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Part I - Literature Review and Methodology.
Chapter Two - Literature Review. 2.0 Introduction.
This chapter begins with a brief survey of classic sociological definitions of human community. It then looks at how the term is often used today, and the development of the relatively recent idea of a virtual community. The place of community networks, as organizations which attempt to bridge these two definitions, is then examined.
2.1 Definitions of Community.
2.1.1 Classic definitions.
An important component of the fields of human geography and sociology is the concept of 'community.' Some excerpts from the Oxford English Dictionary provide some useful starting points.
Community:
I: As a quality or state.
1. the quality of appertaining to or being held by all in common; joint or common ownership, tenure, liability, etc.
2. Common character; quality in common; commonness, agreement, identity.
3. Social intercourse; fellowship, communion.
4. Life in association with others; society. The social state.
II: A body of individuals.
7. A body of people organized into a political, municipal or social unity: a. A state or commonwealth. b. A body of men living in the same locality. c. often applied to those members of a civil community, who have certain circumstances of nativity, religion, or pursuit,common to them, but not shared by those among whom they live, as the British or Chinese community in a foreign city. d. The community: the people of a country (or district) as a whole, the general body to which all alike belong, the public.
8. A body of persons living together, and practising, more or less, community of goods. (Oxford English Dictionary, 1971.)There are a number of common themes in these definitions. First, they seem to imply a certain degree of commonality between individuals. This can be extended to include understanding, trust, cohesiveness, group commitment, sharing, and conviviality between individuals. According to John Gould the "etymological roots obviously lie in the Latin communicare, (which) originally meant to share, to join and to unite." (Brunn, Leinbach, 1991, p. 3.) Second, there is by implication a suggestion that physical, geographical, bounds are of some importance to the concept.
2.2.2 Ferdinand Tönnies.
Many modern studies of community can be traced back to Ferdinand Tönnies' Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, usually translated as 'Community and Society.' (Tönnies, 1957.) In this sociological milestone, Tönnies proposed that social relations can be divided into two general categories - those of Gemeinschaft and those of Gesellschaft. The former is understood as encompassing the organic and the rural; the latter the mechanical and the urban. Gemeinschaft is related to strong, intimate and familial bonds, and is essential; Gesellschaft is related to weaker, rule-based and artificially constructed ties.
Although criticized today as being naïve or excessively dichotomous, Tönnies' ideas have had a clear impact on the development of modern sociology. Durkheim, for example, in his studies of the division of labour in society, draws upon similar typological themes to produce his two societal types - organic and mechanical solidarity. (Durkheim, 1933.) His concept of 'anomie,' or normlessness, might also be seen as being related to Tönnies' writings of the social transition from rural agrarian communities to urbanized, structured bureaucratic societies.
2.2.3 Modern conceptions of 'community.'
The latter half of this century has seen massive and rapid changes in societal structures across Canada and around the world, and with these changes have come various redefinitions of community. The postwar period has seen particularly accelerated social change, and with this change has come a wide range of new social problems.
It is generally accepted that the average Canadian today lives in a far more atomized and fractured world than his or her ancestors. The rapid development and deployment of new communications and transportation technologies, particularly the telephone, television and automobile, coupled with the rise of urban and then suburban settlement patterns make for a striking contrast with the largely agricultural nature of Canada in the previous century. Barlow, writing from a US perspective, comments that:
. . . the vast majority of (Americans today) live not in ranch houses but in more or less identical split-level 'ranch homes' in more or less identical suburban 'communities.' Generica. In my view, these are neither communities nor homes. I believe the combination of television and suburban population patterns is simply toxic to the soul. I see much evidence in contemporary America to support this view. (Barlow, 1995.)Many have argued that these changes, and a commensurate focus on the creation of individualized private worlds and experiences has seriously undermined a traditional sense of community and belonging. A host of reasons is often cited for this change. People live in private dwellings separated from neighbours by large lawns or walls. They live and work in different parts of a city, commuting in individual private cars without any contact with others during the commute. At home, leisure activity is often focused on private activities such as viewing television rather than social and communal activities with neighbours and friends. People change residences with great frequency, causing social dislocation and often precluding any possibility of extended family relations on a regular basis. As Langdon Winner notes:
For modernism the prescribed frame for social relations was that of city and suburb. But today, for significant parts of society, attachment is no longer defined geographically at all. Many activities of work and leisure take place in global, electronic settings. The symbolic analysts of today's global webs of enterprise are shedding traditional loyalties, leaving everyone else to suffer in decaying cities . . . Such attitudes are found in 1990s cyberlibertarianism as represented, for example, in "Cyberspace and the American Dream" and in much of the hyperventilated prose of Wired magazine. These authors fiercely desire market freedom and unfettered self-expression with no sense of owing anything to geographically situated others. (Winner, 1995.)
