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The Language of Community in Canada

The traditional definition of ‘community’ strongly links people to place. The early-20^th Century sociologist Louis Wirth who wrote abundantly on the subject defined community as “a distribution in space of men [sic], institutions and activities, close living together on the basis of kinship and organic interdependence, and a common life based upon the mutual correspondence of interests.” [47] According to this traditional conceptualization, communities exist in a bounded physical area in which people interact as “little groups of neighbours intensively socializing, supporting and controlling one another.” [48] This relationship of people to place in a legible ‘local’ context – based essentially on a village model – has endured in academia as a way of formulating or understanding community since the mid-19^th Century; [49] it is both powerfully nostalgic and truly compelling and still dominates the popular literature and public discourse on community. Community in such texts refers to a place: a municipality, neighbourhood, or other geographic area. “Often when we think of the term community, we think in geographic terms. Our community is the location (i.e. city, town or village) where we live.” [50]

Anecdotally, many of the interview respondents recounted that the built form and local geography were central to their own sense of community identity. The respondent from the urban neighbourhood spoke of the importance of the trees, streetscape and the local park in defining the community; the respondent from Cape Breton spoke both of the geographic characteristics of the island that first drew Scottish settlers to the area and the urban decay of Sydney, Nova Scotia as fundamental to the population’s sense of identity. For the rural respondent from Northern Saskatchewan - an area with a majority population of First Nations’ inhabitants - place was fundamental to the sense of identity. [51] , [52] , [53]

This traditional conceptualization of community based in a local place, many now argue, is limited. Communities need no longer be local; social networks are spread across the globe. Hampton and Wellman state that “since the 1970s, some have argued that it is the sociable, supportive and identity-giving interactions that define community and not the local space in which they take place.” [54] Humans are social animals and establish networks – local or dispersed – as a matter of course. While place may play a role in an individual’s sense of self and connection to others, that connection can be maintained across large distances and through time. One need not be in a place to feel connected to it; one can remain attached to like-minded people from afar. Thus, individuals living abroad can maintain a strong link to the homeland and remain integrated into their own ethnic community. Similarly, within Canada, the respondent from Cape Breton commented that members of that community maintained powerful ties to the island even from afar: “My community has a very strong identity. When we’re away, we’re Cape Bretoners – Capers. When one of us moves away, they can always find a Caper Club wherever they end up.” [55] Similarly the respondent from the Latin American community noted “our identity is more about being Latino than it is about Ottawa; it’s just that circumstances put us in the same place.” [56]

The rapid change in communications technologies has been credited by many with this re-conceptualization of how humans form and maintain communities. Not surprisingly, the notion of community liberated from place is nowhere so evident as in the discussions around internet-based or ‘Web’ communities: “new communication technologies are driving out of fashion the traditional belief that community can only be found locally.” [57] Giddens terms the phenomenon of maintaining supportive social relations across vast geographical distance - liberated from the constraints of time and space - as ‘disembeddedness.’ He suggests that it is an aspect of the process of globalization [58] and characteristic of a fundamental change in global structures which he argues has occurred in the past decade: “the information age has different dynamics, structures and systems of belief from the industrial period. It is producing a society marked by the declining hold of traditional beliefs, coupled to a more active orientation to the world on the part of most citizens.” [59] This new world, he argues, requires new forms of governance.

This question of whether community is ‘place-based’ or ‘place-liberated’ - and whether it is thriving, in decline or has fundamentally mutated - constitutes a lively debate within sociology as well as other social sciences. [60] On one hand, academics and popular commentators stress the importance of local place in solidifying a sense of community and belonging. Place allows for contact and connection among like and unlike individuals. They likewise deplore the withering of community through the loss of local public places to sprawl, suburbanization, privatization and corporatization. Sidewalks, public squares, parks and playgrounds and locally-owned community institutions – shops, bookstores, restaurants, pubs, and theatres – are disappearing, they argue. Housing projects and car-dependent suburbs discourage mingling and informal meetings. Without places where serendipitous encounters among citizens of diverse backgrounds can take place, a sense of community cohesion suffers and individuals withdraw from society. Benjamin Barber writes:

In our mostly privatized, suburbanized world, there are not enough physical places where citizenship can be easily exercised and civil society’s free activities can be pursued. Citizens need physical spaces where they can interact and work to solve public problems… There can be no civic activity without a palpable civic geography. Ducks, to be ducks, need their pond, and the public needs its town square. [61]

