(Note the ‘live’ version of this lectures is decorated with video, if it this doesn’t quite make sense, that’s what you are missing.)
The desire of humans to form communities is probably a natural extension from the family group. The history of colonization of new lands is a history of the trials and tribulations of forming new communities. Anybody who is a fan of Westerns will have a sense of the struggles involved over law, mutual aid, etiquette, respect, trust, property, responsibilities, roles. Whatever the community, whether online or off, these issues arise.
I have tried to show throughout the lectures in this course that online and offline communities, while displaying different strengths and weaknesses, should be considered on one continuum. Both are essentially concerned about connections between and networks of people. The revolution in technology has not been accompanied by a revolution in human-ness—our technology does not make us post-human. Social software, at its best, facilitates things that we wanted to do anyway. Perhaps the ‘transaction costs’–it was simply too difficult to tell people in Johannesburg or Khandi what you thought– made these things impossible in the past, or at least too much work. But I can’t think of an example in which social software has invented wholly bizarre or novel human ambitions.
We have seen that online and offline communities have different strengths and weaknesses. Local, face-to-face ties may be stronger than those online—at least, they are likely to be less transitory. Online you are more likely to find community with people whose interests really are similar to yours, because the pool of people are so diverse; offline we tend to be thrown together, and the people we meet do not necessarily share our goals and interests just because they are local.
However, some issues for communities are the same regardless of whether they are online or offline. Problems of scale are universal—the larger the numbers of people, the less likely they are to all know each other, and the more unwieldy a community becomes. At some point a threshold is reached at which one-to-one relationships become impossible, and at that point the community spirit may fade. Another type of issue that all communities face is about homogeneity or heterogeneity. Conventional sociology argues that homogeneity is a strength in communities, however there is some evidence to suggest that communities such as the wikipedia writers and editors thrive on heterogeneity.
On a more general level, we have seen on a number of occasions the role that media has in our communities. In our first case study about the Victorian bushfires, I argued that the local radio station was not only an important conduit of information about the fire spread (although from the evidence emerging from the Royal Commission, it seems less than perfect). However the radio station in subsequent days played a much broader role. It brought people together as they dealt with their trauma, shock and upheaval; via the radio we witnesses ‘the kindness of strangers’. The radio also had an important ideological function. It re-affirmed—and perhaps even re-created—the existence of the burnt communities on a more abstract, metaphysical level. Community was re-invented as something that transcended bricks and mortar; it even transcended the lives of specific individuals. We were taught to consider that these communities existed so long as there was a will for them to exist.
Marysville and Kinglake are up and running, although life is tough there. Consider the fate of the out-lying suburbs of New Orleans (the Lower Ninth Ward), devastated by Hurricane Katrina nearly four years ago. I took these pictures in January 2009, three and a half years after the hurricane. Many of these houses and businesses are abandoned–one doubts they’ll ever be rebuilt. What is the difference between Marysville and these suburbs of New Orleans? Some of it can be attributed to lack of insurance and government funding. Nobody is putting up the money to rebuild these houses; without local residents the businesses see no point. Another reason is that suburbs built lower than sea level in an hurricane zone would be a disaster waiting to happen (again). However, these suburbs have not be rebuilt in a more viable location either.
There seems to be an opinion within Republican circles (they were in power at the time) that these communities are not worth the effort. They were considered somehow morally sub-standard:
New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen and an ongoing ecological offense maintained only at the cost of billions of dollars and a never ending battle against water, wind and gravity - against nature itself. The cultural centers of the city are still there. The rest was a breeding ground for poverty, crime and hopelessness. There is nothing of value to restore. We would be spending millions of dollars for each person who lived in the wet parts of the city. It is not worth it.
(Jack)
A different culture is operating in the USA than in Victoria, which features a lack of sympathy for the victims, or respect for their lifestyles. Unlike in Victoria, in which the re-valuing and re-invention of local communities commenced on the very day of the disaster. Here is one response attached to the CBS story, arguing in favour of respect for these now struggling communities:
It’’s not like someone born into third world poverty in the lower ninth ward had a whole lot of choice where they lived in this country. Half of them didn”t even have cars to evacuate. It’’s a different world you obviously don”t understand. People who think it’’s so easy to pull one’’s self out of poverty have probably never had to do so. America can waste $100 billion every 6 months on a wasted Iraq war, with much going into the pockets of very wealthy military contractors, but it can”t loan $20,000 to a family of eight to rebuild a shack. Yeah, we can criticize government hand-outs and tell people they”re own their own, but if we”re going to take that hard line, let’’s do it the world-round and stop wasting aid on the likes of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, who have gotten more taxpayer dollars in a year than our own people in New Orleans will see in a lifetime. Racists regularly call loans to a poor black family in New Orleans a “hand out.” kevboom, Aug 29, 2007
(Of course, before we Australians get too self-congratulatory, we should recall the poverty, violence and neglect which are rife in many indigenous communities.)
As documentary makers, filming communities can be very fraught. I felt very self-conscious, driving around the Lower Ninth Ward; it was voyeuristic. If the Lower Ninth Ward hadn’t been wrecked I wouldn’t have been there; I was parasitic on the disaster. I hesitate to go to Marysville, althgouh I want to get some footage of what they have managed to do in three months.
