Community

The interaction among individuals and groups for mutual support. Different types of community are examined in this article. Community resources, including social capital, social infrastructure, and recommendations for community change are discussed.

Community Defined

Following a biological systems model, a community can be defined as the interactions among individuals for mutual support. Whereas for plant communities, such a definition is locality determined, for human communities, interactions may or may not be limited by geography. Communities of interest are composed of interactions among people who may live anywhere in the world and are linked to each other purposively by shared interest and actions. Communities of place are composed of the interactions of individuals who live in a particular locality.

Both types of communities have resources available to them collectively. Resources may be either consumed, held in reserve, or invested. When the resources are consumed, they are gone. When the resources are held in reserve, their worth may increase or decrease depending on that resource’s perishability and context. But when resources are invested, they are used to create new resources and can be referred to as capital; community capitals may be categorized into the following types: natural, cultural, human, social, political, financial and built (see article, Community Capitals).

Interactions of Community Capitals

Each type of capital can either enhance or decrease the productivity of the other forms of capital. Increasing social capital greatly cuts transaction costs, making other resource use more efficient. Granovetter (1973) was among the first in an increasing number of scholars to propose the independent effect that social capital has on the functioning of economic systems.

Natural capital creates fresh air, clean water, food and fiber, and scenery. The natural beauty of an area can be defined as natural capital when it is linked with other forms of capital to encourage tourism. Tourism oriented solely to enhancing financial capital can consume the landscape, or it can be a basis to enhance landscape sustainability.

Deterioration of natural capital can have tremendous impact on both human and financial capital. Research shows that, on average, individuals living in areas of high air quality can expect to lose fewer days from work and to live two years longer than those living in areas of low air quality. Strip mining can generate immediate financial capital, but limit long-term capital returns. A resort located next to a strip mined area loses much of its natural capital and its ability to generate new resources.

On the other hand, financial and built capital investments can enhance natural capital. There is less soil erosion on terraced fields than on a sloping terrain, and grass waterways decrease soil erosion. Farming practices such as these require an investment of financial capital. However, because financial capital is easy to measure and is highly mobile, and natural capital is extremely locality specific and more difficult to quantify, the output of fields and farms is typically measured in terms of financial and built capital. (Soil quality is more than the quantity of soil amendments like nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium, but soil quality remains difficult to define. Attention to soil quality is just beginning in agronomic and soil science circles.) Further, investment in natural capital has a long-term payoff, and is not easily translatable into financial capital in terms of increased agricultural production. Thus, when balancing natural capital with financial and built capital, farmers have emphasized enhancing financial capital through the use of built capital. The tendency has been to invest in machinery, soil amendments and agrichemicals instead of investing in human capital to determine crop rotations, which over the long term could decrease the use of built capital and enhance natural quality.

Training in problem definition, problem severity and expert-devised solutions has been only moderately successful in facilitating natural capital investment in rural communities. However, because of the cost/return ratio implicit in the old policy of using public financial capital to enhance natural capital, several studies and activities are underway to determine how human capital, particularly through education, can be used to ultimately enhance natural capital. For example, Virginia farmers whose farms are in the Chesapeake Bay watershed are being studied to determine how the use of voluntary versus cost-shared practices can enhance natural capital, particularly soil quantity and water quality.

Social Capital

Community social capital can be defined as “…features of social organization, such as networks, norms, and trust, that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit. Social capital enhances the benefits of investment in physical and human capital” (Putnam, 1993).

Many scholars see social capital as an individual attribute and focus on the importance of relationship networks as an individual person’s resource (Coleman, 1988). Some of these scholars base their discussion of social capital on rational choice theory related to public choice theory. They conclude that the decline in social capital and the tendency not to invest in social capital creation is because of the public goods nature of social capital. This means that individuals capture little of the asset enhancement of their investment. There are structural reasons, rather than individual motivation reasons, that are biased against the formation of social capital. The way that built capital is enhanced can either help or hurt social capital development. For example, when housing improvements are delivered in a topdown fashion with decisions and resources coming totally from outside the community, social capital decreases and dependency increases.

Communities can invest in social capital in ways that radically decrease natural capital, as illustrated by the communities-of-interest Wise Use Movement. On the other hand, social capital can enhance natural capital, particularly when communities-of-interest and communities-of-place are brought together. Natural capital is enhanced by investing in social capital where shared symbols include a vision of the future landscape.

From time to time federal policy has recognized the importance of social capital in enhancing natural capital, although social capital has not always been named and there has not been systematic attention to it. For instance, Soil Conservation Districts were organized during the 1930s with the New Deal farm programs. Local residents participated in the Soil Conservation Districts to make policies that were consistent with both the local social and natural conditions. Study groups were organized to address questions of the desired state of natural capital at the local level, as well as the local issues connected to natural capital (Gilbert 1992).

Social capital has a variety of configurations, and each configuration has different implications for community sustainability. Social capital can be horizontal, hierarchical or non-existence. Bonding social capital implies egalitarian forms of reciprocity. Not only is each member of the community expected to give (and gains status and pleasure from doing so), but each member is expected to receive as well. Each person in the community is seen as capable of providing other members of the community with something of value. Further, contributions to collective projects, ranging from parades to volunteer fire departments and Girl Scout troops, are defined as a “gift” to all. Norms of reciprocity are reinforced, but payback to the donor is not required or even expected.

