Community

Hotel Bar Sessions

The HBS hosts try to determine who's in and who's out.

In 1887, Ferdinand Tönnies published a groundbreaking book, Community and Society (an excerpt from his text that lays out the argument can be found here), in which he argues that community is a different form of social group from society. The main distinguishing characteristics are that community is a group in which members are personally connected, relying on each other, close in worldviews and values, while society is impersonal, disconnected, with members that are independent and may not share values. (Think about small town vs. big city!) A debate subsequently arose in Germany about whether one was better than the other and Tönnies seems to have expressed more positive views about community than about society.

More recently, though, “community” has taken on a somewhat different resonance. We speak of the "queer" community/communities, the "Latin American" community, et al, and it seems we are referring to a group that has affinities in terms their members' interests and values, but may not be constituted by personal connections and direct relations.

For Tönnies, community appears to name a group gathered under the principle “we don’t do that here,” and therefore can be oppressive or repressive. Yet, today, community often indicates an association that is affirming and enabling.... even if that latter community can also, at times, turn repressive as a community calls one of its members a turncoat, or worse.

Today, we ask: is "community" the appropriate ground of politics? Or is it, rather, a menace to "society"?

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-99-community

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