), Cohen, (1982) and Payne (2000).
The second definition, community of attachment, can be explained as who you know and identify as family or a friend, independent of geographical locality. This usually refers to emotional ties between individuals (Willmott, 1986). These are the forms of collective association and action that take place between individuals through a community of shared identities. Communities of attachment may also go beyond people to include non-human elements, such as religious or linguistic territories, or historical ties to places; ‘they may be thought of, rather, as existing in the minds of the beholders’ (Cohen, 1982, p. 12). A community of attachment necessitates social interaction. Such social interaction can develop a reserve of emotional obligations and mutual support through ongoing participation, contact with others (Willmott, 1986) and the nurturing of trust (Fukuyama, 1996). This can be referred to as ‘social capital’, defined as the level of productive investment in social relations and access to social resources (Lin, 2001). Here, social capital can help ease transactions and assist individuals accomplish unrelated goals (Field, 2003).
The third of Willmott’s (1986) definitions is that of a community of interest, that is, a group of people sharing and meeting to pursue similar interests. These can be religious, political, based on hobbies, or shared work associations. Some would argue that this is one of the most significant forms of community (Putnam, 2000) and as such can help to produce high levels of social capital. Communities of interest can be discerned as a group of people talking over the Internet about football; a church group debating the nature of God; or a national disarmament organisation discussing how to get rid of nuclear weapons. This form of community does not require the participating individuals to share the same geographical locality, but merely communicate their shared interest in a knowledge domain.
Communities could be defined more or less extensively around these three concepts, separately, in combination, or at the very extreme simultaneously. However, a definition in which all three concepts coincide has little relative value as a sociological tool, mainly because the reality is always likely to fall short of such an idealised standard (Crow and Allen, 1994, p.5).