Similarly, Gratz notes that in the United States,

the malling of America has so homogenized us, so franchised our places of work, residence, and leisure, and so separated our daily functions from each other that there are fewer and fewer places in downtown America and in the rural countryside where people can connect as individuals, as neighbors….. Suspicion and fear of “them” (whatever race, nationality or minority distinction is the local “them”) has replaced familiarity and comfort among neighbours. Isolated homogenous enclaves have replaced connected or adjacent heterogeneous communities. Local stores owned by familiar members of a community have been replaced by anonymous corporate entities that drain resources from that local economy. [62]

Such critics argue that without local shared places, community dies, civility declines and society suffers. [63] ^{, [64] , [65] , [66] , [67]}

There are two essential strands of argument which are often conflated in this discourse on place and its centrality to community. First, there is a conviction that a broader, more inclusive sense of community among diverse members of society can be built through the restoration of public, shared places where different people can encounter one other. Through place, social cohesion and community can be fostered across racial, class or cultural divides. Secondly, sounding a different note, it is argued that place plays a role in solidifying the values within groups – pre-existing communities of “insiders” – who must encounter each other in the physical world. [68]

Echoing the first notion – that the quality of the built environment is critical to a broader sense of shared community - the respondent from the community of sex workers noted eloquently:

if the streets were more user friendly – if streets encouraged people to stop and talk rather than being thoroughfares that people just use to drive through... If public spaces were more comfortable and people were encouraged to use those spaces, that would improve the quality of our community. [69]

Supporting the second notion – that communities need a physical meeting place in order to consolidate their own sense of identity – the respondents from the injection-drug user community and the Latin American community reported that:

If the government would legalize a safe drug shooting gallery – there could be services there, a needle exchange program, different support services – a place where people could use drugs safely and get health services at the same time. Word of mouth would get people to start coming in, which then is the basis for creating a cohesive community. You meet other people, feel comfortable talking, get support from outreach workers - support groups would begin to be created for talking, cooking, crafts…. Then at the same time we could do health education and so on – we can create the community. With the needle exchange program, we were pushing for a storefront so we could have a drop-in…a place where people can come in and have coffee, do acupuncture…. Once you get people through the door and help them feel empowered and starting to talk, that’s when you have the opportunity to create community. [70]

And

People talk about wanting to have a permanent café or bar that would always be a Latin American space – not a salsa place, where the environment can become cheesy and heavy. Right now, people lend us their restaurants for events and get-togethers, but we want our own place with our own images and music and food, representing the part of Latin American cultures that aren’t represented by Ricky Martin, or by salsa bars – a working class place, an encounter place, kind of like the native crisis centres where you can just hang out. [71]

Similarly the member of the gay and lesbian community commented on the importance of a local street in promoting a sense of belonging:

Oppression is a part of it, we all want to visit a place that’s safe and comfortable….Often a gay community will have a main drag that is inhabited with gay bars of all different kinds … [with] AIDS and social services, some art thrown in, some culture. Physical places keep us linked. [The street] is really important to us. [72]

 Though seldom acknowledged, there is a tension between these two aims of building broader community and strengthening the internal network within a community. The example of the intentional eco-housing community provides an illustration. The respondent from that community described how the collective had purposely planned their shared spaces with the intention of strengthening community spirit. The community’s design encourages encounters. The community put in place

Architectural elements that are designed to support our sense of community, such as the way our homes relate to each other, our common space, and the pedestrian street… There are 34 townhomes on either side of a glassed-in pedestrian street. We have a 5,000 square foot commonhouse…There’s no real way that improvements could be made, except in minor ways. This is a 3^rd generation style of cohousing, and it’s better than the first 2. 1^st generation involves large private homes and a small common house. 2^nd generation has small private homes and a large common house. 3^rd generation is characterized by small private residences, large common houses, and a large enclosed street that connects them...People can encounter each other as much or as little as they want. [73]

It is interesting to note, however, that while the public spaces of the community were organized to maximize the random, serendipitous encounters among inhabitants, the community itself has very important physical boundaries delineating the inside from the outside:

The boundaries are important – our 6-acre site is identified and registered. We are bounded, just outside our site, by areas of single-family homes on one side and townhomes on the other… [74]

Thus, while the processes internal to a community such as this might be supportive of active engagement and participation, with respect to the ‘outside’, the community may be as inaccessible as any other private community. Critics contend that for place-based policies to counter fragmentation and the withdrawal of sub-groups from a larger society, attention must therefore be paid to ensuring full access to place for all members of society. While advocates of ‘place’ proclaim that public spaces provide a forum for people from all walks of life to encounter one another, it is also argued that in fact many people do not have access to these places. Thus, critics of the battery of new community policies which focus on place -- from new urbanism to smart growth programs to ‘safe streets’ campaigns -- note that often in implementation the side-effect of such policies can be to further exclude members of society who are already marginalized.

