What Is Community?

The Characteristics Required for Community

Carol Anne Ogdin
Founder, Deep Woods Technology, Inc.

If we carefully define what we mean by community, if we distinguish between successful and unsuccessful examples, and if we understand the characteristics of successful communities, we can be better equipped to understand the dynamics of community. That means, in turn, that we're then better equipped to understand how for form successful communities.

Communities & Mobs

What distinguishes a community from a mob, an ad hoc gathering of people, a team, a business organization, a party (celebratory or political), a nation?  We can label any of these "community," but are they really community?  Unless we distinguish between what's community and what's not community, how can we even know what we're talking about?

It's our contention that while all interacting groups of human beings are capable of becoming a community, only some do.  And of those who attempt to intentionally forge community, only some are successful.  So, what's the hallmark of community; what characteristics of successful community can we identify that separates the wheat from chaff?  We believe there are five:

·  Boundary and exclusivity; some definition of who's a member and who's not,

·  Purpose; some reason for the community to exist, beyond just 'having community,'

·   Rules; some limits on community member behavior, with a threat of ejection for misbehavior,

·   Commitment to other's welfare; some essential caring by each member for others in the same community,  or at least some responsibility of individual members toward the community, and

·   Self-determination; the freedom to decide for themselves how they'll operate and whom they'll admit to membership.

Each of these is necessary, our view, to constitute community; any less and the group is something else.

Boundary

Membership must confer certain benefits, else there's no reason to join.  But, membership in a group, in and of itself, does not make that group a community.  You can join a club, or a cooperative, or a professional association.  A community is bounded; there are people who are "in" and people who are "out," and those who are "in" know the difference.  The "in" members reap the benefits that others do not.

You don't "belong" to the supermarket,  even though some commercial retailers issue "membership cards."  These are not generally regarded as communities.   A membership cooperative is closer, and you may be expected to exercise some civic duty (say, by periodically voting for a board of directors); in an of itself, that doesn't seem to create community.  A group of people who share ownership of land, agree to share the maintenance of the grounds with each participant willing to take on a share of the load, and cover each other in the event of schedule conflicts:   That's a community.

The bounds of the community may be defined in many ways, for example:

·        Geographic:  the community of Nashville,

·        Interest:  a community of guitarists,

·        Qualification:  the M.D.s who specialize in treatment of repetitive stress injuries among the music community

·        Belief:  a group of people who play music as a tool for health and healing.

Members each possess some distinguishing characteristic(s),  the existance of which is necessary, but not sufficient.   The members of a club, association, student body, the residents of a town or city, the believers in a particular faith all have some unique and unifying characteristic.   How they behave determines whether or not they are truly community.

Often, a community exists within a larger culture of like-minded people...perhaps a group of people with the same professional title, or the same postal ZIP code.  It is the more tightly-knit group of people who know and trust one another to act in the best interests of community survival that constitute the community, even though the larger community gains some benefit from their endeavors.

Purpose

A community needs to have some purpose, some reason for being, above and beyond just "having a community."  Recent popular efforts to gather interested people together to form community solely for the sake of experiencing community are bound to fail.   If such a community survives, it's because members have found some common purpose for banding together.

The most common purposes are economic:  You may choose to participate in a community, for instance, because it will serve to protect your interests.  Or, you may find professional support for continuing expanding your skills.  You might also find these in a more traditional membership organization.  Community is just one of the ways people can organize to achieve common ends.

Another popular purpose is the sharing some common resource, (e.g., water, land, or knowledge).  Balancing the complex demands of multiple claimants can serve as the purpose for a community.   But not all resources are limited:  Certainly, the totality of knowledge is not:  When people join in a knowledge community, they share the common purpose of expanding the knowledge available by sharing with one another, or by jointly synthesizing new knowledge together.

Rules

But, what of the member of community who begins to behave (or is discovered to have behaved) in a way that is inimical to community interest?  There need to be rules that moderate and govern behavior in the community.  And, because rules without penalties are meaningless, there is need for graduated penalties that can be applied by some authority.

Rules, whether written, explicitly shared or an implicit part of the culture, will always exist.   There are acceptable norms of behavior, and there may even be taboos (rules that are generally unwritten, but so strongly held that violation may lead to the ultimate penalty:  Expulsion).  The ad hoc rules that exist can only be discovered by someone violating them, which brings down a rain of wrath from other members (or from certain authoritative members, acting on behalf of the group).  In a sense of fair play, most communities try to document some minimal set of guidelines to behavior for the benefit of new members, and to serve as reference in the future.

