- Email: [email protected]
More on the “Problems” of Community
Political Geography 27 (2008) 35e39 www.elsevier.com/locate/polgeo
Commentary
More on the ‘‘Problems’’ of Community Lynn A. Staeheli Institute of Geography, University of Edinburgh, Drummond Street, Edinburgh EH8 9XP, Scotland, UK
Abstract In responding to the commentaries, I focus on two concepts: the importance of the sites of activism and what is meant by community. These are concepts in which one might expect the possibility of some convergence not just between activists, but also between activists and at least some researchers. The commentaries usefully highlight the ways in which the varied goals of activists make it difficult to build the kind of theoretical arguments with which we, as academics, are often most comfortable. But more than just a matter of disciplinary (dis)comfort, the seeming disjunctures in our conversations may point to very different explanatory and interpretive frameworks that operate in different realms. Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Activism; Sites of activism; Community; NGOs; Political communities
It is gratifying to have two people read and comment on one’s work so carefully and thoughtfully as have Jessica Hayes-Conroy and Susan Clarke. For all that we academics claim to love to work with and struggle over ideas, it seems that we often do that alone, without the benefit of the back-and-forth of discussion and debate. Writing and reading are often solitary, so the more communal space of discussion created through these commentaries is very much appreciated. In reading through the commentaries, I was struck by how often shared concepts and ideas become differently inflected and take on different implications in the context of rather different starting points for debate and goals for theory and political action. In this context, these different starting points make it difficult to put theoretical perspectives in ‘‘conversation,’’ when it often seems that activists and researchers hold such a wide array of viewpoints that they often seem to talk past each other. In responding to the comments offered by Hayes-Conroy and
E-mail address: [email protected] 0962-6298/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2007.09.004
36
Commentary / Political Geography 27 (2008) 35e39
Clarke, I want to focus on two concepts: the importance of the sites of activism and what is meant by community. These are concepts in which one might expect the possibility of some convergence not just between activists, but also between activists and at least some researchers. The commentaries usefully highlight the ways in which the varied goals of activists make it difficult to build the kind of theoretical arguments with which we, as academics, are often most comfortable. But more than just a matter of disciplinary (dis)comfort, the seeming disjunctures in our conversations may point to very different explanatory and interpretive frameworks that operate in different realms. Perhaps trying to integrate themdto do more than put them in conversationdis doomed to failure.1 In the article, I tried to hold the theories of activists in tension with the theories of philosophers, researchers, and state agents. In conclusion, I will offer my own tentative idea of how the diverse conversations regarding the agonisms inherent in community and citizenship might be related in the conceptualizations of citizenship and the strategic visions held by (at least some) activists. In this sense, I will succumb to the desire to, in Hayes-Conroy’s words, ‘‘take a stab at some normative claims.’’ Sites of activism One of the themes running through the commentaries relates to the sites of activism, how they are conceptualized, and how they are structured. The materiality of communities, their histories, their institutional relationships, and the political opportunity structures they can access are important to the ways in which community and citizenship are envisioned, struggled toward, and constituted. While activism and community are often thought of in localized terms, they rarely are completely local. They exist in relationship to histories, to the capabilities of communities and individuals that are notddespite the rhetoric often attributed to neo-liberalismd shaped entirely by personal assumption of responsibility. Both commentaries highlight the need to understand localities as material, social, embodied, and networked resources for individual and communal agency. The challenge for many activists is to hold an imagination and an ability to act that is not ‘‘just’’ or ‘‘merely’’ local; it is to have a networked sense of community, akin to what Massey (1994) calls a networked sense of place. But this is not a perspective or a goal held by all activists. Many of the people I have interviewed over the years have argued that ideas about the connectivity of places and the need to connect or to ‘‘join up’’ struggles is either a luxury they do not have or is not necessary to the kinds of struggles in which they are engaged. Most of the people I have interviewed would describe themselves as local activists, not as part of a global struggle against inequality, injustice, or a new kind of citizenship. Those are often ‘‘our’’ goals, not ‘‘theirs.’’ As researchers, it is important to consider what to do with that piece of information. Recognizing it is important analytically and in our evaluations of the efficacy of activism. As Clarke notes, participation in voluntary organizations often is not translated into greater political participation. This may not be a concern for some activists, but it might be a concern for those who are interested in broader questions of democratic renewal. Furthermore, as researchers, we 1
I worry about constructing a straw argument here, but this discussion is motivated by a sense of unease that many researchers assume there will be a convergence between the politics of communities and the politics of researchers. Leftist, feminist, and ‘‘progressive’’ researchers often strive to blend theory and politics. Calls for ‘‘relevance’’ within the academy, however, also assume the possibility of convergence, or that ‘‘good’’ research will be applicable in some way to addressing issues of societal concern. In both cases, there is sometimes a tendency to assume that the goals and politics of research seamlessly blend with the goals and politics of people involved in activism or governing.
