Diana Sofia Rodrigues n 100512010

The New
Community
Citizens in a modern state have a great deal of interconnectedness but
very little in the sense of community and attachment to place.

Lord Raymond Plant

01-05-2013

To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is

the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the
series by which we proceed toward a love to our country and to mankind. The interest
of that portion of social arrangement is a trust in the hands of all those who compose it;
and as none but bad men would justify it in abuse, none but traitors would barter it away
for their own personal advantage
Edmund Buke, REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE

Abstract
During the last decades of the 20th century, the technological revolution changed society.
Internet, computers, PDAs and other devices altered our day to day life, keeping us all
connected to each other at all times. However, it seems that instead of reinforcing the social
relationships, they have somehow diminished them to their virtual existence. The main purpose
of this paper is to discuss the effects of interconnectedness in the sense of community and
attachment to a place. To analyze how interconnectedness and the sense of community relate
to each other, this paper starts with a clear definition of both community and place
attachment. Moreover, its important to understand how globalization has change human
relations and, consequently, the way we define the sense of community and belonging. Finally,
if possible there will be presented arguments to explain how globalization might have killed the
sense of community in modern societies.

Key-Words: Community, Place Attachment, Globalization, New Communities

Defining Community
The word community was first used by Aristotle in his work NICHOMACHEAN ETHIC, in
the sense of a group of people living in the same place at the same time and under the same
political and social order. Yet, this minimal definition doesnt clarify the difference between
community and society. So, to Aristotle, in community the focus is not in the unity of this
people, but in the harmony that thrives among them1. Traditionally, it was said that this
harmony could only be achieved if there were a social, religious, political, scientific and moral
consensus. However, modern societies have shown that communities only need minimum
consensus of the core values in order to succeed.
In 1887, Ferdinand Tnnies in his book, GEMEINSCHAFT UND GESELLSCHAFT , created the
first formal dichotomy between society and community2. According to Tnnies, the social ties
developed by humans can be divided into two categories: they are personal interactions, roles,
values and beliefs base on direct, total and significant relations or they are indirect interactions
and impersonal roles complemented by formal values and principles based on formal, abstract
and instrumental relation. It is needless to say that the first relation is called community while
the second is called society.
In Rawls THEORY OF JUSTICE he defends that a community is the main product of an
association by independent individuals and its worth must be estimated by the justice of the
terms upon which the individuals chose to associate. This view has been widely criticized by a
school of thought that was given the name of Communitarianism. Michael Sandel, one of the
communitarianism scholars, supports that the existence of individuals who are able to decide,
chose and agree to associate themselves is, by itself, the product of a pre-existing
community3.4 This means that community is the second form of society: right after the state of
nature, human beings started to communicate and to agree with each other, thus creating a
community. Thus, community is a group of people who chose to live together, under the
political and social order constructed upon their shared values and beliefs. The view of
Communitarianism is vital because they highlight two important characteristics of community:
first, the fact that the shared values are the background of all institutions of a community;

Aristotle uses the word koinnia, which can be translated as sharing or taking part in a thing with
others, the author also uses it do refer to a group of persons- travelers and commercial partners, for
example- who work together to achieve a common goal. (KRAUT, 2002)pp. 355.
2
Recent authors have decided that it is more appropriated to translate it as the distinction between
community and civil society. However many scholar still refer to the discussion as community versus
society, and so will this paper.
3
The individuals, according to Sandel, must be already involved in the community life in order to accept
any form of association.
4
Cnf. (KUKATHAS, 1990)

secondly, MacIntyre underlines that everyone inherits from the past of their family, tribe and
nation a great variety of debts and obligations that constitute their starting point. This second
point shows us that every person is changed by the community they are born into and
therefore it changes her character and shapes her principles accordingly.
Other authors take under consideration additional factors, such us geography and
urbanization, hence defining community as a geographically defined subarea of the city in
which residents are presumed to share both spatial proximity and some degree of mutual
circumstance, need, priorities, and access to the broader metropolitan area and the systems
that have an impact on their lives (CHASKIN, 1999, pp 1) So, Chaskin refers to community as
neighborhood and not as a group of people who chose to live together and have shared
values.
Contemporary, the term community appears with three uses:

as Chaskin defined it: as local groupings created due to proximity and face-toface interactions, putting the focus on geography

as community of shared interests and/or characteristics, in the line of thought

of Rawls5 and mostly Durheim;

as Sandel and MacIntyre theoretical framework: sharing of goals, values,

identity and emotional and moral investments, focusing on the relation
between people.

