Communities of Communities

I just finished Amitai Etzioni's interesting book "The Spirit of Community: The Reinvention of American Society". In the book, he makes the case for the ideas of the Communitarian movement:

"The success of the democratic experiment in ordered liberty (rather than unlimited license) depends not on fiat or force, but on building shared values, habits and practices that assure respect for one another's rights and regular fulfillment of personal, civic, and collective responsibilities. (p.255)"

In the book, he gives many examples of urgent societal problems and possible communitarian solutions. Although I don't agree with all of them in every detail, overall, I think the communitarian philosophy can make an important contribution to restoring the societal fabric which has been so dramatically torn in the past decades.

One idea particularly interests me. Communitarians want to help grow healthy communities. However, they claim that a precondition is that communities are not grown in isolation, but are continuously exposed to the needs and interests of other communities, in order not to become self-centered and turn against others. In other words, they envision supra-communities, communities of communities. Such communities span many different levels, including, of course, the national, but also the global level:

"While it may seem utopian, we believe that in the multiplication of strongly democratic communities around the world lies our best hope for the emergence of a global community that can deal concertedly with matters of general concern to our species as a whole: with war and strife, with violations of basic rights, with environmental degradation, and with the extreme material deprivation that stunts the bodies, minds, and spirits of children (p.266)"

Technology plays an important mediating role in the creation of supra-communities. Especially global communities are almost by definition virtual in nature. A wonderful example of the emergence of a  global "proto-community" was the one surrounding the GlobalVote 2004 project "where non-Americans get to vote". The idea was that, since US policies directly affect the interests of so many other countries in the world, non-American citizens should also have the right to vote for the American president.  A lot of  - predictable - flak of the "mind your own business"-kind emerged. The fascinating thing was that this was exactly what the 113,552 voters from 191 countries around the world thought they were doing!

Of course, this was just a very primitive example of a temporary community which hardly deserves that name, since voters did not get to know each other and did not verbally communicate or interact. Still, more permanent and advanced forms of such virtual political communities can easily be imagined.

Clearly, inter-community communication is a critical success factor for such higher-level communities to emerge. However, many questions can be raised. What does it mean to be a member of such a meta-community? What role do individuals play? Individual roles or as representatives of their communities of origin? Does such a supracommunity have interests of its own, or is it merely an aggregation of the interests of its consituent communities? What happens in case of conflicts between the higher and lower-level communities?

References

- A. Etzioni (1993), The Spirit of Community: The Reinvention of American Society, Touchstone, New York.

Comments

[Gary Richmond]

Aldo,

You always ask such interesting and, in my opinion, vitally important questions. I'd like to comment on a few in this most recent post of yours: You wrote:

> [AdM] What does it mean to be a member of such a meta-community?

Can one really be a member of a meta-community? Isn't it just an idea, albeit a powerful one? Is it possible that one can only be a member of an actual community or communities, even when they take virtual forms? If so, then meta-community might best be seen as something like an "attitude" or a "tendency" or a philosophy & a way of thinking about things that need be applied to actual and virtual communities in the interest of their evolution.

> [AdM] What role do individuals play? Individual roles or as representatives of their communities of origin?

If for a moment one assumes that one cannot actually be a member of a meta-community, than the proactive individual will assume the attitude that such an idea is vitally important to the success of his own actual (including, virtual) communities. This does not argue against his or her being a representative of this meta-community value. And, indeed, as in the GlobalVote project, one can indeed--and actually--represent this meta-perspective.

> [AdM] Does such a supracommunity have interests of its own, or is it merely an aggregation of the interests of its consituent communities?

Again, the idea of a supracommunity may turn out to be what Kant called a "regulative principle," which C. S. Peirce interpreted to be "an intellectual hope" (see, "A Guess at the Riddle"). I think that one of the principal purposes and uses of such a principle is related to the final question of your post, namely:

> What happens in case of conflicts between the higher and lower-level communities?

Gary

[Aldo de Moor]

Very interesting point, Gary. Yes, I like the idea of being a representative of a value, the higher one gets in the hierarchy of communities. Still, I also think that at the lower levels, there are 'real' communities. An interesting case in point is that within Europe, EU citizens often consider themselves members of their country, outside of Europe, we often think more in terms of being a 'European', especially when being in a similar federation of states like the U.S. Both national and supra-national levels have actually existing public spaces, such as parliaments, courts etc., so in that sense I do think it is possible to be a 'real' American, European, etc. The higher one gets, the less public spaces are available for developing an actual sense of community, and the more the being a 'representative of an idea or value' gains prominence. Food for a lot of future thought...

[Piers Young]

Aldo, nice post and interesting questions!

Do you think it's possible to grow two "healthy" but ethically opposed communities, or does healthy in this instance just mean democratic (or something like)? Would love to hear your thoughts.

Piers

[Aldo de Moor]

Piers,

A healthy community in my opinion is one that is self-sustaining, grows in scope, complexity, and effectiveness, does not develop pathologies, etc. The prevailing ideology or ethics by themselves are a different dimension. It is perfectly conceivable to have a healthy community of religious fundamentalists, even though their ethics are diametrically opposed to those of a group of modernist liberals. I do think, however, that some form of democratic governance is essential for any community to become and remain healthy. A dictatorially governed community is a contradiction in terms.