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The Language of Community in Canada

Communities are constituted of individuals who tacitly or explicitly express shared values or characteristics. The very fact of a group of individuals that shares common traits however implies that ‘outsiders’ or non-members also exist. Thus while communities are defined by what members have in common, they are similarly defined by what makes them different from non-members, or indeed are defined by the very fact of exclusion. How do notions of governance through voluntary, fluid and self-selecting community membership comprehend these dynamics of inclusion and exclusion?

In the course of interviews with community members, the theme of “inclusion” resounded. By meeting a very basic set of conditions – founded essentially on will and desire – respondents suggested that membership in their particular community was open to all. The respondent from an urban neighbourhood commented that “anyone who moves in becomes a member of the...community.” [156] Similarly the leader of a rural northern community noted: “Whoever lives there is a member. They’re automatically members by virtue of living in the community.” [157] The Latin American community leader stated that to become a member, one need “just show up and show interest in being involved, it’s very informal.” [158] In a like fashion, membership in the eco-housing community is declared to be open: “we do not select people or refuse entry to anyone.” [159] Similarly, we were told that “one doesn’t have to be gay to be part of the community…it’s a state of mind, a politics.” [160] To be involved in the drug-users community or the sex worker community requires simply that you are engaged in those activities or interested in the lives of those people who are. [161] , [162] As the respondent from the sex worker community noted “there are many supporters of sex workers rights who are not themselves sex workers.” [163] Membership in such communities is thus perceived to be accessible to all, open to willing or interested individuals.

As noted above, this idea of inclusive, voluntary, and self-selecting membership in a community of ‘belonging’ is central to the policies of governance through community. But the dynamics of inclusion and membership in a community are, in truth, less straightforward. Whether explicitly acknowledged, barriers to membership often exist. Not everyone can be a member of the community of his or her choice. Not all people have the capacity to choose. Thus, while the respondent from an urban community claimed that all who live in the neighbourhood are members, it was also acknowledged that this community “has very important boundaries, delineated by the communities around us which are so different.” [164] Similarly, the respondent from Cape Breton reported candidly that while “officially, everybody’s open and welcoming” in reality being accepted as a member of the community is more complicated:

It depends on your attitude – a professor friend of mine from Toronto [lived in Cape Breton] for 3 or 4 years and thought he was a member – people liked him, he fit in well - but he wasn’t really a full member, although nobody said that to him. But now he is because he’s been there 7 years, he’s dating somebody from [Cape Breton], and he’s a good professor – if he’d been a bad professor, acceptance would have been much more difficult. [165]

Similarly, the respondent from the Latin American community noted that “a certain political affinity is understood” among members of that community and the political activity which was an important common bond among members – might, in fact, keep some potential members away, such as “the old revolutionaries that we’ve forgotten about… some of them want to forget what they suffered in the war – it’s a lot of work to attract them.” [166] While membership is open, it is open to those who share and care about the issues that bond the other members. Membership in communities is available, in short, to like-minded individuals; outsiders are less likely to be welcome or will, quite simply, stay away.

The respondent from a web-based community put it succinctly by noting that “by nature, on-line communities don’t include everybody^,” adding that these communities are “primarily based on conversation….you can only have so much of it before it becomes noise.” [167]

It is difficult to reconcile this dynamic of exclusion and difference with the notion of governance through voluntary, active communities. Communities may be deeply affected by discrimination or the perception thereof. As Wirth, in the 1930s, noted with respect to minority groups, perceived differences may be as powerful as real ones,

…a minority group is one which, whether or not it suffers from discrimination and exclusion, conceives itself as the object of such differential treatment and is regarded by others as such… [168]

Discrimination against a collective is a form of community definition that originates external to the community. In some cases, these external definitions can have a catalytic effect. As Ward notes, conflict or opposition is not always a negative influence: “opposing force helps those within a group to find common cause through opposition to the other group.” [169] The respondent from the sex worker community noted that the group’s identity “developed in conjunction with the growth of prostitutes’ rights movements, as a result of oppression of various kinds: social stigma, police oppression, the laws – there was organizing around that, and the concept of community was born.” This happened partially in recognition of and response to the fact that the recent “change in [public] perception of ‘prostitute as criminal’ to ‘prostitute as victim’ is not necessarily better,” [170] and therefore, the community sought its own voice, to speak for itself. One of the specific outcomes was that the community adopted the term “sex work.^” The term, the respondent noted, is consciously used to encourage broader membership instead of focusing on differences or negative stereotypes:

It’s inclusive. It’s an umbrella term, and puts the emphasis on the work and the labour issues. This is important for the effort to build community and it’s important for the organizers and the policy makers. But it’s also important for the community of sex workers; this is a term that seems to help bring people into active organizations. Interestingly, people whose work is clearly prostitution often don’t define themselves as prostitutes or join the organizations, because of the stigma attached to the term and the concept, and because of the public image of what prostitutes are and do. So people [who engage in sex work] who feel they don’t fit [the] mold [of prostitution] stay away from the term and the organizations. [171]

The respondent from the gay/lesbian community similarly commented:

The gay/lesbian community formed out of people who were entirely oppressed because they loved someone of the same sex. They started to seek each other out, and so the community formed out of their oppression. Oppression pulls people in and makes them want to get involved for their own good, for the sake of survival. [172]

