Community and Society: A new definition

There is no doubt that the theoretical and conceptual clarity is an important when undertaking a project or guiding the action. On the contrary, confusion will deviate the original purpose or it will confuse with other ones antagonistic. That has been the case, in the history of the last centuries, what have occurred with the concepts of "Community" and "Society".

Once that the Liberal Revolution (French and Industrial Revolution) triumphed, it systematically dedicated to completely obliterate its political enemies. Among them, one of the less noted was the old agricultural communities.  These communities, were HORIZONTAL forms of organization, where nobody had more power than the rest, and where the relationships were of primary order, that is to say "face-to-face" and affective, as it is on families.

Even the academic history, such as is the case of sociology, has made efforts to diffuse, eliminate or to make ambiguous the communal way of life. This way, people would not know anymore about the existence of such way of social organization, thinking that the only one possible is the present one, which it is the one of Society. Society, in few words, is the HIERARCHICAL way of social organization based on COMPETITION, that has INSTRUMENTAL social relationships (the other one is a mean to satisfy my end).

This, with my thesis I try to revindicate a conceptual distinction to have clear that community is not a "diffuse form" that is not fully understood; nor a amorphous thing  within the society... By the contrary, it has clear and defined characteristics that distinguish it of societies, which have been the ones who have written our history.  That is to say, my intention is to show the differences between those ways of organization, differences that have not been considered till now by the academy (or that it has been deliberatively hidden for political purposes). 

I shared thence, extracts of my Sociological Thesis:

"The idea of community has been one of the most interest for the sociological analysis. From the origins of sociology, in the XIX^th century, different authors (Durkheim, 1893/2011; Marx, 1867/2010; Tönnies, 1887/1947; Weber, 1922/2012) have theorized about it.

it was Tönnies (1887/1947) who showed more openly to the social study disciplines the conceptual scission between community (gemeinschaft) and society (gesellschaft). Community seen from this perspective would be a good itself, due to the virtues that this would possess: to give security to the individual, offer relationships that characterize for being close, personal and affective; here individuals “keep together besides all separations” (p.65). Hence, for Tönnies community is the moral place par excellence, virtue headquarters (Nisbet, 2010).

Contrarily, society concept (which is the new in contraposition to the antique communal) would characterize for the high grade of individualism and impersonality on relationships (due to contractualism[1]). Its main character would be then to be structured on the calculus (instrumental rationality) and selfish individual interest. That is why “in society [individuals] keep separated beyond all unions” (Tönnies, 1887/1947: 65). As it can be glimpsed on Tönnies’ version, he proposed to highlight the negative effects of modernity: the loss of social cohesion and affectivity among relationships. That is why often he is catalogued as a romantic, due to its nostalgy of the benevolent past (Nisbet, 2010).

But the classical gemeinschaft-gesellschaft conceptualization did not remain always with the same signification that had in its original author. One of the first critics was Émile Durkheim. In The Division of Labour in Society (1893/2011) he assumes on a first glance a similar conception than Tönnies -mainly on which refers to society description- (Schluchter, 2011), in the sense that there is an important break between old and modern societies. For this Durkheim analyses the principal characteristics of each one: it is the solidarity type which distinguish current societies from old ones. On primitive societies (what are understood by Tönnies as community) the active type of solidarity would be mechanic solidarity. This would refer to the social cohesion based on similarities. As within primitive societies would be a tendency to the homogenization of believes, representations and social practices among individuals of the same community, there would be few possibilities to get into conflicts, because of there would be a common sense that would guide all individual to the same social purpose[2]. But with the advance of the division of social work differences were accentuating each time more. The prevailing modern individualism would find a new type of solidarity, organic solidarity. As work is divided is convenient that there is difference: what a worker does not make, he buys to another worker that does it. This way the tendency of differentiation in the division of social work and consume would enhance cohesion in modern societies. What is important to highlight here is that from this interpretation a positive idea of modern society arises. In Durkheim, differently from Tönnies, modern individualism (because of its job specialization) would ward off social disintegration. Moreover (as it would be seen later), mechanic solidarity characteristics (homogenization, repressive right) would have several undesirable qualities for the modern subject.

It was not only Durkheim who distance himself from Tönnies. Max Weber also did. Being coherent with his methodological individualism, Weber centered on social action, diluting the original dichotomy between gemeinschaft and gesellschaft, although it can be noted the influence of it. On this Nisbet (2010) points out:

We have the effect of Tönnies’ typology over the way that Weber examines the nature of social action and social relationships. Weber’s framework is more subtle and, as a whole, more complete, but its roots on the distinction that the former established between the two types of association are at sight.

