The conundrum that is community

The past three weeks have had me embroiled in (sometimes fiery) discussions, as well as (less rowdy) contemplation around what can be considered as a ‘community’. Someone made the claim that communities are not real and can only be imagined as per Benedict Anderson’s “Imagined Communities”, a book which delves into the notion of nationalism. That in itself is an interesting book to revisit in the current international political climate, but it has very little to do (in my opinion) with the definition of what a ‘community’ is in sociology and development theories, and of course in the practical world of community development, resettlement and similar practices. In reality the person’s view point that communities are imagined by presumably the members of said community, as well as those external agencies that acknowledge the existence of said community, could stem from the fact that this person had to give up rights to land (and was compensated for it fully) as part of the land restitution process in South Africa: “This disparate bunch of people was fleet-footed enough to have some of the most beautiful farms in Zululand land in their collective lap, mahala, totally free and without cost of any kind except for having a sharp eye to be able to get on to some list or other.”  Of course I could write a lot about the mind-set that thinks that restitution is getting something for free, especially in the context of Colonial and Apartheid South African dispossession (without compensation one might add), but this post is about how we see and define community and really what a community comprises of in this 21st Century contemporary society. 

A few days after I received the above quoted sentiment in an e-mail, I also received an email from another person, in response to queries about a street-guard scheme in my street, in which the author accused me of having no social conscience and informed me that I am no longer part of the community. To provide some context: I had moved to this city and this suburb a few months ago, and soon started receiving invoices for guard services. Since I have not subscribed to such services, I asked on what basis I am receiving these invoices (one with ‘overdue’ in red stamped across it), and the response came that it is my civil duty as a resident of this specific suburb and a member of the community to pay for the guard. I responded by asking for more information such as the registration number of the entity employing the guards, whether the guards are employed as per legislation, how the books are audited, etc. In response I received an irate email that declared me no longer a member of the community, that I have no social conscience and that I am a ‘free-loader’. 

Hmmmm….

This of course had me thinking of how we should be defining communities. Is it still enough to use Tonnies’s definition of community as ‘Gemeinschaft’ (face-to-face contact) or even ‘Gesellschaft’ (contractual society, which is less personal, as in industrialised societies)? Perhaps those of us who work with (and for) industries that are active in more isolated, rural societies can still to some degree use these definitions when dealing with communities in that context. But even in the merged slightly less face-to-face ('Gemeinschaft') slightly more contractual society (‘Gesellschaft’) which one encounters for example in the less rural, more urbanized communities surrounding developing mining towns, communities are becoming more and more fluid, less place-based. Often members of these communities are mobile. They might be migrants who have left their home physically to look for better socio-economic opportunities in the city or in another country or in another region, but they return periodically and are viewed by others, and more importantly, they view themselves, to be an integral part of the community because they are in constant web-based (whatsapp, Facebook, snapchat) contact with the community. In my experience, these physically absent members of these communities are often also considered to be the ‘opinion leaders’ of the community (they are often well educated, have traveled more, have different experiences), who despite their physical absence wield great influence within these communities. Often these people are not present when community engagement and consultation happens. I would propose that this will become problematic, if it is not already, and that it is becoming more and more important to find ways to include these physically absent persons when we consult with communities.

As more and more people across the world are able to access the internet, there are constant changes as to what constitutes a community and how we should engage and consult.  We need to broaden the definition of community to include not only the context in which we work and operate, but we also need to ensure that the definition encompasses both geographical place, interest and the internet.  Community members no longer need to know each other or physically engage with each other face-to-face in order to belong to a community. Communities might often appear to be ‘disparate’ to the casual observer, but who is to decide whether they are a community or not? The person who believes that this community cannot be a real community because they are ‘disparate’, or the community who self-identifies through a shared ethnicity and shared history of dispossession? And who assigns a person to be a member of a community, and who decides to exclude persons from a community? If one is unaware that one somehow belongs to a community, and then is promptly expelled from said community for being impertinent and asking too many questions, as was the case for me last week, it does not really matter in the bigger scheme of things; but when it comes to community development and community engagement, it becomes important to be cognizant of the pit falls when we conduct a community census or rank stakeholders. And above all, it is vital that we study, in order to understand, the processes of social interaction within a community (which can include both face-to-face and internet-based) before we design and implement community consultation plans.