Monday, August 3, 2009
Giles Fraser on this morning's Thought for the Day (Today Radio 4) commented on the Catholic church's rather silly condemnation of social networking sites like Facebook and My Space. He introduced an interesting distinction between what he called "thick" communities and "thin" communities. Noting that the type of community prioritised in the Church and government's thinking is "thick" community - highly homogenous and exclusive "congregations"- he explicitly compared these to a rural village communiuty with a pub and a church where the village worships together. He saw cities as places with a thinner notion of community but where a much wider and more diverse population could still fit in, find their place and feel at home. Quite rightly he highlighted the need for both types of interaction with virtual communities and social networking sites being vital as part of the thinner type of interaction especially for those who feel excluded or who seek to interact with others in ways that do not centre on geograhical space or "neighbourhood" but rather on other facets of people's identities.
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I recently attended a seminar at the IPPR on "the future of class analysis and politics : some British reflections" lead by Professor Michael Savage from the University of Manchester. In a nutshell its official "class" is back on the agenda when developing policies on equality. The main difference is that even-though we all have some concept of class which we identify ourselves with class also is related to our choice of cultural activities and obviously level of education.The policy in the 80's and 90's programmes to tackle poverty and disadvantage in he coined the wider and more woolly concepts of social exclusion or inclusion, alienation, disenfranchised groups. Alas class has reappeared and now acknowledge as fundamental to understand the complex intersection between class and gender, ethnicity, faith, social spaces such as neighbourhoods, pubs, local estate or schools. Professor Savage is now being consulted by the EHRC ( Equalities and Human Rights Commission) as this will be the main agency who will oversee the new Equality Bill which acknowledges discrimination due to social-economic reasons.
This is all very well but, how will this be integrated in the development of policy and practice in Community Cohesion? How does class relate to the popular concept of social capital? Now that more men and women are made redundant including those who have more social capital have now has to use social networks in different ways, including electronic electronic networks like facebook. My experience is that Class is a complex identity which can not being confined to only economics relations but also socio-cultural relations. As a professional woman, from an ethnic minority background who currently has joined the jobless at my local job centre I have been surprised that my own social capital bit by bit has also been affected by the recession. I have recently joined some mums and dads who have been more that six month unemployed most middle managers from the private sector. We have started to meet at our local park for a weekly picnic and as we watch over our little one's play in our local park and share hummus, cucumber and pita bread we express our surprise to be suddenly a full-time house-husband or wife not due to choice but due to redundancy. Suddenly what we took for granted as part of our identity has been shattered. Our conversations are not about sharing what is the best apple crumble recipe or how to make sure not to make lumpy custard, but when will we be back at work not just for financial reasons but also because our employment and being employed was part of our social network, social capital and identity. The unexpected result of our weekly picnics at our local park is that we feel very strongly part of a community which includes local concerns for our children's school, local services, health, green areas, support to local shops on our High Street. We all know our local shopkeepers, the good and the ugly of what our neighbourhood has to offer. We have all decided to be more involved in civic engagement within our local community. The irony is that if we had not been made redundant we wouldn't have had the time or opportunity to meet and we would be entangled between the school run, the rat race and finding quality time for our children.
Interesting Jacky that this important sense of community that you describe so well here has arisen as part of a struggle against the aimlessness and even potentially humiliating aspects of life on the dole. This is exactly what I would want to call "good" community - in other words a feeling or state of imnvolvemnet and engagement that is defined by doing something together actively rather than just "being" something - being defined passively as a "resident" or a "tenant" or even just by one's ethnicity or interest group
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