Commentary / Political Geography 27 (2008) 35e39
37
might also want to combine our analysis with activism. In that case, it is not always clear how or whether an understanding of institutional structures, histories, and broad politicale economic transformations ‘‘helps’’ in framing specific political actions. The example of the Sangtin Writers and Nagar (2006) provide some tantalizing clues, although their experience is not one that is easily replicated, even if replication were desirable or appropriate. Over the course of their collaboration, the Sangtins, a feminist group of community workers in Uttar Pradesh, spent many hours talking with Richa Nagar about what they knew and experienced. Collectively, they used their narratives to understand the broad contexts of postcolonialism, uneven development, poverty, caste, and religion, but also the ways that relationships within families, households, communities and NGOs shaped their lives and activism. Learning from each other, the goal seemed to be understanding, with a belief that the multiple understandings that were shared might influence activism. They did not, however, seem to hold more instrumental aims of either using the narratives to change their strategies or of tracing how such collaborative knowledge production could be ‘‘seen’’ or ‘‘assessed’’ in specific projects. The knowledge gleaned and constructed through these conversations were undoubtedly important, but not in ways that could be easily described. The knowledge they produced grew through their experiences, their interactions, and their emotions. In this sense, it may well be an example of the more embodied sense of activism and community that Hayes-Conroy describes. They knew something important had happened, had changed them, was important, but they did not articulate this in terms of new theoretical positions, political strategies, or daily activities. From the outside, one might ask whether this was therefore ‘‘important.’’ What was the ‘‘utility’’ and how could it be ‘‘measured’’? I think the answer is that utility and efficacy may not be important in an easily traceable sense. Rather, the importance may be to the members of the Collective. The ‘‘conversations’’ that the Collective engaged in and that I suggested as a goal in the original article may sometimes converge and other times seem to be about very different things. It is probably most useful to recognize this, rather than holding to a goal (which I think some academics may hold) of having the conversations lead to agreement or to a convergence of theoretical arguments. Rather than the structured conversations of academic debate, these are likely to be the looser, more chaotic conversations of the dinner table. They are important conversations theoretically, politically, and personally, but it is often not clear how they can be incorporated within common academic frameworks. The simplifications of community and citizenship It often seems that the relationship between community and citizenship is complex, plural, and rarely stable. Taking to heart Clarke’s argument, citizenship is every bit as problematic as community. The relationship between them, is not uni-directional, with one ‘‘causing’’ the other; rather, and as I argued, each seems to interpellate the other, as impossible as that might seem. This complicated relationship, however, almost requires that we simplify either ‘‘community’’ or ‘‘citizenship,’’ as a matter of getting a handle on or gaining an ability to talk about them. While we might recognize each is a complex, multifacted concept, pragmatics often leads us to abstract out one element of the concept. In this context, it is important to ask whether participation in community activities and voluntary organizations leads to an enriched or impoverished citizenship, as blunt and as categorical as that framing may be. Answers to this question often follow an analytical chain such as the one that Clarke describes: does participation in voluntary activities lead to participation in more formal arenas in politics and ultimately to governing structures and practices that
38
Commentary / Political Geography 27 (2008) 35e39
represent the political community. If the answer to all these questions is ‘‘yes,’’ then one might conclude that community involvement enriches citizenship. But what if citizenship is indicated by something other than juridical status and representation? What if citizenship is defined in terms of civic participation, as suggested by many of the people I have interviewed over the years? What if participants believe that interactions through community-based institutions lead to a different way of regulating tolerance and aversion (Brown, 2006) than that suggested in government policies, whether they are multiculturalist policies or social cohesion agendas, thereby expanding the inclusiveness of the political community? Or even more, what if participants do not locate citizenship in a political community, but somewhere else? What if we truly are in a post-political age (see Mouffe, 2005)? Those are big questions, and the point is not to answer them, but to suggest that the goals of community and citizenship may be not always be to enhance a political form of citizenship or community.2 Many of the people with whom I have spoken over the years reject the notion that their actions are either political or related to citizenship. When I argued in my writing that their actions do have implications for citizenship, my theoretical perspectivedmy simplification of the relationship between citizenship and communitydwas at odds with theirs. As I indicated, such differences in arguments and what we mean when we talk about community and citizenship often seem inevitable, and we rarely have the opportunity to truly engage in conversations about those differences. If I had to temporarily suspend the limited ‘‘conversations’’ between the variously positioned activists and academics that I have listened to and read over the years and