The many complexities of the relationship between a documentary-maker and his/her subject are revealed when taking on a community as your focus. Not only can you be voyeuristic, but you can also find it difficult to penetrate the promotional wall that community members will often erect around their communities. Finding the interesting or dramatic issues that will justify people spending their time watching your documentary can be difficult, if the community members are not prepared to be self-critical. The documentary maker is always an outsider; he or she needs to be, or the documentary will be boring. But, as an outsider, you are alienated from your subject.
Krisjof Kieslowski says:
Not everything can be described. That’s the documentary’s great problem. It catches itself as if in its own trap. The closer it wants to get to somebody, the more that person shuts him or herself off from it. And that’s perfectly natural. It can’t be helped. If I’m making a film about love, I can’t go into a bedroom if real people are making love there. If I’m making a film about death, I can’t film somebody who’s dying because it’s such an intimate experience that the person shouldn’t be disturbed. And I noticed, when making documentaries, that the closer I wanted to get to an individual, the more the subjects which interested me shut themselves off.
That’s probably why I changed to features. There’s no problem there. I need a couple to make love in bed, that’s fine… I can even buy glycerine, put some drops in her eyes and the actress will cry. I managed to photograph some real tears several times. It’s something completely different. But now I’ve got glycerine. I’m frightened of those real tears. In fact, I don’t know whether I’ve got the right to photograph them. At such times I feel like somebody who’s found himself in a realm which is, in fact, out of bounds. That’s the main reason why I escaped from documentaries. (Kieslowski 1993, p.86)
This is the Rio Grande, I am standing in Texas looking across to Mexico. The land is all scrub desert, very hot in summer, and towns are rather sparse. Nevertheless, every day thousands of South American immigrants make the illegal crossing into the USA across the river (PBS. Casualties are high.
It seems that whatever community we belong to, knowing the borders of it—who belongs and who doesn’t—is important. We need to be able to define ourselves, perhaps, and therefore we need to know what the limits are. Sometimes community borders and definition is benign; other times such borders have real political and social consequences. Communities are political, although they are not necessarily presented as such.
Sometimes communities seem so natural that they go almost unnoticed. Or if noticed, they are uncontroversial. Such communities function well because there is a good level of social capital operating within it. Shared understandings, values, trust and responsibilities make any disruption solveable. These communities are quite possibly often forgiving of a little bad behaviour, or at least, they know how to deal with it. One of the nice aspects of New York (and for that matter of Melbourne) is that it embraces so much cultural diversity. We seem to have created a high level of tolerance for diversity—although it can still cause tension.
Other communities thrive on homogeneity. I went to a church service in Memphis. It was the most amazing thing—the whole service was sung. The congregation was ecstatic; they were speaking in tongues and fainting, carried away by the Holy Ghost. I’m not religious, but it was intense and uplifting, extraordinary. They were extremely welcoming towards us too, although we were almost the only white folk there.
But much more was going on than religion. This is a poor community—the economic meltdown appears to have hit Memphis very hard, and although these people were dressed much better than I was, I don’t believe they were wealthy. So the Ministers were making announcements about health care and work availability between the religious euphoria. In other words, the church was the fulcrum for the community.
I went into that service very skeptical about the role of religion in people’s lives, the famous phrase of Marx, that ‘religion is the opiate for the masses’, ringing in my ears. But the church service shook me. Here was a living, thriving community, and the service was its expression, the highlight of these people’s week. On the other hand, my skepticism was not completely overcome: throughout the service, collections were taken. This church is extremely expensive to run, and I’m not sure these people can or should be paying so much of their limited incomes.
But what is community worth? How can we ever stand outside one and judge it? We probably can’t. This church community makes me slightly uneasy, but perhaps I’m being too rational; I’m not acknowledging the social capital that is earned and exchanged here.
There are other communities which seem much more clearly negative—online, they include pro-ana groups and suicide clubs; there are just as bad—or worse—offline communities (eg, Jonestown? White supremacists? terror cells?) These communities also circulate their own social capital. Social capital circulates, although many of us would not want to say it always has good effects. But we can’t distinguish between the idea of community and the focus of a particular community very easily—and therefore it is difficult to call a specific community a bad one.
One thing we can perhaps redeem from Tonnies is the idea that smaller homogenous communities do have a relationship with the larger society. Within that relationship occurs the push and pull of normative values. Whether for good or ill, communities will always be judged by outsiders, and will always, sooner or later, need to justify themselves in relation to the larger world.
They are playing golf at my mother’s gold club again—it re-opened merely 8 weeks after it was burned out. Volunteers have been working on the golf course; even Tiger Woods made a donation. Communities form in sometimes bizarre or unexpected ways, and they survive through disasters because people need them to. In other words, communities evolve to suit the needs of the members, and if they can’t, like the case of Friendster in Western countries, they die out.
Some groups may be so transitory that don’t deserve to be named a community; others, like cities, exist through many generations; many other communities thrive between these extremes. Communities are always changing, and if it is a too higher a cost to their members, they will die out. But although communities come and go, and their forms may change, they seem to be a permanent part of most human beings lives.
Some things we hope you take away from this course:
- The online and offline environments are not the antithesis of each other. In terms of community and social relationships, they have many of the same issues and tensions and strengths;
- Using theory in anything you create can actually make it more interesting;
- Even the most ordinary and mundane aspects of our world are quite interesting if you spend long enough thinking about them;
- exploring our own creativity in our own ways is not only good for our audience/communities/interactors, it’s good for ourselves!
Dean and I look forward to seeing your final work—and showing your projects to next year’s students.
References
Kieslowski on Kieslowski (1993) (Ed. Danusia Stok). London: Faber and Faber