Bridging social capital, although built on norms of reciprocity and mutual trust (or at least mutual obligation), are vertical rather than horizontal. Traditional patron-client relationships, typical of urban gangs (Portes and Sensenbrenner, 1993), Sicilian “families,” or “boss”-run political machines, are created. Those at the bottom of the hierarchy, who obviously are beholden to the few at the top, are the majority of the population in such communities. The receivers of favors owe incredible loyalty to their “patron” when time comes to vote for public office, to collect from a loser in the numbers racket, or to settle a score with a rival gang. Horizontal networks, particularly outside the sphere of influence of the patron, are actively discouraged. Dependency is created and mistrust of outsiders is generated. This type of social capital is prevalent in persistent poverty communities (Duncan, 1992).

Absence of social capital is characterized by extreme isolation. In such communities, there is little trust, and as a result, little interaction. Bedroom communities, rural communities which become low-rent havens for jobless urbanites, and many central city neighborhoods (including those undergoing gentrification) fit this pattern. Such communities tend to have high population turnover and high levels of conflict. When middle and upper class communities lack social capital, they are able to substitute physical capital for social capital: private guards, fenced neighborhoods, and elaborate security systems. In poorer communities, there are often high levels of crime and delinquency.

Putnam (1993) showed that provinces in Italy with low levels of social capital had lower levels of government efficiency, lower levels of satisfaction with government, and slower rates of economic development (concentrated in southern Italy) than did provinces with high levels of social capital (central and northern Italy). The citizens of areas with low levels of social capital did not trust others to follow the established rules, and were less likely to follow the rules themselves. As a result of this heightened level of distrust, there was a high demand for more law enforcement and more demand to imprison criminals for longer periods of time, a societal-level manifestation of substituting built capital for social capital.

Overemphasizing the value of a single form of capital can reduce the levels of other forms of capital. For example, overemphasis on generating financial and built capital without regard to the pollutants generated can reduce the value of human capital through negative impacts on health. That overemphasis can reduce natural capital through destruction of soil and water quality. It can also reduce social capital through by-passing local networks and replacing them with impersonal bureaucratic structures with top-down mandates. Attention solely to preserving natural capital can lead to a waste of human capital and a decline in financial and built capital.

Because of its importance for community sustainability, it is important to measure social capital at the community level. Coleman (1988) identified social structures that facilitate social capital on the individual level. He identified closure of social networks (e.g., seeing the same people in more than one setting, such as church or school functions). He operationalized social network closure within the family in terms of the social capital available to the child from the family (e.g., relationships with the parents of one’s children’s friends). In the case of community, Flora and Flora (1993) identified basic social structures within a community—entrepreneurial social infrastructure—that contribute to the development of horizontal community social capital. These social structures include diversity of networks, widespread resource mobilization, and diverse symbolic structures.

Social Infrastructure

Networks are a crucial part of social capital, and community social infrastructure facilitates their formation. A critical aspect of networks for social capital formation is diversity. Whereas internally homogeneous groups are often the basis for diversity within the community, there must also be networks within the community that include individuals of diverse characteristics: young and old, men and women, different racial and ethnic groups, different social classes, and, often most difficult, newcomers and old timers. Richard Florida (2003) argues that diversity is a critical part of creativity, including economic creativity and dynamism. But, recent research by Putnam (2007) suggests that ethnic diversity decreases both bonding and bridging social capital.

Community networks must be inclusive to contribute to social capital. Metaphorically speaking, there is a realization that adding more people to the table means a larger community pie, not a pie that must be cut into more pieces. A social infrastructure that continually adds diverse groups to the leadership network is more likely to develop the social capital necessary for sustainable community development.

Networks that contribute to sustainable community development link horizontally to other communities, which is referred to as lateral learning (Flora and Flora, 2008). Communities that develop this kind of networking often incorporate a diverse group of people to a community who have done something the community wishes to emulate. They visit together, ask questions, and return determined to adapt an idea to bring about improvements in the community.

Vertical networks with regional, state or national centers are important for sustainable community development to take place, and thus an important part of social infrastructure. Such networks link many community individuals and groups to resources and markets beyond the community limits. Wide access is a crucial aspect of social infrastructure because where there is a single gatekeeper between the community and the outside, no matter how well connected that gatekeeper is, the concentration of power in a single individual contributes to hierarchical, not horizontal, social capital.

Resource Mobilization. The ability of a community to mobilize resources is critical for social capital to develop and is a vital part of community level social infrastructure. The resources to be mobilized must be defined broadly, which allows a wider range of community members to contribute. For example, certain older community members may not have large quantities of money, but have important knowledge of community history.

There is also equality of access to resources within a community. For example, it is assumed that every child should have a chance to receive a good education. High school dropouts are viewed as a community-level problem, not the fulfilling of one’s social destiny based on one’s parents’ social status. Equity of access often means that a wide variety of resources, from swimming pools to golf courses and schools, are financed publicly and open to all, rather than owned by private individuals or elite social groups.