Many critics have argued that this increased sense of detachment from social relations with others is one of the fundamental causes of today's serious social problems. Winner again:
Of course . . . breast-thumping individualism conceals many social conflicts. Many of those enthraled with globalization as the wellspring of economic vitality also bemoan "the weakened family", "collapse of community", and "chaos of the inner cities", failing to notice any connection. (Winner, 1995.)
Jan Fernback and Brad Thompson write that in the US, community, "our shared sense of collective self, fails to embrace the public and instead becomes enmeshed in the cult of personality." In this way community can be seen as moving away from Gemeinschaft definitions to Gesellschaft definitions, becoming a "private community." (Fernback and Thompson, 1995.)
2.2.4 Popular definitions of community.
Popular notions of community tend to fall into two general areas, somewhat analogous to Tönnies' two groups. The first is the use of the term 'community' in the context of physical locality. Community here refers to the collective networks of social relations between groups of individuals within a given geographical area, and this is the most common use of the unqualified term 'community' in common speech. In popular usage 'community' can be seen as being closely related to the term 'neighbourhood'-both refer to geographical areas of a size roughly comparable to mediæval towns, and both terms imply some degree of congenial relations amongst their inhabitants.
This use of 'community' could be said to be closely related to the ideal of Gemeinschaft, in that strong and close ties amongst a group of people in a fairly small area are implied. Certainly Tönnies felt that Gemeinschaft is, by its very nature, intimately connected with physical locality.
The Gemeinschaft of blood, denoting unity of being, is developed and differentiated into Gemeinschaft of locality, which is based on a common habitat. A further differentiation leads to the Gemeinschaft of mind, which implies only co-operation and co-ordinated action for a common goal . . . All three types of Gemeinschaft are closely interrelated in space as well as in time. (Tönnies, 1957, p. 42.)
It is debatable, however, whether this definition lends itself well to contemporary atomized suburban society.
The second popular use of 'community' involves the qualified use of the term to describe groups of individuals with a common cultural bond or interest. Thus one might speak of the 'academic community,' the 'black community,' the 'Sikh community.' Here the term does not implicitly rely upon conceptualizations of physical space but rather on notions of social space. A person is a member of such a community by virtue his or her social relations. They can also be described as a gathered community or a community of identity.
In this regard, 'community' could be said to be closer to Gesellschaft, in that relatively loose social ties are usually implied. Although this may not be the case in certain fairly strong social communities (such as the Jewish community or the Chinese-Canadian community), popular use of the term does seem to imply more casual and short-lived social interactions. This is particularly the case when the term 'community' is used to refer to groups of people coming together out of personal interests, such as hobbies, or professional groups.
2.3 Virtual communities.
The development of social and cultural patterns on online communications systems has brought with it the suggestion that another form of community, a 'virtual community,' has arisen. Virtual communities arise from an adaptation of the second popular definition of community above, communities of interest, to the world of online communications. (Rheingold, 1995.)
Here the term 'virtual' stems from the technical nomenclature and jargon of computer programming. In computing terms, 'virtual' refers to an effective working replacement and does not necessarily have any implications of mere approximation, although it can imply 'substitute.' The term is commonly used in the area of computer memory; 'virtual memory' being computer data stored temporarily on hard disk and not on faster but more costly computer chips.
Virtual community refers, then, to the social groupings of people that form on online systems. Such virtual communities are inevitably communities of interest and not of locale, brought together by diverse CMC tools, including mailing lists, Usenet newsgroups, online chat systems and so on. In 1978 Starr Roxanne Hiltz and Murray Turoff offered this telling prediction of what is now known as virtual community:
We will become the Network Nation, exchanging vast amounts of both information and social-emotional communications with colleagues, friends, and "strangers" who share similar interests . . . we will become a "global village . . ." (Hiltz and Turoff, 1993, p. xxv)
The term has been increasingly used in the media in recent years, particularly owing to the successful popularizing of the concept by Howard Rheingold in his book The Virtual Community. {2} He offers this definition:
Virtual communities are social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on . . . public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace. (Rheingold , 1993, p. 5.)