In recent years the concept of community gained a new face, when Howard Rheingold
published THE VIRTUAL COMMUNITY , in 1993. He defended that communities were possible
when people carried public discussions long enough and embraced them with sufficient feeling
that allowed them to form webs of personal relationships online. But, instead of creating new
forms of community, many sociologists consider that globalization has created a global society
and so, the true sense of community has disappeared in human relations6.
All in all, the level of uncertainty remains: what truly defines a community? Most
academics would answer: the sense of community7 is what actually defines it. In order to
define SOC, it will be taken under consideration the work of MacMillan and Chavis8 and their
theoretical development of the concept. The authors divided the definition into four main

Even though the main idea in Rawls was never the reference to community of interests or ethnic
community, he also developed the idea of free association between people, regardless of what caused
or characterized this union.
6
This will be discussed ahead.
7
From this point onwards, it will be used the abbreviation SOC to refer to Sense of Community.
8
The work refered is (MACMILLAN, 1986) pp. 9-14

criteria: membership9, influence10, reinforcement11 and shared emotional connection12. So,

SOC is a feeling that members [of a group] have of belonging, a feeling that members matter
to one another and to the group, and a shared faith the members needs will be met through
their commitment to be together. (BLANCHARD, 2004, pp. 67). The most difficult part of this
assessment is to understand its origins and despite MacMillan and Chavis attempt to create a
complex framework of origins it still hasnt been properly tested.
The social and physical dimensions of a community are reciprocally interconnected,
given that locations represent the space in which people develop their significant relations and
social exchanges (MANNARINI & ROCHIRA, 2012, pp 952) Concluding, community has both
the notion of geographic proximity13, connections and shared values among its members, and
SOC.

Defining Attachment to a place:

A good way to start this definition is by a crossing the definitions that have been used
by different branches of the social sciences.
In the view of Anthropologist Setha Low, place attachment is a symbolic relationship
formed by people giving culturally shared emotional/affective meaning to a particular space of
piece of land that provides the basis for the individuals and groups understanding of and
relation to the environment Thus, place attachment is more than an emotional and cognitive
experience, and includes cultural beliefs and practices that link people to place.
In geography, Yi-Fu Tuan uses the term topophilia to define the affective bond
between people and place or setting. Such ties vary in intensity, subtlety, and mode of
expression, which is more commonly known as place attachment.
Historian John Brickerhoff Jackson wrote that a sense of place is something that we
ourselves create in the course of time. It is the result of habit or custom A sense of place is
reinforced by what might be called a sense of recurring events.

Membership denotes the idea of feeling of belonging and personal interconnection to the other
members of the community.
10
Influence relates to the awareness that both the organization and each member is influenced by the
participation.
11
Reinforcement subdives into two categories: fullfilment of needs and integration, and it is concerns
the idea that the members needs will only be fulfilled by the in integration in the community.
12
Finally, emotional connection refer to the commitment and belief that members have shared and will
share history, common places, time together, and similar experiences (MACMILLAN, 1986) pp.9
13
Some authors mention that in human life there are connections that occur in divergent physical places
and so, community does not necessarily relates to neighborhood and living community, but also that of
working community, interest community, etc. And in recent years, the virtual space as well.

Finally, sociologist David Hummon explained by sense of place I mean peoples

subjective perceptions of their environment and their more or less conscious feelings about
these environments. Sense of place is inevitably dual in nature, involving both an interpretive
perspective on the environment and an emotional reaction on the environment sense of
place involves a person orientation toward place, in which ones understanding of place and
ones feelings about place become fused in the context of environmental meaning.14
One more definition has to be taken into account given its ability to sum up several
characteristics. According to Low and Altman15, sense of place is a more accurate expression
since it conjugates three different aspects of the relation between men and space: affective,
cognitive and conative components. In this analysis, place attachment refers solely to the
affective aspect of the relationship; while place identity and place dependence refer to the
other two aspects respectively. These authors define place attachment as an affect bond
between people and places, which include different actors, social and places of varying scale.
Recent papers have had an important part in studying the terms of affective bonds to
the residence or neighborhood, and attaching them to several criteria such as, length of
residence.
Research has shown that places are symbolic contexts imbued with meaning, which
emerge and evolve through ongoing interaction with others and the environment. Therefore,
the meanings that individuals or groups ascribe to certain places arent but mere reflections of
their cultural or individual identity. This idea of attachment to place, also serves to strengthen
and shape identity, both in individual and in communities. Through place affiliation, people
inherit their social identities which help distinguish the us from the others. 16 Some studies
have underlined that places are implicated in the definition of identity and consequently
sustain the feeling of belonging to the physical dimension in a community.
Also, place attachment carries both a positive and a negative side to it. The positive
side is well kwon and has to do with the creation of a community and creating bonds in civil
society. The less positive side is the shown relation between strong place attachment and the
propensity to territorial conflicts; as well as the fact that a romancised notion of home and
community tends to cause difficulties when it changes, or is forced to change17.