We clearly see this on the notable Weberian characterization of the four types of social action, oriented respectively: 1) To interpersonal ends, 2) towards absolute valued goals, 3) toward emotional or affective states, and 4) unto the traditional and conventional. Let’s concede that Weber classification is superior; anyhow, his link with Tönnies’ distinction between the two types of volition, and between social norms and values, results incontestable. (p.111, own italics)

Weber would outstrip therefore -in Nisbet opinion- Tönnies’ theorizations. It is important to foreground this lack of transcendence on which Tönnies theory fell. It seems that other conceptualizations were getting more importance on Academy, turning each time community-society concepts more diffuse. For example, although the definitions made, on Weber (1922/2012) himself it can be found some polysemy on community concept: domestic, local, economic, ethnic, religious, political, they are all forms of community. This diffuse use of community seems to be installed on social sciences, to the level that nowadays it is used as synonym of multiple words (to refer from a locality[3], race, a nation or even the whole word, to civil organizations[4]). About this, Hobsbawm (in Bauman, 2004) reflects: “the word ’community’ never was used in such a indiscriminative and void way as on the decades where it was very difficult to find on real life true communities, in the sociological way” (p.182); that is to say, on modern times, where industrial societies dulled communities almost till extinction.

Besides the distention of the Tönnies’ original community concept, this term also has been criticised from a semantic viewpoint. Contemporary Bauman (2003) has pointed out that, even though community gives a positive impression, deep down there is a price to live in it. The cost is the constant trade-off between security and liberty, which to Bauman, are inversely proportional concepts, therefore if one increases, the other would decrease. On community what would be won in security, would be lost on liberty. The previous can be understood recapitulating Durkheim (1893/2011). Mechanic solidarity (according to mainstream sociology is the one that rules communities[5]), which is based on similarities, has repressive sanction, where individual is highly limited to fit on the collective similarity.

Similar to Bauman’s analysis, Touraine (1997, 1998) drafts the danger of valuating the individual only by its belonging to community. This cultural fragmentation would lead us to a world of cults and the rejection of any social norm (because communities would often define themselves in a defensive way, as victim-groups against an omni-encompassing system, which would be seen itself as perverse). Furthermore, the obsession of purity and homogeneity obsession that characterises communal spirit (which would distance itself from instrumental rationality), would impulse communities to fall on authoritarian leaderships (examples of this, according to Touraine, would be Nazi Germany or the Islamic countries…).

Although practically all Bauman’s book Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World is sustained by security and freedom notions, in any place those concepts are defined. We can find the same ambiguity on classical theoretical sociologist (Tönnies, 1887/1947; Durkheim, 1893/2011), although it is important to point out that their works have rather an implicit than explicit relationship with those terms. Similarly, works related to community, made by contemporaries philosophers (such as Esposito, 2003), though they might significantly enrich social theory, they might not seem to be enough for a strict sociological conceptualization, since as Bortz (in Flick, 2007) exposes, the ideas of philosophical content do not explicitly fit with the empirical purpose of social sciences. That is why, though a priori some temporary definitions are suggested, we would constantly keep the reflective attitude of qualitative research (Hernández, 2014), being open to the possibility of making new conceptualizations based on the empirical data (Flick, 2007).

Nonetheless, there are general notions about all conceptualization of community. For instance, community tend to be related to the common elements shared by some individuals. At this respect, Concha (2010) points out: “Community is a group of beings that shared common elements, either material elements (as body and other possessions, relating this way with consumption) as social categories of perception and interpretation[6] of reality” (p.21).

This common element, besides being express on believes, it would be mainly sustained on feeling. Thus, community is a way of organization that generates an especial type of communion, that is to say, it is a form of social organization that involves feelings between its members. As Max Weber (1922/2012) mentions:

We call community to a social relationship when and as far the attitude in the social action -in this particular case, for middle term or in the pure type- is inspired on the subjective feeling (affective or traditional) of the participants on constituting a whole. (p.33)

In contrast:

We call society to a social relationship when and as far the attitude on the social action is inspired on a compensation of interests for rational motives (of ends or values) or also to a union of interest with the same motivation. Society, as a typical mode, can especially lie (but not only) on a rational agreement or pact, for reciprocal declaration. Then the action, when is rational, is orientated to a) Rational according to values: on merits to the belief of the same vinculation; b) Rational according to ends: for the expectative of loyalty of the other part. (p.33)

Therefore, it could be said that while community is based mainly on feeling[7], society does on rationality, though it should be always kept present that, as ideal types they are not absolutely exclusive, but “the great majority of social relationships participate in part of the ‘community’ and in part of ‘society’” (Weber, 1922/2012, p.33).

Roberto Esposito (2003) deepens the semantic critic to the community concept. For this philosopher the concept of community has often been used as “an attribute, a determination, a predicate that classifies them [the subjects] as belonging to the same set. Or even as a ‘substance’ produced by their union” (p.22). This way he criticizes the sense of wholeness and essentiality of the community concept, marking off its darker aspects. Through a complete semantic analysis of the term, Esposito got to the conclusion that on its origins communitas would rather represent something related to duty:

The munus that the communitas share is not a property or a membership. It is not a possession, but, for the contrary, a debt, a pledge, a gift-to-give. And is therefore what is going to determine, what is to become, what virtually already is, a fault. A “duty” links the subjects of community -in the way that “I owe you something”, but not “you owe me something”-, that makes them to not be completely master of themselves. In more precise terms, it expropriates them, in part or completely, of their original property, their most characteristic property, that is to say, their subjectivity. (pp. 30-31)