Communities also galvanize around crises: “weekly meetings of a local association may garner 10 or 12 participants, until a dump is proposed nearby and 75 people show up,” [173] one respondent noted. Again the respondent from the sex worker community commented: “our experience has been that unless there is a very concrete reason for a meeting – such as a police raid or proposed changes to the law that will have a big impact – it’s very hard to get people involved.” [174] Communities can become more cohesive when they are faced with a threat. The converse may, however, also be true. With the disappearance of an opposing force, a community’s bond may weaken. The respondent from the Latin American community indicated that when the nature of the political struggles in Central and Latin America diminished at the end of the cold war, much of the original sense of identity of the community, which was largely formed around political solidarity, disappeared as well: “In recent times, the end of the dictatorship in Chile and the fall of the Berlin Wall happened around the same time, and it put a lot of community activities to sleep for a while – people felt that the dictatorship was over, the wall was down - what do we do now?” [175]

It is interesting to consider the role of an explicit and ever-present “other” in a community’s sense of identity. While the member of the urban neighbourhood listed the importance of the physical environment such as the farm, the trees, and the park to the community’s sense of identity, [176] the community was also defined according to the strict border with adjacent neighbourhoods. What would happen if these different communities suddenly disappeared – in this case if the affordable housing was torn down and replaced by market housing, as is being proposed? Would the community’s boundaries become arbitrary as the areas immediately outside the boundaries became more “like-self?” Would the community reach out to embrace and accept these new areas, thus redefining itself in the process? If so, what is the process by which a community decides to expand its boundaries, whether geographic or conceptual, to accept “others” or new members that meet the criteria to be community members?

This influx of new members is a particularly salient issue to community formation and operation. How does a community maintain an identity with changing membership? The sex worker noted “a difficulty is that there are many women coming to Toronto for sex work. This is a big issue – how are the leaders going to communicate to migrant workers [for instance] and be open to them? Like any community, ours can be resistant to newcomers.” [177] Is it viable to expect a community to be able to welcome all potential new members, when doing so may mean that the community’s identity may be in a constant state of flux? As one respondent noted: “the one thing that strikes me is… that community is really unstable; that it can mean a lot of different things and can change over time.” [178]

While communities may form around or be strengthened by forces of exclusion or discrimination, they may also exist as the result of an imposition from outsiders whether through law or in practice. The characteristics and conditions of communities like ‘the homeless’ or ‘drug users’ are often created externally. The ‘elderly’ similarly provide an example. This ‘community’ – its attributes, its needs and problems ‑ has largely been defined by those who are not themselves elderly. Onyx and Benton write compellingly of the ways in which the state has defined this group "…older people [are] objectified into an undifferentiated 'other' whose fate is determined by professionals working within a state policy framework.” [179] By defining “aging” as a process of declining health, older people are viewed essentially as a medical problem. Uncomfortable questions follow: Who is responsible for this definition? Who are the beneficiaries? Onyx and Benton suggest that the health industry is a major purveyor of stereotypes in this regard. [180]

Finally, the notion of governance through inclusive communities of active self-selecting individuals does not take into account the difficulty of reconciling competing claims among different communities. This dilemma was illustrated in several discussions with respondents, notably from the sex worker and drug-user groups who recognized that their objectives were in conflict with the values of other groups in society or general government policy. [181] , [182] While these communities are built around the positive values of wanting to create healthy, safe and humane conditions for members, their aims are often perceived to be in conflict with other public goals such as eliminating prostitution and drug use. A similar dynamic was suggested by the resident from the urban neighbourhood who was concerned about the high number of social housing units and homeless shelters in the community’s environs. The community aims to ensure a safe, economically viable, and attractive downtown neighbourhood; these positive goals, however, are difficult to reconcile with the equal and opposite “good” of accommodating marginalized members of society. [183]

While the language of community claims to promote ‘social cohesion’ by activating individuals to connect with each other in the public sphere, at the same time a diversity of voices is being empowered, all of whom are clamouring for particular – and sometimes irreconcilable – rights and interests. Critics of governance through community highlight this portioning up of interests, claiming it leads to fragmentation and “conflicts over the mutually exclusive ‘rights’ and values of different communities.” [184] While the objective of community policy is to activate and strengthen communities, in the absence of clear criteria it is impossible to determine which communities are more legitimate and whose aims are more salutary. As Carothers notes,

Although many civic activists may feel they speak for the public good, the public interest is a highly contested domain. Clean air is a public good, but so are low energy costs... Struggles over the public interest are not between civil society on the one hand and bad guys on the other but within civil society itself. [185]

Governance through community is based on the idea of inclusive, intentional, conscious membership. This conceptualization of community does not take into account that many communities are formed by exclusion, strengthened by conflict or exist largely because they have been named by external forces. Communities are by definition exclusive; their boundaries and their differences from others are a crucial means of maintaining identity. Conflict is not necessarily bad – it both helps communities to galvanize and it serves as a means to define issues of public good in the broader society – but concerns exist over the fragmentation of society into separate community enclaves, each clamouring for its specific rights. The language of community does not address the inherent inconsistency in seeking to support “strong communities” while at the same time seeking to promote social cohesion to bridge differences among communities.