Ideally, existing rules are so effective in shaping behavior penalties are never invoked.  In event of a minor infraction, someone may point out the penalties for misbehavior, and a misbehaving individual can be encouraged to conform in order to reap the benefits of membership.   But, where unique benefits are sparse or an individual has something to gain from weakening the community some individuals may violate the community norms.

A graduated set of penalties provides for enforced education of the violator.  But, ultimately, there has to be penalty of ejection.  If there is no misbehavior sufficiently offensive to cause the member to be banished from the community, then the community has no enforceable rules.  With no enforceable rules, any behavior is acceptable.  If any behavior is acceptable, there are no norms, no mores, no taboos unique to the community.   In that case, what is called community is probably merely an loosely-knit group of people with some common interest.

In most cases, there is some authority who decides whether a member has violated community norms.  It might be an appointed official, or an elder, or a "sergeant-at-arms," depending on the customs of the community.  It might be an individual, or a group.   Authority may come from some formal act of the membership, or simply assumed by someone, who if unchallenged, will probably gain the implicit sanction of the membership.   Often, unless and until some crisis arises, an informal group of "elders" performs the role of ad hoc authority.  This can confuse newcomers, who may not understand the nature of the local authority and  challenge anyone who purports to speak for the group.  It's a milestone of such community when one such authority spea ks up, is challenged, and then that authority is supported by many other long-term members of the community.

Commitment

Not all behaviors can be legislated, documented or enforced.  Ultimately, there is some caring or concern, which reaches the spirit of community.  In true community, the members care about each other's welfare (at least within the context of the community's purpose).

It is this essential "other" focus that distinguishes true community from a less robust form of group participation.  The group may pass through an early phase in which there is little sense of "other."  But, unless and until a majority of members take some responsibility for other members reaping benefits, true community has not been achieved.

The group of people who've all bought homes in the "Oak Ridge Community" development may or may evolve to community.  If residents take an active role in the homeowner's association solely to protect their own interests and values, it may be a good association, but not a community.  If a resident hoses water on his neighbor's roof for fear the fire will spread, he acts out of self-interest; if he douses the flame because of his concern for the neighbor's house, he's exhibiting care and concern for the welfare of another.   When members can be counted on to help protect each other's interests against assault, damage, erosion or loss, they're  behaving in the spirit of community.

You can quickly distinguish communities from other kinds of associations.  In community, members are constantly working toward agreement.  If they are focused, instead, on gaining advantage or arguing the essential validity or truth of their own viewpoint, they are acting in the spirit of preservation and nurturance of the community.  In short, communities tend toward convergence; anything else is not community.

One quick test:   How are the interests of temporarily absent members treated?  If the needs and concerns of an absent member are treated as irrelevant (for example, a quorum is sufficient to decide), it is possibly not a community.  In fact, if other members look for opportunities to decide in the absence of other members, you can be assured the group is not a viable community.  If, however, present members express the potential concerns of those absent parties (i.e., looking out for their interests), we believe, the spirit of community is being actively preserved.

Community happens when people have some personal responsibility and commitment to ensuring the community's survival.  The activists in a union, or the core cadre of a professional association who serve, year in and year out, because they believe the purpose of that association; these are the members of some community.  A minimal level of caring is assuming responsibility toward the community.  By supporting and nurturing the community, one maintains one's own membership.

Self-Determinati on

Communities are, by their very nature self-organizing ("autopoetic"); that is, they form spontaneously out of some population as individuals personally assume responsibilities of membership.  You cannot mandate the formation of community.  In fact, the more the community is defined by criteria established outside the membership, the less likely it is to succeed.  If a structure or form is pre-ordained or decided, the group may choose to form an association, a club, a company.  But, when the members volunteer to shape their own interactions, the mores and taboos of their own culture, they are in the process of forming community.

When the responsibilities for its survival are assumed by individuals, community begins.  The first tests of survival come when a founding member leaves, or a newcomer bangs on the door for admittance.  Thriving communities exist independently of any one member:   The collective behaviors of all the members is the material of which community is formed.  The sum of those behaviors is the essence of the community.

Therefore, when one member leaves, the community survives in those who remain.  And, when newcomers become candidates, their membership is achieved when they exhibit the community norms.   There may an informal membership qualification (that is, older members begin treating the newcomer as a peer), or formal rituals and rites of passage.  In both cases, the candidate demonstrates through behavior the acquired knowledge and acceptance of  cultural norms of the community.

Finally, as conditions change, the members must have the authority to change their own rules and penalties.  Again, if these are imposed, community is weakened.  If, for example, the community is a subset of a larger population, and that population decides to limit the permissible range of the community's behavior against the member's will, you can almost certainly predict the end is nigh.