Interestingly, the issue of access is equally relevant to virtual communities. The nature and configuration of a community’s infrastructure – or the ‘architecture’ of the collective – remain relevant. Who owns or controls the space – whether physical or virtual? How is the site structured for the interaction of community members? These are critical questions even in cyber space. Mary Rowe suggests that just as "built form and the way in which neighbourhoods are actually planned and developed have seemed to have had an impact on the values of people who live within them,” [75] the structure, organization and patterns of ownership of collective infrastructure matters in non-traditional communities, like those based in the internet. The values according to which collective sites are created – whether corporately-owned and managed sites or sites managed jointly in ‘commonspace’ – affect how members of the community interact. [76] The respondent from an internet community made this distinction between privately-controlled and collectively-managed sites, noting that “in many ways there are relationships between costs and how genuine the community is. Expensive online communities are usually intentionally constructed, they are corporate online communities,” [77] and the respondent implied, less concerned with active community citizenship and more focused on passive consumption.

Critics also argue that the strength of ‘local’ community is a double-edged sword. In a study on the ethnic Portuguese community in Toronto, Teixera demonstrates a correlation between the proximity of community members to one another within a particular neighbourhood and the maintenance of a strong cultural and linguistic identity in the face of pressures to assimilate. He suggests that other communities in Canada also follow this pattern – citing the Italian and Jewish communities of Toronto. [78] While a strong sense of shared identity is maintained through proximity, the very maintenance of these strong bonds in spatial terms can also isolate the community from the surrounding society, highlighting yet again the eternal tension between the goals of in-group solidarity and broader social integration.

Finally, there are critics of the theories of place-based community who argue that changes in the physical characteristics and patterns of ownership of shared public place have caused no decline in community. They argue that the focus on local, traditional place as the locus for generating a sense of community is misleading, highly nostalgic, ahistorical and often restrictive in practice. [79] Such commentators argue that community is alive and well, mediated by information technologies, and offering choice and flexibility in lifestyle in a more democratic fashion than ever before. In his popular, if controversial, 1997 book Sex in the Snow on the changing demographics of Canada Michael Adams writes of ‘liberated’ communities:

Canadians are now forming new attachments with a diversity of communities, within and without Canada. These include the new on-line communities that disregard national borders and individual stereotypes… Once defined by our race, religion or region, now we define ourselves by our values, by our personal priorities and by our life choices. [80]

Community is not withering, according to such writers; it is alive and well and no longer restricted by place or demography, tradition or convention.

Interestingly, the rhetoric of governance through community in many ways sidesteps this debate and borrows generously from both sides of the argument. It draws on the concerns of ‘place-based’ commentators who lament the loss of community and focus on the need for strengthening community bonds; at the same time, the language of community is built on the notion that community is fluid and flexible, a matter of voluntary choice and personal agency. Rose notes that both geographical communities and ‘virtual’ communities (by which he means not only internet communities but all non-traditional groups who have formed or are identified according to some shared characteristic or value) are recognized in the language of community:

Sometimes [communities] are defined in terms of the geographical coordinates of a micro-locale. Sometimes they are ‘virtual communities’ associated in neither ‘real’ space or ‘real’ time but through a network of relays of communication, symbols, images, styles of dress and other devices of identification: the gay community, the disabled community, the Asian community. [81]

Community in this language refers equally to a local place as to groups of people united by interest, occupation, gender, culture, or other markers. Students, AIDS patients, workers, fans of hiphop or the Latino population of Edmonton may all be members of a community – the community of their choosing or affinity.

The focus in the language of community is thus not where to find community but how to activate it. The fundamental assumption is that community – in its multiple forms -- is salutary. Communities nurture members, they provide support, they afford a grounding for individuals that neither the state nor the market can provide. While individuals interact with each through the structures of the market and the state, these transactions do not afford the affective bonds and shared values which community offers. This, Nikolas Rose argues, puts the language of community outside the debate on place into a different field:

Today community is not primarily a geographical space, a social space, a sociological space… community is...an affective and ethical field… it is a space of emotional relationships through which individual identities are constructed through their bonds to microcultures of values and meanings. [82]

Communities are understood to be heterogeneous, overlapping and based on affinity and choice. One may both be an active member of a local community and simultaneously identify with other collectives along the lines of ethnicity, interest, sexual preference or other identities.

