documentclass[ngerman,american]scrartcl usepackage[T1]fontenc usepackage[latin1]inputenc setcountersecnumdepth2 setcountertocdepth1 usepackagevarioref IfFileExistsurl.styusepackageurl newedcommandurltexttt usepackage[authoryear]natbib par makeatletter par newedcommandboldsymbol[1]mboxboldmath [IMAGE png] par usepackagenewcent,helvet usepackagexspace setlengthoverfullrule5pt deffootnote1em1emtextsuperscriptnormalfontthefootnotemark newedcommandHRbigskip centeringnoindentlargesloppy * * *par bigskip renewedcommandthraisebox+1exfootnotesize thxspace newedcommandiei.e.,  newedcommandege.g.,  par usepackagebabel makeatother begindocument par subjectSOC3345--Community Analysis par titleSocial Context of Community Life par authorMatvej Cepl, urlmatej@ceplovi.cz par maketitle tableofcontents par sectionDefinition of community par The goal of this paper is to explain how social context influences formation, organization, and survival of a community. In order to do that, I will in the first section of this paper define what I mean under the term community. Then in the next section I would like to explain a position of different sociological schools to this issue. Then in the last section I try to aggregate all these opinions into an overview of the social context influence on the community life. par In order to deal with the issue we have to first understand meaning the term ``community'', because as in many other cases the terms used in social sciences its definition is far from being unequivocal. According to cite[p. 5]lyon:CUS-1999 the definition of the term ``community'' is not stabilized and there are many competing definitions. However, citeauthorlyon:CUS-1999 then settles on the rough definition of a community as ``ldots people living within a specific area, sharing common ties, and interacting with one another, ldots''. Usually this definition is further limited by the level of these factors, so that community in the community analysis is study of a group bigger than family (although such limitation may be too restrictive for some preindustrial societies) and smaller (inclusive) than a city.footnoteI believe that study of national ``community'' is too different from the classical community to be considered together with the analysis of urban neighborhoods. par sectionInfluence of Social Context on a Community par subsectionTypological Approach par Typological approach to the community analysis tries to analyze communities by classifying them into different typologies. By far the most important one is typology of the two ideal types of society: foreignlanguagengermanemphGemeinschaft and foreignlanguagengermanemphGesellschaft.footnoteParallel to this dichotomy is a distinction between rural and urban society. Some authors falling under this category worked with different or similar typologies: Howard P. Becker worked in dichotomy sacred-secular and some modern scholars try to extend the idea to post-industrial society. The former is community and tradition oriented, while the latter rational and individualistic. citep[p. 7]lyon:CUS-1999 par Unfortunately, although this approach to the community analysis provides interesting insights into development of communities, it is focused mostly on the issue of the industrialization and it has just limited value for study of influence of other contextual factors (e.[IMAGE png]g., immigration wave of the end of 19th century citepspain:WSC-2000, or involvement of the government).footnoteMoreover, there may be the problem of circularity of the argument in the foreignlanguagengermanemphGemeinschaft/foreignlanguagengermanemphGesellschaft discussion--whatever we define as the characteristics of industrialization (and call collectively as foreignlanguagengermanemphGesellschaft) is caused by industrialization. par The value of the typological approach to the community analysis lies in the fact, that it is able to firmly establish some order in different types of society and although there is still not agreement about the causes of shift from foreignlanguagengermanemphGemeinschaft towards foreignlanguagengermanemphGesellschaft there is quite enough of evidence that the industrialization was a strong factor. citep[p. 26]lyon:CUS-1999 par HR par In relation to our issue of explanation of social context influences on formation, organization, and survival of a community, the typological approach very much considers importance of the context in the life of community. Actually so much, that it seem to underestimate importance of all other processes in a community and consider them to be just a function of forces exogenous to the community. The standard typological approach considers only limited amount of context in its consideration of the community (i.[IMAGE png]e., industrialization) and some other factors (e.[IMAGE png]g., government actions, or immigration wave) are usually undervalued. par subsectionEcological Approach par Ecological school grown especially before the Second World War around the University of Chicago Sociology Department. Supporters of this approach observed and studied ``natural processes'' occurring in every society and they tried to explain some social changes (e.[IMAGE png]g., spatial organization of the city) as the results of such processes citep[p. 34]lyon:CUS-1999. For example they usually totally omitted governmental influence (because it was considered outside of their model) and they (at least in the original Chicago version) were mostly limited to study effects of industrialization, competition, and growth of the community on the dissolution of the traditional communal values and new spatial organization of the city. par Moreover, contrary to conflict theorists (see vrefsub:Conflict-Approach) proponents of the ecological approach were trying to eliminate concept of conflict from their theories by reinterpreting it as just natural phenomenon of competition, which was considered to be positive because encouraging natural growth of the community. par HR par The problem of the ecological approach to the community analysis is just opposite of the problem of the typological approach. While the latter seemed to understand every change