In order to enhance equality of access, resource mobilization as a part of social infrastructure contributing to community social capital formation includes collective investment. Such communities must be willing to invest in themselves, through school bonds, public recreation programs, and volunteer fire departments and emergency squads. There is the expectation that all will participate in some way, and mechanisms are in place to facilitate that participation.

Finally, there is also an ethic that encourages individual investment of private resources. Banks in such communities have high loan-to-deposit ratios, choosing to invest locally rather than in safe but distant government securities. Local entrepreneurs can find both equity capital and debt capital. Local residents are willing to invest individual dollars into local community development corporations and enterprises, often assuming that there will be no payback or that the payback will be in the distant future.

Symbolic Diversity. Symbols are the source of meaning for human beings. Symbolic interactionist theory states that meaning is not intrinsic in an object, but is socially determined through interaction. Different human groups have different sets of shared symbols. Indeed, the same object may have very different meanings for two different groups. The meaning given to the object in turn determines how one acts toward it. Symbolic diversity within a community means that while symbolic meanings for objects and interactions may differ, there is an appreciation among different community members of the different meaning sets. With symbolic diversity, there is a recognition of differences, but the differences are not hierarchical. “Different than” does not mean “better than.”

Where there is symbolic diversity, people within the community can disagree with each other and still respect each other. There is acceptance of controversy. Because differences of opinion are accepted as valid, problems are raised early and alternative solutions discussed. Members of the community are able to separate problems (e.g., “We need better health care”) from solutions (e.g., “We need a doctor”). People feel comfortable in raising issues without being accused of causing the problem. Discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of alternative solutions can be presented and argued. At times, an individual will argue for one solution. At other times, that same individual may make a strong argument for an alternative. An individual’s identity is not conflated with her or his position on a particular issue.

Because controversy is accepted and issues are raised early, communities with social infrastructure that contributes to horizontal social capital have a depersonalization of politics. Community members do not avoid taking a public position. Stands on issues are not viewed as moral imperatives. Because problems can be addressed early, one’s stand on an issue is not equated with one’s moral worth. Risk of character assassination, the destruction of one’s job, or the ruining of one’s social life is lessened for those who take on public charges. The much discussed burnout of volunteer public officials, which is often related to the amount of abuse they face from their constituents, is reduced.

In communities with high levels of symbolic diversity, there is attention to process, rather than to outcomes only. These communities realize that there is no single, best solution to solve all problems. When alternatives are laid out and discussed, decisions are made based on a high probability of taking action that must be modified in the near future. There is constant evaluation of impact and adjustment of action. Continuous learning occurs. Communities that focus on process tend to have many local celebrations.

Finally, communities with symbolic diversity have a broad definition of community and permeable boundaries. Such communities find it easy to become part of multi-community and regional efforts, not by giving up community identity, but by expanding it.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Social capital and social infrastructure are a necessary but neglected aspect of sustainable rural communities. The elements of social infrastructure are measurable at the community level; they include quantification of the levels of and trends in social capital and assessment of how social capital interacts with other forms of capital. The subsequent goal of these measurements is to devise means to increase social capital in communities where it is deficient. Creating social capital requires attention to both communities-of-place and communities- of-interested related to any specific landscape.

More attention to social capital is appropriate at this time of democratization, devolution of government to local levels, decentralization of responsibility (if not authority), and privatization. As governmental functions are shifted to governance communities to mobilize markets and civil society, movements toward desired outcomes are more likely to be successful, resilient and sustainable, because they reduce transaction costs of all forms of investment. Smaller bureaucracies are required because less documentation, regulation, and contract oversight are needed. The creation of social capital, which requires trust and reciprocity, takes time; top-down regulation presumably is achieved instantly.

Adaptive community management is needed to enhance community life, which involves the following recommendations. Investment in community social capital is time consuming because simply organizing groups is not enough. Group membership must be representative; groups must be diverse, inclusive and flexible, with broad and permeable boundaries. Flexibility allows groups to form and re-form according to the level of concerns to be addressed. For example, a group concerned with neighborhood issues may expand to explore watershed issues if those concerns arise.

Communities need to form lateral linkages. Activities that foster inter- and intra-group learning can be particularly effective in building social capital, in contrast to bringing groups together simply to listen to experts talk. Communities learn best from seeing and discussing on-site rather than in lecture halls. Communities need to be connected with partner organizations at the state and federal levels through the wide networks of the community members. Communities need the capacity to monitor outputs (i.e., the actual change in the desired conditions), rather than just monitor what is hypothesized as the means to achieve those conditions. Community social capital is enhanced when there is a vision of the ends and a flexibility in terms of means. The tendency of federal and state programs to become ritualistic rather than truly functional has resulted in abuse of those programs.

Rural communities that are resilient are able to be responsive to constantly changing economic, climatic and social conditions. By investing in multiple forms of capital, communities are better able to mobilize outside investments.

— Cornelia Butler Flora

See also Community Capitals; Community Economics; Development, Asset-based; Development, Community and Economic; Sustainable Development

References

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