Thus, the language of community is articulated both in terms of local place and at the same time community is discussed as a social rather than a geographical construct. Systems of governance through community are founded on the notion that the rapid economic and social changes of the ‘information age’ and the pressures of globalization, have rendered the nation state and traditional systems of governance insufficient. [83] The new world is “too complex, fluid and diverse to be managed by a central state” [84] and it is through the instrumentality of community that the state can interact with the individual to ensure a continuance of the public realm. Giddens argues that governance through community and civil society is appropriate as “globalization not only pulls away from the local arena, but it ‘pushes down’ on it, too, creating both new pressures towards and new opportunities for the restoration of community.” [85] In the conditions of a ‘new world order’, community provides a way for the individual to belong to the collective, a means through which the individual’s sense of self is enhanced and which offers a framework and a moral compass for the individual: “communities also share sets of values and reaffirm them, encourage their members to abide by these values, and censure the members when they do not. Communities have a moral voice that is external to the ego’s own voice, that serves to reinforce the inner voice.” [86]

Despite the fact that the language of community encompasses or incorporates both traditional and non-traditional forms of community, the distinction between place-based and ‘virtual’ communities – in the broadest sense of the term ‘virtual’ – nevertheless remains important in how relations are structured between the state and community. First, it must be recognized that place continues to play a powerful role in how the state interacts with and intervenes in communities. The policies which invoke community -- from newly-popular ‘smart growth’ strategies which “will help strengthen our economy, strengthen our communities and make sure our children inherit a clean, healthy environment" [87] to community health care initiatives -- are implemented locally. Administrative systems for the provision of public services continue to exist spatially. Communities continue to be defined primarily according to geographical borders and place remains an important feature in how communities are recognized and consulted even across communities of interest, ethnic communities and other groups. For example, injection drug users are identified at a municipal level; [88] sex workers distinguish between conditions in Vancouver and Toronto. [89] Though local place is perhaps less important a factor in how humans form community, many of the public services which are fundamental to how citizens perceive quality of life – from waste management, transportation, and schooling to justice and policing – are provided or managed locally or spatially. [90] As the fiscal responsibility for such services becomes increasingly devolved to local forms of the state – local government, agencies and commissions – place will continue to be important to the way in which communities and citizens relate to their governments. [91]

Much of the popular community development literature is accordingly preoccupied with how decisions over public infrastructure – roads and buildings and parks and schools – can best be taken in consultation with community or with the participation of the community. [92] There is a strong tendency in this literature to present participatory processes as resulting in optimal decisions for all parties:

Taken together, the voices of communities and professionals provide a convincing argument for giving priority to community participation as an active two-way process that may be initiated and sustained both by individuals and communities and by local and health authorities and other local organizations. Community participation can increase democracy, empower people, mobilize resources and energy, develop holistic and integrated approaches, achieve better decisions and more effective services and ensure the ownership and sustainability of programmes. [93]

 It is important to note, however, that consultation and partnership with community will not always result in an optimum distribution of public goods. Hester has noted that, with its beginnings in the civil rights and environmental advocacy movements, community-based participation in decision-making around issues of public service provision can tend to ‘carve up’ the public interest instead of strengthening it. [94] This is eminently apparent in the case of public goods which stretch across neighbourhood, district, municipal or other geographical boundaries. The siting of homeless shelters, public transportation corridors and landfill sites, for example, has become virtually impossible in many areas as fragmented local community groups protect their own interests and space. While specific local community interests are met, general public interest may be undermined by an undersupply of public goods and services. This dilemma is captured by the respondent from an urban neighbourhood:

I’ve had discussions with the province and City officials who all agree that [the large nearby social housing project] should never have been done, but of course once something’s been done, it’s hard to change. I am one of the people that is pushing for it to be gone, and rebuilt with the more typical maximum of 15% social housing, rather than 100%, and that would have a dynamic change on the entire east end of the city. We have so many services for the homeless, hostels for single men, etc. – 81% of all these services are located in [our] area. We are trying to stop them from putting more in this area, we are proponents of the idea that everybody should accept their fair share, spread them out a bit. [95]

Similarly, the difficulty of reconciling specific local interest with the general public interest was illustrated by the respondent from Northern Saskatchewan, who discussed how the planning of a provincial roadway deeply affected local conditions. [96] The story captured the essential difficulty of meeting both particular needs and serving the general interest. Building a road for this community may well cause another community to suffer. Local interests may not always be reconciled with the general public interest.

