CHAPTER 19 ·ng the Movement: The \l, ~hiladelphia: Tem_ple What Community Supplies •,Ii Robert J. Sampson Community seems to be the modern elixir for community is in order. The loss is expressed much of what ails American society, Indeed, most frequently in terms of the decline of as we reflect on the wrenching social changes civic life and the deterioration of local that have shaped our recent past, calls for a neighborhoods. return to community values are everywhere. But if community has come to mean From politicians to private foundations to everything good, as a concept it loses its ana­ real estate developers to criminal justice lytical bite and therefore means nothing. officials to communitarians, the appeal of What exactly do we mean by community? community is ubiquitous. Does the term refer to geographic locales, Consider just a few examples of the efforts such as neighborhoods? Or to common mem­ to mobilize action under the rubric of com- - bership in some association or group? Does it munity. Among private foundations many mean shared values and deep commitments, programs have settled on community as a and if so to what? What in fact does com­ conceptual umbrella to coordinate new ini­ munity supply that makes it so in demand? tiatives. Meanwhile the growing Community Not only are the answers unclear, the current development corporation (CDC) movement appropriation of community rhetoric elides has long singled out community as a mean­ any references to the dark side of communal ingful unit of social intervention to improve life. One might ask, what do we stand to the lives of the poor. In the criminal justice lose by a return to community-what does system the move to community-based strat­ community deny? Perhaps more important, egies has included increased community does the current drumbeat of allusions to policing, community-based prosecution pol­ community values bespeak a mythical past, icies, and community corrections. Even real raising the paradox of returning to nowhere? estate developers are beginning to take heed The thesis of this chapter is that com­ of modern discontent with urban sprawl and munity does matter, albeit not in the simple suburban anonymity. They are proffering way that current yearning suggests. Com­ new visions of living arrangements that pro­ munities are an important arena for realizing mote neighborliness, local interaction, and common values and maintaining effective common physical space with architectural social controls. As such, they provide impor­ integrity, all in an attempt to restore some tant public goods, or what many have termed semblance of community. And in intellectual "social capital," that bear on patterns of discussions, the rise of communitarianism social organization and human well-being. as a serious movement is centered on com­ There is hope in this conception, for it reveals munity responsibility and civic engagement ways to harness social change to reflect the as the structure supporting social justice and nature of transformed (not lost) communi­ the good society. ties. Especially in low-income, socially dis­ Whatever the source, there has emerged a advantaged neighborhoods, dimensions of widespread idea that something has been lost social capital may work to buffer the forces in American society and that a return to of sociodemographic changes that have 164 I ROBERT J. SAMPSON battered the idea of community. But the con­ later expanded these concerns by pos1trng cept is not an unqualified good, and thus one that size, density, heterogeneity, and ano­ must also come to grips with such potential nymity were socially disintegrative features adverse consequences as local corruption that characterized rapidly changing cities. Be and the social exclusion of outsiders. contended that these defining elements con­ To tackle these matters, this chapter begins strained social relations to be impersonal and by reviewing some of the defining themes of superficial and that this estrangement under­ community and neighborhood, placing pres­ mined family life and the intimate bonds of ent concerns within the framework of intel­ local community. lectual history. Although not apparent from Wellman (1979) summarizes this classical recent debates, there is a long history of tradition in urban sociology under the label research and theory on urbanism and com­ "Community Lost," invoking the idea that munity in the United States. the social ties of modern-urbanites have I next highlight the social dimensions by become impersonal, transitory, and seg­ which communities in the United States are mented, hastening the ec_lipse of community stratified ecologically. Neighborhoods vary a and feeding the process of social disorganiza­ great deal in terms of racial isolation and the tion. Community Lost is thus a salient theme concentration of socioeconomic resources, that has a venerable history in twentieth­ and social dislocations· such as crime and century America. poor health come bundled in geographical Research, however, suggests that Wirth's space. thesis is naive and the pronouncement of the I then turn to the heart of the topic: what loss of community premature. Ethnographic community supplies and how structural research in the 1950s and 1960s discovered forces in the larger society shape the internal thriving urban communities and ethnic dynamics of communities. Specifically, I enclaves where kinship and friendship flour­ explicate a theory of community social ished. Especially in poor urban neighbor­ organization and the public-good aspects of hoods, the evidence of dense social networks social capital such as informal social control and local identification remained strong (see .mechanisms, network ties to extra-local Gans, 1962; Jacobs, 1961; and Stack, 1974). power, mutual trust, capacity for efficacious Even quantitative studies began to chal­ action, and organizational resources that lenge the hegemony of Community Lost. In communities can in theory provide. Just as an important 1975 survey replication in a important, I delineate what research has Rochester, New York, neighborhood of a revealed about the ways structural forces (for study conducted there in 1950, Hunter example, inequality and stability) promote (1975) found a decrease in the use of shop­ or inhibit these public goods. ping, entertainment, and other facilities but no change in informal neighboring and local interaction. Indeed, the local sense of com­ COMMUNITY: LOST, FOUND, munity had increased, leading him to con­ AND LIBERATED clude that "the hypothesized consequences of an ecological and functional increase in scale The "loss of community" is by no means a have not resulted in a social and cultural­ new concern. The basis of the classic urban symbolic loss of.community." Summarizing paradigm in sociology is related to the mas­ these findings, ethnographic and quantitative sive social changes of the late nineteenth and alike, Wellman (1979) declared a mid-century early twentieth centuries. Concern c;wer the era of "Community Saved." presumed decline of traditional forms of per­ As suburbanization and technological sonal association in small towns and neigh­ change have increased in the past two dec­ borhoods under the advance of urbanization ades, scholarship has begun to reach a and industrialization was widely expressed compromise in the Community Lost and by early sociologists such as Tonnies, Durk­ Community Saved arguments. The research heim, Simmel, and Weber. Wirth (1938) of theorists on social networks has shown WHAT COMMUNITY SUPPLIES j 165 that, contrary to the assumptions of a decline shop, work, go to church, and make friends in primary relations and to the Community throughout geographical space and, increas­ Saved image of dense parochial ties, modern ingly, cyber space. This alone suggests that urbanites have created non-spatial com­ interventions in the local community are munities-viable social relations dispersed in unlikely to succeed if they attempt to pene­ space (Tilly, 1973). Modern urban dwellers, trate the private world of personal relations. for example, might not know (or want to I contend that we do not need com­ know) their neighbors on an intimate basis, munities so much to satisfy our private and but they are likely to have interpersonal personal needs, which are best met else­ networks spread throughout the city, state, where, nor even to meet our sustenance and even country. Wellman refers to this needs, which for better or worse appear to expanded concept of community as "Com­ irretrievably dispersed in space\Rather, local munity Liberated," or what might be thought community remains essential as a site for the of as community beyond propinquity. This realization of common values in support of does not mean local relations are unimport­ social goods, including public safety, norms ant, but only that they are no longer control­ of civility and mutual trust, efficacious vol­ ling for many areas of social life. untary associations, and collective socializa~ Fischer (1982) has presented a similar tion of the young,_____...--~ vision of what urbanism has wrought and The local community remains important what it means to think of communities as lib­ for another reason-economic resources and erated. Clarity is accomplished by emphasiz­ social-structural differentiation in general ing the distinction between the public and are very much spatially shaped in the United private spheres of social life. In the urban States. Income, education, housing stock­ world of strangers