Even though differentiation and stratification have been permanent processes of interest to sociologists (Hall, 1982), the free-thinker Gabriel Zavando (2011) points out that this problem transcends the sociological research field; being resolved with clarity with hundreds of examples of concrete communities, when they are analysed from the anthropological works. Zavando states that human being is a communitarian animal for nature and therefore, the one that lives in societies is equivalent to an animal that lives in captivity, is worth to say, a being that would lose the basic qualities that allow him to be part of the body that we call his specie. The problem with sociology would be that it would be taking as a object of study a mass of human beings that literally has lost their basic human qualities, precisely because they have isolated themselves from each other, being reduced to a multitude of loose atoms but piled up on big masses; trying to analyse them as they were a group when in reality that would be precisely what they have lost, which would make impossible an accurate characterization of them. What characterizes a society would be, precisely, that it is a mass without own identity, that is why all identity that is pretended to be given to the individuals, in reality would be given by who characterizes them from outside; nations, social classes, religions, which would not be therefore, identities constructed from themselves. For this intellectual, the dichotomy between individual and human collective would be fallacious, that is why it would only be possible to speak about human groups when we talk about communities; he foregrounds the Ubuntu philosophy (‘I am because we are’) and explains that the dynamics of mutually reinforcing interactions that are given among a human group would be precisely what would constitute them as group, so that if we refer to individuals in competition (as happens in society), it could not be talked of group and analyse them as they were would be a basic conceptual mistake in which -according to Zavando- sociology falls. To sustain these arguments, he works from systems theory paradigm and he defines four differences between what we should understand for community and society: differences of structure, cosmovision, organization and dynamics. For example, meanwhile community would mainly have a horizontal structure and a cooperative organization, society would have a pyramidal structure (hierarchical) and a competitive organization.

To those theorizations, the present research adds up one distinction more: meanwhile the decision-making on the social organization of a modern society (that is to say, one based on the power of the state and the bureaucratic administration; Weber, 1922/2012) would be principally sustained on the instrumental rationality according to ends (that is, that which usually instrumentalizes individuals as just statistical numbers), the decision-making of community would be characterized by a communicative rationality (Habermas, 1992), i.e., the one that has as goal to find agreements between the implicated people, through a transparent and direct dialogue.

Taking into account the above, for “society”, it will be understood then:

Hierarchic mode of organization mainly based on instrumental rationality according to ends, with a competitive ethic that records agreements through formal and written proceedings using the juridical violence logic.

For juridical violence logic is understood all the processes of decision-making based on an oligarchic center of power, where members hold positions of political power, acting according to idealism, self interest or class consciousness, privileging a specific population sector, being another sector disadvantaged in great or less degree as direct or indirect consequence of those decisions.

In contrast, by “community”, would therefore be understood:

A horizontal organizational mode mainly based on emotional connections, that generates a sensation of unity between its members, with a cooperative ethic that registers its agreements tacitly through the communicative rationality logic.

For communicative rationality logic it is understood all the decision-making processes are based on face-to-face relationships, where all the members participate equally in decision-making processes, having all interests in common, that is to say, acting with purpose unity and the intentionality of getting mutual consensus, resulting in agreements." 

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[1] By contractualism is understood the typical form of relating in the modern societies: through legal contracts. This form of relating each other, naturalized by the iusnaturalists of the illuminist period, have not been always like that, as it was deduced from the sociological contributions about primitive societies (Tönnies, 1887/1947 and Durkheim, 1893/2011, 1912/1995). For example, from Weber (1922/2012), it can be understood that the concept of community from Tönnies would be associated to a traditional domination, while the concept of society, to the bureaucratic-rational domination.

[2] Far from idealizing the primitive communities (considering them as pacific entities), it is important to foreground that the cohesion would be internal. As it follows from the anthropological contributions of Pierre Clastres, “the war is a structure of the primitive society” (in Gayubas, 2010: 2), in the sense that it is useful for the self-affirmation of the own community, which would need an enemy otherness (foreigner communities) to create an indivisible and solid identity tie.

[3] Such as in Hall (1982).

[4] See León (2013), Las organizaciones civiles como un ejemplo de comunidad [civil organizations as an example of community].

[5] Effectively, lots -if not most- of the sociological works (Bauman, 2003; Touraine, 1997; Weber, 1922/2012, among others) tend to associate the community with a social organization with homogenous values and a strong social cohesion. In addition, it would be strongly repressive against individual freedom. That is to say, they tend to associate communities -deliberately or unconsciously- to the characteristics of the mechanic solidarity.

[6] This categories of perception and interpretation would be the ones that would allow to reduce -in part- the complexity of the modern world, letting this way, some level of security. To more information, see the next section (Security and liberty).

[7] It is important to stand out that it is not any type of feeling, but that is a reciprocal referred feeling, that is traduced in a joint organization, that is to say, in individuals that form a whole; that is, a unity (Weber, 1922/2012). At this regard Concha (2010) states that:

The identity of the community, in all its complexity and variability, must be able to integrate the multiplicity into a coherent self. In order that this happens a binder that generates cohesion in the group is needed, be a common remote past, a conjunction of qualities with which the group feels imitatively connected and/or an ideal or vision of future (p.21).