Thanks to Matty's love of Wal-Mart's constantly falling prices, we Chattacynics have fallen into a great discussion about the nature and management of community. To follow the conversation, it's best to start with the comments on Lobsters in a Bucket (pay special attention to Josiah's final post), then read Ryan's take over at /dev/null.
I was planning to simply comment on Ryan's piece, but my comment kept growing in a disconcertingly Eric Bana-like manner, so I'm just going to post it here. (Isn't inter-blog correspondence fun? I feel like a gay Catholic Canadian!) My post is written directly to the Rye-Diggity, so you'd better read his piece first.
Ryan,
You've been in a community with an exceptionally strong center: Covenant College, and its chapel program. You may have hated it, you may have loathed everything it stood for, but it was the place where most members of the collegiate community gathered for half an hour, five days a week. Everyone saw their friends, boys and girls flirted (and more), people caught up on each other's lives, and every once in a long while the whole room focused on the same speaker.
Chapel had it's obvious drawbacks (uneven quality of programming, the transitory nature of the college years) but it still serves as a good example of what sociologist Ray Oldenburg calls "third places": the informal gathering places where people leave their work (their "first place") on the way to their homes (their "second places").
In my life, I've experienced dozens of these places. Some I've been "a part" of: chapel, of course, but also the clothing/toy store in my hometown, the 4-H center where all the redneck and homeschool parents brought their kids, and a couple of bars in Chattanooga where I've been something of a regular. Others I've only observed: the Tiftonia Hardee's, the Trenton barber shop, Lucky's 777, and -- horror of horrors -- the Hamilton Place Mall on a Friday night. Some of these places appeal to my aesthetic. Some piss me off. But that's not the point. The point is that, at least in the South, these places exist.
Matt makes a great point that some of the most vibrant "third places" are in fact chains, architecturally anonymous hangouts far from city centers. I guess the question is whether these chains are creating new "third places" or erasing old ones that were better at bringing people together for meaningful interaction. This question is why God made urban planners. I am not one, and I don't know the answer. (I do know that the toy store I mentioned eventually moved from downtown Lake Wales to a mall; now it specializes in educational toys, and no one gathers there.)
But it does disconcert me when Hardee's centers its advertising campaign around two old men complaining how they used to sit all day at the chain, but they won't anymore because of the new rock music on the speakers. It's an obvious case of capitalism/populism trumping community, and it appeals strongly to today's society. This is why I have a hard time trusting the motivations of Wal-Mart and other massive conglomorates: they appeal to the parts of our society that I fear are most destructive of meaningful interaction. I could be wrong, but I'm afraid I'm not.
But the discussion of whether malls and fast-food chains can ultimately foster both convenience and community ignores your basic question: Where are these "third places," and why haven't you seen them? Which brings me back to my opening: I think you've been in them; the question is how much you are willing to engage. You and I are both extreme examples of a generation with a penchant for detatchment - this is what we really mean by "irony" when we misuse the word. Communities aren't closed systems; they're nebulous, and you sit at the edge of a great many. The issue is to what degree you and I choose to jump into those communities, whether they be chapel or a bunch of bachelors bumming in St. Elmo. The structural questions about "third places" are tremendously imporant, but they come after that decision to engage.
Communally,
-a.
Posted by mesh at July 2, 2003 02:17 AM | TrackBackI agree with you, Ernie. It seems like there're two components of community, the first more important than the second. The first is the desire to commune/fellowship (the decision to engage, as you put it) and the second is the place where that communing occurs. Look at Catacombs for a good example; we all did everything together, including the guys that moved off the hall eventually. That community was
established on Catacombs(and more broadly, at Covenant) but it's expanded beyond those physical locations to be a more flexible entity.
I feel like the like a columnist for World that free-lances for Wall Street Journal with all my comments in this discussion. Mesh I wholeheartedly agree with you that the advent of national retail chains and all the consumptive undercurrents this trend signifies are in fact what probably helped to destroy the traditional modes of community in America.
However I would suggest that the old forms of community were guided by an earlier set of economic conditions. Let me be clear, I am not an economic determinist. Rather, I think that economic factors provide limits on the places community can form. The centralized town, has economic factors that enabled it, namely, the railroad. The small, centralized towns were only possible because it was relatively cheap to ship things inland through rail freight. At the railway town products go in, and others go out.
My point is that technological reality and economic reality have a lot to do with how community can come about. Hopefully, we live in the twilight year of mass retail. But in any case, community has to take place in the context of the commercial world, it doesn' really have another option.
One of the benefits of an information economy, is that things are becoming more decentralized, more jobs rely only on the computer, and not on a certain place of work. If I'm correct, I see a change that will allow people to reform communities in whatever mode they like, including whomever they wish. See my newest blog post for more.
Matt, I hope my blog is closer to the WSJ. What you say makes sense to me, and I think Josiah's SIP suggested at least one way that a new info-economy can coincide with new technology in a positive way.
My mom sent me an e-mail responding to this post, which is chock-full of practical thoughts:
"For my personal take....Wal Mart has in fact become part of the community here. I know some who work there. Because of my personality, I say hello to some (not all) of the greeters on a frequent basis. Because we live in a small town, I almost always see another shopper whom I know. Many of us who home school stop and have 'a small group meeting' right there. It's funny.
You are also correct about it pushing out small businesses. Many of us talked about what would happen to downtown not so much when Wal Mart came but when the mall was built. It has changed some. Edwin not only moved to the mall but he went out of business last year. I would stop and talk to him every once in a while but I was always in a hurry and I rarely went in his store at the mall. I don't need to buy toys much anymore so I avoided the social aspect. When he was downtown however, I went in, shopped, talked and moved on. At the mall I just moved on."