in community as a product of the external processes (development of the mass society, industrialization), the former works usually with conceptually closed models--if the movement of the national groups in city is considered to be function solely of the developmental law of struggle for the best place to live and pursuit of happiness, not much inside the community matters (because it is not an independent variable) for the control of its life, but its direction is solely controlled by the contextual influences. par subsectionSocial System Analysis par More sophisticated approach to study of communities is the study of communities as systems. The main issues of this approach are derived from the general systems theory--interactions and links among different members of the community and different communities, and study of boundaries of a community citep[p. 54]lyon:CUS-1999. Such abstract approach to the community analysis promises quite objective study capable of formulating exact theories of the community behavior. Moreover, this approach also seems to be superior to other approaches (esp. ecological and conflict) in being able to synthesize between micro- and macro-level of behavior linking an individual action with the life of community.footnoteThe micro-level studies are often related to citetgranovetter:AJS-1973-1360,granovetter:AJS-1985-481. par citet[p. 58]lyon:CUS-1999 mentions work of Roland L. Warren (in the book ``The Community in America'') as an example of thinker who linked study of a community with supra-communal structures by introduction of ``extracommunity systems'' which stands over different communities. Contrary to some critics of the typological approach, he makes distinction between such dominance and the elimination of the local community importance (although he sees importance of the mass-society and its dominance over the local communities). ``Like Mark Twain's comment about the fallacious report of his own death, the death of the community has been highly exaggerated.'' par Warren finds in a community two different types of patterns--horizontal and vertical patterns. The horizontal pattern links together units and subsystems of the community, whereas the vertical patterns are made of links between parts of different communities with their supra-communal extracommunity systems of the national headquarters etc. Obviously this idea of two different patterns links the system approach to the foreignlanguagengermanemphGemeinschaft v. foreignlanguagengermanemphGesellschaft movement of society. However, the system analysis gives to this dichotomy through comparison between the strength of horizontal and vertical links quite objective measurement of the level of foreignlanguagengermanemphGesellschaft-ness of the particular community. par HR par Contrary to all approaches described in this paper, the system approach is the least deterministic one and it appreciates most actions of individuals. Actually, actions of individuals (albeit working as elements of bigger system) are the biggest concern of the approach. From this point of view this approach is very poorly suited for the analysis of the issue we are dealing with. par Therefore, there is not much what could be provided by the system approach for studies of the emphrelation between the social context and the particular community (again, let's think about the influence of Irish/Italian/Jewish immigration on the American communities in the second half of 19th century studied by citealpspain:WSC-2000). par Of course, that the system approach may be used for studying how the system reacted to that external influence. For example, from the system point of view (to use the same example) the restructuring of the formerly local community based charitable systems into the network of nation-wide charitable systems (YWCA, Salvation Army, etc.) is appropriate subject of the system analysis. par From this point of view, the immigration wave may be understood as inclusion of external elements (immigrants) to the previous systems, which force these old system to be for the most part to be basically created again, because the old systems were not capable of delivering services and acculturation. par The question whether this approach is well suited for the analysis of the relation between social context and a community depends largely on what we exactly mean by ``social context''. If the social context of a community includes any force which originates outside of the community, then certainly Warren's extracommunity systems are a valuable tool for the study of the issue. par subsectionlabelsub:Conflict-ApproachConflict Approach par Traditional Marxist ideology was not originally too much concerned with study of urban communities. Of course, Marxism is primarily urban ideology, and cities were considered places of the class struggle and the stage for future revolution. However, the original Marxists and their followers were much more concerned with the social processes and the revolution on the national level (of course, the iron laws of the dialectic materialism and scientific communism were supposed to be applicable equally in any capitalist economy). par Many neo-Marxists switched their interest to the urban communities in the beginning 1970s'. The reasons for that are not totally clear. According to citep[p. 71]lyon:CUS-1999 it was because the focus of class struggle switched to issues like preservation of urban communities, and impoverished cities. Other explanation is of course, that in that time it was obvious that the classical Marxism with the world-wide Communist revolution was obsolete, and therefore its supporters had to find other area, where their ideas seemed to be still relevant. par Aside from the Marxist and neo-Marxist conflict approach, there are other scholars working with the conflict approach who considers conflict to be undesirable and concentrate their analysis of communities on finding ways how to minimize conflict in a society and if possible how to eliminate the high-level conflicts escalated to the violent level (James S. Coleman). par HR par The relation of conflicts theorists to the issue of this paper