provide a summary, the summary probably would seem contradictory and not to represent any particular perspective very well. It seems to me that the conversations about community and citizenship have two strands that may be cacophonous.3 The first strand is one that says that institutionsdpolitical, economic, social and communaldthat structure citizenship are central to processes of inclusion. As such, finding a way to work with institutional structures is a key to reshaping citizenship. In this context, community structuresdand the histories behind themdare both a resource and an obstacle to enhancing citizenship. The second strand is one that attempts to distance both community and citizenship from institutional structures in an effort to actively re-imagine and reconstitute them both. This strand of the argument is emergent, and one never really knows how community and citizenship will be reshaped or re-formed. It is likely, of course, that any new relationshipdif indeed new relationships actually emergedwill be contingent on the networked power relationships and institutions that condition a particular struggle. It may seem unhelpful to offer as a summary something that is so contradictory as what I have just described. Yet my sense is that the relationship between community and citizenship is undecidable and never fixed. People and organizations wobble between both desiresdto rely on institutional structures and to remake them. Which way they lean reflects the struggles in which they are engaged, the structures they confront, and the ethopolitical imaginations that help them negotiate their communities and political futures at particular times and in particular spaces. 2
There is some unease amongst citizenship scholars about the proliferation of different kinds of citizenship and with the implication in some uses of the term that if citizenship can be conceptualized without reference to the state or politics. 3 This summary takes liberties with an argument provided by Bonnie Honig (2001) about immigration and cosmopolitanism. I do not wish to enter into a debate about cosmopolitanism, however, not least because few of the people I have interviewed would describe themselves as cosmopolitans.
Commentary / Political Geography 27 (2008) 35e39
39
References Brown, W. (2006). Regulating aversion: Tolerance in the age of identity and empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Honig, B. (2001). Democracy and the foreigner. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Massey, D. (1994). Space, place and gender. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Mouffe, C. (2005). On the political. London: Routledge. Sangtin Writers, & Nagar, R. (2006). Playing with fire: Feminist thought and activism through seven lives in India. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Commentary
More on the ‘‘Problems’’ of Community Lynn A. Staeheli Institute of Geography, University of Edinburgh, Drummond Street, Edinburgh EH8 9XP, Scotland, UK
Abstract In responding to the commentaries, I focus on two concepts: the importance of the sites of activism and what is meant by community. These are concepts in which one might expect the possibility of some convergence not just between activists, but also between activists and at least some researchers. The commentaries usefully highlight the ways in which the varied goals of activists make it difficult to build the kind of theoretical arguments with which we, as academics, are often most comfortable. But more than just a matter of disciplinary (dis)comfort, the seeming disjunctures in our conversations may point to very different explanatory and interpretive frameworks that operate in different realms. Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Activism; Sites of activism; Community; NGOs; Political communities
It is gratifying to have two people read and comment on one’s work so carefully and thoughtfully as have Jessica Hayes-Conroy and Susan Clarke. For all that we academics claim to love to work with and struggle over ideas, it seems that we often do that alone, without the benefit of the back-and-forth of discussion and debate. Writing and reading are often solitary, so the more communal space of discussion created through these commentaries is very much appreciated. In reading through the commentaries, I was struck by how often shared concepts and ideas become differently inflected and take on different implications in the context of rather different starting points for debate and goals for theory and political action. In this context, these different starting points make it difficult to put theoretical perspectives in ‘‘conversation,’’ when it often seems that activists and researchers hold such a wide array of viewpoints that they often seem to talk past each other. In responding to the comments offered by Hayes-Conroy and
E-mail address: [email protected] 0962-6298/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2007.09.004
36
Commentary / Political Geography 27 (2008) 35e39
Clarke, I want to focus on two concepts: the importance of the sites of activism and what is meant by community. These are concepts in which one might expect the possibility of some convergence not just between activists, but also between activists and at least some researchers. The commentaries usefully highlight the ways in which the varied goals of activists make it difficult to build the kind of theoretical arguments with which we, as academics, are often most comfortable. But more than just a matter of disciplinary (dis)comfort, the seeming disjunctures in our conversations may point to very different explanatory and interpretive frameworks that operate in different realms. Perhaps trying to integrate themdto do more than put them in conversationdis doomed to failure.1 In the article, I tried to hold the theories of activists in tension with the theories of philosophers, researchers, and state agents. In conclusion, I will offer my own tentative idea of how the diverse conversations regarding the agonisms inherent in community and citizenship might be related in the conceptualizations of citizenship and the strategic visions held by (at least some) activists. In this sense, I will succumb to the desire to, in Hayes-Conroy’s words, ‘‘take a stab at some normative claims.’’ Sites of activism One of the themes running through the commentaries relates to the sites of activism, how they are conceptualized, and how they are structured. The materiality of communities, their histories, their institutional relationships, and the political opportunity structures they can access are important to the ways in which community and citizenship are envisioned, struggled toward, and constituted. While activism and community are often thought of in localized terms, they rarely are completely local. They exist in relationship to histories, to the capabilities of communities and individuals that are notddespite the rhetoric often attributed to neo-liberalismd shaped entirely by personal assumption of responsibility. Both commentaries highlight the need to understand localities as material, social, embodied, and networked resources for individual and communal agency. The challenge for many activists is to hold an imagination and an ability to act that is not ‘‘just’’ or ‘‘merely’’ local; it is to have a networked sense of community, akin to what Massey (1994) calls a networked sense of place. But this is not a perspective or a goal held by all activists. Many of the people I have interviewed over the years have argued that ideas about the connectivity of places and the need to connect or to ‘‘join up’’ struggles is either a luxury they do not have or is not necessary to the kinds of struggles in which they are engaged. Most of the people I have interviewed would describe themselves as local activists, not as part of a global struggle against inequality, injustice, or a new kind of citizenship. Those are often ‘‘our’’ goals, not ‘‘theirs.’’ As researchers, it is important to consider what to do with that piece of information. Recognizing it is important analytically and in our evaluations of the efficacy of activism. As Clarke notes, participation in voluntary organizations often is not translated into greater political participation. This may not be a concern for some activists, but it might be a concern for those who are interested in broader questions of democratic renewal. Furthermore, as researchers, we 1
I worry about constructing a straw argument here, but this discussion is motivated by a sense of unease that many researchers assume there will be a convergence between the politics of communities and the politics of researchers. Leftist, feminist, and ‘‘progressive’’ researchers often strive to blend theory and politics. Calls for ‘‘relevance’’ within the academy, however, also assume the possibility of convergence, or that ‘‘good’’ research will be applicable in some way to addressing issues of societal concern. In both cases, there is sometimes a tendency to assume that the goals and politics of research seamlessly blend with the goals and politics of people involved in activism or governing.
Commentary / Political Geography 27 (2008) 35e39
37
might also want to combine our analysis with activism. In that case, it is not always clear how or whether an understanding of institutional structures, histories, and broad politicale economic transformations ‘‘helps’’ in framing specific political actions. The example of the Sangtin Writers and Nagar (2006) provide some tantalizing clues, although their experience is not one that is easily replicated, even if replication were desirable or appropriate. Over the course of their collaboration, the Sangtins, a feminist group of community workers in Uttar Pradesh, spent many hours talking with Richa Nagar about what they knew and experienced. Collectively, they used their narratives to understand the broad contexts of postcolonialism, uneven development, poverty, caste, and religion, but also the ways that relationships within families, households, communities and NGOs shaped their lives and activism. Learning from each other, the goal seemed to be understanding, with a belief that the multiple understandings that were shared might influence activism. They did not, however, seem to hold more instrumental aims of either using the narratives to change their strategies or of tracing how such collaborative knowledge production could be ‘‘seen’’ or ‘‘assessed’’ in specific projects. The knowledge gleaned and constructed through these conversations were undoubtedly important, but not in ways that could be easily described. The knowledge they produced grew through their experiences, their interactions, and their emotions. In this sense, it may well be an example of the more embodied sense of activism and community that Hayes-Conroy describes. They knew something important had happened, had changed them, was important, but they did not articulate this in terms of new theoretical positions, political strategies, or daily activities. From the outside, one might ask whether this was therefore ‘‘important.’’ What was the ‘‘utility’’ and how could it be ‘‘measured’’? I think the answer is that utility and efficacy may not be important in an easily traceable sense. Rather, the importance may be to the members of the Collective. The ‘‘conversations’’ that the Collective engaged in and that I suggested as a goal in the original article may sometimes converge and other times seem to be about very different things. It is probably most useful to recognize this, rather than holding to a goal (which I think some academics may hold) of having the conversations lead to agreement or to a convergence of theoretical arguments. Rather than the structured conversations of academic debate, these are likely to be the looser, more chaotic conversations of the dinner table. They are important conversations theoretically, politically, and personally, but it is often not clear how they can be incorporated within common academic frameworks. The simplifications of community and citizenship It often seems that the relationship between community and citizenship is complex, plural, and rarely stable. Taking to heart Clarke’s argument, citizenship is every bit as problematic as community. The relationship between them, is not uni-directional, with one ‘‘causing’’ the other; rather, and as I argued, each seems to interpellate the other, as impossible as that might seem. This complicated relationship, however, almost requires that we simplify either ‘‘community’’ or ‘‘citizenship,’’ as a matter of getting a handle on or gaining an ability to talk about them. While we might recognize each is a complex, multifacted concept, pragmatics often leads us to abstract out one element of the concept. In this context, it is important to ask whether participation in community activities and voluntary organizations leads to an enriched or impoverished citizenship, as blunt and as categorical as that framing may be. Answers to this question often follow an analytical chain such as the one that Clarke describes: does participation in voluntary activities lead to participation in more formal arenas in politics and ultimately to governing structures and practices that
38
Commentary / Political Geography 27 (2008) 35e39
represent the political community. If the answer to all these questions is ‘‘yes,’’ then one might conclude that community involvement enriches citizenship. But what if citizenship is indicated by something other than juridical status and representation? What if citizenship is defined in terms of civic participation, as suggested by many of the people I have interviewed over the years? What if participants believe that interactions through community-based institutions lead to a different way of regulating tolerance and aversion (Brown, 2006) than that suggested in government policies, whether they are multiculturalist policies or social cohesion agendas, thereby expanding the inclusiveness of the political community? Or even more, what if participants do not locate citizenship in a political community, but somewhere else? What if we truly are in a post-political age (see Mouffe, 2005)? Those are big questions, and the point is not to answer them, but to suggest that the goals of community and citizenship may be not always be to enhance a political form of citizenship or community.2 Many of the people with whom I have spoken over the years reject the notion that their actions are either political or related to citizenship. When I argued in my writing that their actions do have implications for citizenship, my theoretical perspectivedmy simplification of the relationship between citizenship and communitydwas at odds with theirs. As I indicated, such differences in arguments and what we mean when we talk about community and citizenship often seem inevitable, and we rarely have the opportunity to truly engage in conversations about those differences. If I had to temporarily suspend the limited ‘‘conversations’’ between the variously positioned activists and academics that I have listened to and read over the years and provide a summary, the summary probably would seem contradictory and not to represent any particular perspective very well. It seems to me that the conversations about community and citizenship have two strands that may be cacophonous.3 The first strand is one that says that institutionsdpolitical, economic, social and communaldthat structure citizenship are central to processes of inclusion. As such, finding a way to work with institutional structures is a key to reshaping citizenship. In this context, community structuresdand the histories behind themdare both a resource and an obstacle to enhancing citizenship. The second strand is one that attempts to distance both community and citizenship from institutional structures in an effort to actively re-imagine and reconstitute them both. This strand of the argument is emergent, and one never really knows how community and citizenship will be reshaped or re-formed. It is likely, of course, that any new relationshipdif indeed new relationships actually emergedwill be contingent on the networked power relationships and institutions that condition a particular struggle. It may seem unhelpful to offer as a summary something that is so contradictory as what I have just described. Yet my sense is that the relationship between community and citizenship is undecidable and never fixed. People and organizations wobble between both desiresdto rely on institutional structures and to remake them. Which way they lean reflects the struggles in which they are engaged, the structures they confront, and the ethopolitical imaginations that help them negotiate their communities and political futures at particular times and in particular spaces. 2
There is some unease amongst citizenship scholars about the proliferation of different kinds of citizenship and with the implication in some uses of the term that if citizenship can be conceptualized without reference to the state or politics. 3 This summary takes liberties with an argument provided by Bonnie Honig (2001) about immigration and cosmopolitanism. I do not wish to enter into a debate about cosmopolitanism, however, not least because few of the people I have interviewed would describe themselves as cosmopolitans.
Commentary / Political Geography 27 (2008) 35e39
39
References Brown, W. (2006). Regulating aversion: Tolerance in the age of identity and empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Honig, B. (2001). Democracy and the foreigner. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Massey, D. (1994). Space, place and gender. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Mouffe, C. (2005). On the political. London: Routledge. Sangtin Writers, & Nagar, R. (2006). Playing with fire: Feminist thought and activism through seven lives in India. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.