Lecture 3: Communities I: Communities, Neighbourhood & Place

Question 1

Early accounts of community:

Answer 1

Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (1887)

Question 2

Define Gemeinschaft

Answer 2

Community relations based on a relatively homogenous culture and tends to be intimate, informal, cooperative, and imbued with a sense of moral obligation to the group.

Question 3

What are Gesellschaft relations like?

Answer 3

Formal
Goal-oriented
Heterogeneous
Based on individual self-interest
Competition
Complex division of labour.

Question 4

When were the early efforts of community planning?

Answer 4

Turn of 20th Century

Question 5

Yesterday…

Today…

Tomorrow…

Answer 5

Living and working in the smoke

Living in the suburbs- working in the smoke

Living and working in the sun

(A peaceful path to real reform, 1898)

Question 6

‘Human ecology’ - Chicago School of Human Ecology

1. Competition

Answer 6

Parker argued that within the urban setting there was competition, closer to centre = greater competition

Question 7

‘Human ecology’ - Chicago School of Human Ecology

2. Ecological dominance

Answer 7

Dominance of one group of people e.g. high status or ethnic neighbourhoods

Question 8

‘Human ecology’ - Chicago School of Human Ecology

3. Invasion and succession

Answer 8

Gentrification- one group would come in and replace another

Question 9

What are neighbourhoods?

Answer 9

Territories containing people of broadly similar demographic, economic and social characteristics, but are not necessarily significant as a basis for social interaction

Question 10

What are communities?

Answer 10

Exist where a degree of social coherence develops on the basis of interdependence, which in turn produces a uniformity of custom, taste and modes of thought and speech.

Question 11

‘Communities with propinquity’

Answer 11

Having spatial proximity and social cohesion

Question 12

What was Bethnal Green?

What was it characterised by?

Answer 12

Bethnal Green in the 1950s was set within the context of the Fordist way of economic life

Characterised by economic stability, state regulation and intervention (including welfare), organised labour (based around a ‘living wage’), and mass production/ consumption.

Question 13

After WWII: the ‘long boom’ of Fordism:

Answer 13

Harmonious relationship between production and consumption ~1945-1970

Question 14

Role of place in shaping communities:

Answer 14

1. Structures the daily routines of economic and social life; (functional)
2. Structures people’s life paths, providing them with both opportunities and constraints;
3. Provides an arena in which everyday, ‘common- sense’ knowledge and experience is gathered;
4. Provides a site for socialisation and social reproduction.
   - Barke and Farlane, 2001