is twofold. On the one hand non-Marxist conflict theorists were concerned with the sources of conflict they tried to avoid (which certainly includes influences of the social context), but the main focus of their work was concentrated on the description and understanding of the actual conflicts. Related to the sources of conflicts was work of William A. Gamson (1966) who indicated as main sources of ``rancorous'' conflicts (an especially strong conflict which is out of control by traditional means of dispute resolution in the given community) the period of rapid political change in the community and weaknesses of ``horizontal patterns'' (to use term from another approach) of the community, which are not capable of holding the stress on the society. However, Gamson also understood that conflict may be necessary for the development of communities. par The neo-Marxists are more oriented towards the relation between social context and community conflict. For them the external influences are important catalysts for showing more clearly the inherent conflict in the capitalist society between different classes. Moreover, given much more complex (and fuzzy) models they are used to work with, they are able to include the external sources of the conflict much more easily. par section[Examples]Examples of relation between social context and community development par subsectioncitetrabrenovic:CBU-1996 ``Community Builders'' par The book is a collection of the analysis of four communities in two cities (Albany and Schenectady): the middle/upper class and working class one in each city. The two cities were selected as being in contrast for their wealth (Albany is quite economically stable given the support from government offices, whereas Schenectady is formerly affluent industrial city which is now declining after transfer of production facilities of its monopolistic employer--General Electric--to other countries). The book also contains thorough description of the social context which influenced the development in both cities (de-/industrialization, urban renewal and gentrification). par The book deals exactly with the issue of this paper: what caused different community development in two cities and what is the relation of such development to the social context of such communities. The author provides an evidence, that the difference between the success of community building could be traced to the economical situation of the cities and that the individual members of disadvantaged communities have very limited options to overcome them (even people who are not working class). par subsectioncitetspain:WSC-2000 ``How Women Saved the City'' par This book is not strictly community analysis. First of all it does work on nation-wide level and analyzes work of the national organizations in the different cities (illustrations of the organizations work in different cities are more for the illustration of the basic theory, however the wealth of information about different cities is enormous). Moreover, the theory presented in the book is much more concerned with the nation-wide trends of the influence which ideologies of the municipal housekeeping and social gospel had on the re-constitution of the urban culture which was in that time under enormous pressure of the immigration wave from Europe. par The book is hopefully contrasting to the the citeauthorrabrenovic:CBU-1996's book (and to the most authors mentioned before, to be sure) by showing how the persistence of the individual women working in their small areas really made a gigantic change of the American society possible. There does not seem to be any particular contextual reason which made possible success in the enormous effort to include into the American society millions of undereducated and generally quite poor immigrants without much support from government. par Certainly, that this independence from the social context is not absolute. Substantial part of this miracle was caused by the special situation of women who were partially liberated from the household chores (among others by the invention of tap water, gas stove etc.) yet still not allowed to fullfill their dreams in being employed. par sectionConclusion par The conclusion about influence of the social context on the community formation, organization, and survival has to be compromise between different points of view and therefore it is very much blurry. par It is quite certain that the social context has very strong influence on the development of community. However, it is quite certain that dependency doesn't go only in one direction: citeauthorspain:WSC-2000's book clearly illustrates, that it is possible to change society so that it evolves to be conforming with new social context. In the same time, the book also clearly shows how extraordinary effort was needed to save the urban culture to fit into new environment. par citetrabrenovic:CBU-1996 seems to be slightly more pessimistic about the prospect of the changes. Although all community organizations spend enormous effort to serve their members, it does not seem to be possible to break out from the dependency on the economic decline in Schenectady (without regards to particular class membership of its members). However, it may be possible that the longer study would provide more optimistic impression (it may be possible that even in Schenectady process of deindustralization will finish, new equilibrium will be found, budget of the city will stabilize and it will be possible to support poor neighborhoods of the city). par In the same time comparison of the books shows that the real difference is better to be achieved by small seemingly unimportant work when done by large number of people and for a long time (it is worthy to remember that citeauthorspain:WSC-2000's book covers more than fifty years between the Civil War and the First World War) than with huge government-funded action of the urban renewal kind (I still believe that the authors of the urban renewal were well-intenioned wishing to modernize living conditions of the people). par bibliographystyleplainnat bibliography/home/matej/archiv/2003/clanky/citation par enddocument