As noted above, recognition and relations with non-traditional communities tends also to occur through place. So that they are legible, boundaries are placed around such groups: the Chinese Community of Toronto, the Asian community of British Columbia. A different set of issues face the state in interacting with ‘non-traditional’ – or virtual – communities, however. Similar to traditional place-based communities, such groups – whether formed around ethnicity, interest or another characteristic – are embraced by the language and rhetoric of community. The interface with such groups is complex, however. The nation state, existing according to established physical boundaries and defined rules of citizenship, is challenged by the fluid nature of virtual communities, and faces difficult questions regarding the accountability and legitimacy of the groups with which it partners from civil society.

In the essay “‘Our home and native land? Canadian ethnic scholarship and the challenge of transnationalism,” this disconnect between policies based on definable borders in a world where boundaries are increasingly porous is highlighted. [97] Winland argues that scholars and official bodies alike have tended to treat ethnic communities as discrete and freshly-constituted entities established in a new Canadian homeland; such communities may have sentimental and cultural links to a past place of origin, but they are understood to behave essentially in a Canadian context. Winland believes that there is an implicit assumption among the scholars and officials working in the field of multi-culturalism that “the establishment of ethnic communities involves a gradual shift, from culturally coherent and homogenous settings in the country/region of origin, to the host country, where immigrants either assimilate to the dominant way of life or selectively appropriate new patterns and symbols in efforts to accommodate to their new context….the bounded conceptual universe of minority/majority relations persists.” [98]

This approach, she argues, fails to take into account that networks which bind these communities together are based on relationships rather than on territory. [99] Ethnic communities in Canada –like other virtual communities – are not bound by geographical designations within this country. [100] They are ‘disembedded’ to use Giddens’ term. In Winland’s study of the Croatian community of Canada and its relationship to the newly-established Croatian state, she notes that “diasporas often function as the source of ideological, financial, and political support for national movements that aim at the renewal of the homeland” and are an active and often important political force outside the borders of Canada. There has been a lack of attention paid to the ways in which communities in Canada are engaged in global processes, and scholars and official structures alike have focused largely on the internal dynamics of such communities. This connection to global processes was reflected in our conversation with the respondent from the Latin American community, who told us that:

Our community was born from the diaspora after the Chilean civil war. Our community was established around 2 activities: the urgency of finding ways to accommodate and receive incoming Chileans… [and] political solidarity – many of us arrived from small villages and started to live and work in exile; a lot of what we did had to do with raising awareness and money about and for political prisoners, torture, etc… We’re together because we’re in the same place, but it doesn’t restrict us. [101]

The ‘mosaic’ understanding of Canadian communities – a peaceful interweaving of harmonious, culturally-diverse groups within defined boundaries – does not take into account the divisions within communities nor the role which communities based in Canada play outside this country’s borders.

While there is a debate in both academic and popular literature about the role of place in the maintenance of a healthy and vibrant community, the language of community in governance sidesteps this argument. Community policies incorporate both the local and the ‘virtual’. The language of community draws both on the notion that community needs to be strengthened and at the same assumes that communities now exist as flexible networks of active individuals, choosing affiliations and membership.

The rhetoric of community avoids two critical issues in considering the interaction of community and the state: first, place is not neutral. Administrative systems are defined geographically and many of the services which determine quality of life are increasingly delivered locally. Consultation and interaction with communities – whether geographical or virtual - occurs in place. And while community consultation and participation is presented in the language of community as the key to more equitable and appropriate decisions in the public sphere, this does not take into account the potential for a carving up of the public interest and a resulting undersupply or oversupply of certain public goods as communities seek to protect their local interest.

Secondly, the interaction of the state with virtual communities is also affected by place. While boundaries are increasingly porous and virtual communities exist in a ‘disembedded’ world, the state nonetheless remains the primary framework in which policies are implemented. In Canada, for example, ethnic communities and other communities of interest are understood to exist as domestic entities in an integrated, multi-cultural mosaic within the boundaries of this country. The state in partnering with such communities is limited in its capacity to comprehend the impact which such communities have outside of the boundaries of this country.

Finally, whether virtual or geographical, accessibility and the ownership and control of the community ‘architecture’ or infrastructure is an important factor in how the community members interact.