14

All the quotations in previous paragraphs were taken from (CROSS, 2001)
As quoteb by (KYLE, 2006)
16
According to (KYLE, 2006)
17
According to (Society for Community Research and Action, s.d.)
15

Community and Place Attachment: Relation

Both dimension of attachment that have been described, to community of to a place,
are communal in their nature since they both transmit to human beings of bondedness and
rootedness. This is to say that both realities allow people to fell as a part of both the
community but also they space they inhabit. As a consequence, emotional bonds with the
community turn from internal individual processes into social and external processes, which in
some cases ends-up becoming self-definition to the community and its individuals.
Sense of community has been linked to place attachment at both the individual and
community scale. Rivlin (1987) found that attachment to one's neighborhood serves as a
precondition for the development of a sense of community among neighbors. Moreover, both
sense of community and place attachment manifest themselves in behaviorally in
participation. (Society for Community Research and Action, s.d., pp 11)
Social constructivist geographers have discovered a relation between place
attachment, individual identity and power in the everyday use of space in communities. So,
gender, race, ethnicity and class tend to change how the community organizes and defines
itself.
Despite sounding clich, studies have shown that residents who are more attached to
the community have higher levels of social cohesion and social control and less fear of crime.
The point is that community is a natural part of sociability among humans and so is attachment
to a place, so it is important to make sure communities and neighborhoods are preserved as a
way to foster a better society.

The effect of Globalization upon Community

Since the beginning of the theorization of community sociologists have been writing
about how urbanization and industrialization alter the main characteristics in society, making it
really difficult for a community to emerge. Tnnies described how these two factors
constituted the bases to break the community attachment, transforming what once was a
community into a mere society. Another important contributor to this investigation was Louis
Wirth, in 1937 in his work URBANISM AS A WAY OF LIFE , he postulated that urban society
resulted from increasing in population, population density and heterogeneity, which created
the perfect storm to decline the meaning of the local community in ones life18.
However, their followers have come to disagree with these findings due to what they
saw as its linear system approach. So, it was created a systemic model were The local

18

According to (KASARDA, 1974)

community is viewed as a complex system of friendship and kinship networks and formal and
informal associational ties rooted in family life and on-going socialization processes. At the
same time it is fashioned by the large scale institution of mass society. Indeed, it is a generic
structure of mass society, whose form, content, and effectiveness vary widely and whose
defects and disarticulations reflect the social problems of the contemporary period.
(KASARDA, 1974, pp. 329)
It is worthy noticing that nowadays communities have subtle boundaries and their
sense of self varies immensely from certain areas to another. Besides, human interaction as
also changed and communities are getting more and more informal, so the only way to identify
them is, like suggests Kasarda and Janowitz, by focusing on local social networks and
abstracting out those relations that are directly linked to the occupational system (KASARDA,
1974, pp 329). If such approach is taken, the conclusion is that neither urbanization nor
heterogeneity is causing the lack of community bonds.
Technology changed the nature of communication from the public to the private
sphere: while in the 19th century most of the communication happened in public spheres, like
the local market, the church or the town square, nowadays people mostly communicate with
friends and family by phone or email. This change in way we communicate has also made it
harder for people to meet their neighbors and start developing a sense of community.
Another valuable aspect of todays society is the fact that, more than ever before,
people have different spheres of connections, Burkes little platoon have flourish and
encompassed all types of social interactions, from PTA meetings, to soccer practice, to yoga or
book club. These are new forms of community, but they are interest-based and not
geographically-based. Furthermore, it seems that today basic group identity fails to
appreciate that individuals have any number of identities.
Etzioni & Etzioni, have made a brilliant point when referring to the possibilities of
joining the virtues and benefits of the internet to the run for a closer community. This mixture
of both face-to-face and online communication would actually allow communities to became
more united that only one type of communication. Besides, online exchanges may lead to
offline contact and vise versa (HAMPTON, 2007, pp3)
So, we can conclude that the interconnectedness is not what has been killing the sense
of community and attachment to place. Attachment to place has been weaker because
nowadays people keep moving across country or from different cities, or even to different
neighborhoods, which makes it difficult to create real bonds with others. As has been
demonstrated, attachment is directly and positively correlated to the amount of time one lives

in that community; and so it is getting shorter and shorter, since very few families have been
living in the same neighborhood for more than one maybe two- generations.
The truth is that community is built upon mutual trust which sometimes might be
lacking in modern societies, due to criminality or to shorter stays in the community.
Furthermore, intellectual currents in the past century, such as neoliberalism or
postmodernism, have pointed towards more fragmented societies, that, in the end, mean the
death of communities. Since human beings are incapable of living alone, the SOC will probably
rise in the next decades, but lets be clear, not in the form of close neighborhood communities
as we know them. It can be argued that an emerging global civil society, attested to the desire
and the capacity of individuals and groups to negotiate new forms of belonging- many of which
are disconnected from more familiar attachments to territory, geography of policy. Both
community and attachment will be around for centuries to came, what is changing is just the
form, not the essence.

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