Rheingold bases much of the book on his own personal experience as a regular user of the well, an electronic conferencing system set up in 1985 in San Francisco's Bay Area by the publishers of the Whole Earth Catalog, a popular, populist and pragmatic catalogue of counter-culture tools and ideas that dates back to the Bay Area idealism of the late 1960s. The well is a relatively small multi-user system, with membership in the tens of thousands and not the millions. But according to both Rheingold and the well's own promotional literature it has developed a strong sense of online community and belonging amongst its users.
The concept has become extended to the Internet as well. An example of a loose-knit virtual community could be that of Ecto, an online community that has formed around an electronic Internet mailing list of the same name. Originally set up as a venue to discuss the works of American independent singer / songwriter Happy Rhodes and named after one of her albums, Ecto has since become a small but thriving virtual community of people around the world interested in a variety of 'ectophilic' music: music that generally features female vocals.
Although Ecto's chief focus remains its unusually friendly email list, 'real life' or face to face interaction is seen as an important part of its social cohesiveness. Ecto list members often hold small group gatherings, (in cities as far flung as Edinburgh, Vancouver and Wuppertal, Germany) attend live concerts together when possible and even circulate an 'Ectohostel' list. This latter lists the real life addresses of list members willing to host fellow 'Ectophiles' if they happen by and need somewhere to stay. Other aspects to Ecto include an irregular online IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channel for live conversations and an automated birthday list that notifies the group of list members' birthdays.
To an outsider such a virtual community may hardly seem as important as one grounded in the reality of everyday life. Yet many members of such online communities consider them an extremely important part of their daily social interaction. Ectophiles, for example, frequently report important life events to fellow list members-the birth of a child, the loss of a parent to cancer or an apartment flood, for example. The passing of one occasional list member, known to most only by his online nickname of 'Revvie,' inspired a series of touching online eulogies from online friends and acquaintances around the world, none of whom had known him in person. On this topic Rheingold, quoting Barlow, comments that "you aren't a real community until you have a funeral." (Rheingold 1991, p. 37.)
Do such social trends represent what Rheingold considers "the hunger for community that grows in the breasts of people around the world as more and more informal public spaces disappear from our real lives"? (Rheingold 1993, p. 6.) Or do they represent the precise opposite-an increasing reliance on artifice that is symptomatic of growing social isolation and alienation? Jacques Ellul, for example, objects strongly to the concept of virtual community. He argues:
. . . words are typically misused when there is said to be "community" between people who do not meet and who communicate only by teleconference with the help of computers. It is sheer bluff to talk about fellowship or community in such circumstances. It is audacious to say that teleconferences are the same as clubs or societies or bistros or salons. We have here an inhuman outlook which can abstract from clubs, etc., all that is specific and simply retain the fact that one can communicate. There may well be conviviality in them, but there is also selection and the exclusion of those who do not keep the rules, as R. Klatzmann points out. Klatzmann is right to talk about "electronic nomads." These living contacts between people far removed can be more real and significant for many of them than the real communities in which they live, and they thus change into electronic nomads with no roots in a place or a human setting. (Ellul, 1990, p. 344.)
Perhaps virtual community represents something that falls between these divergent views. As Fernback and Thompson suggest, "It is one of the supreme ironies of the utopian view of CMC that it is likely to reduce that felt sense of community that it so nostalgically seems to uphold as virtuous. In its place will be a community of interest in which members will be able to drift in and out." (Fernback and Thompson, 1995.)
2.4 Entirely virtual communities.
An extreme example of social interactions in a virtual context might be the elaborate constructed fantasy worlds that have become popular on online systems, of the kind that Pavel Curtis calls a "network-accessible, multi-participant, user-extensible virtual reality whose user interface is entirely textual." (Curtis, 1992.) Known under a variety of odd acronyms, such as MUD, MUSH, MOO, MUSE and MUCK, {3} in which the common denominator is the letter 'M' for 'multi-user,' such environments are, in a sense, the computer-based extension of fantasy role-playing games of the 1980s. (Reid, 1994. Rheingold, 1995.) The names of these systems are sometimes abbreviated as 'MU*,' in which the asterisk is a 'wild card' that substitutes for any character.
In online MU*s users take on the roles of various characters and act out their online fantasies in incredibly elaborate textual virtual worlds. In these worlds social interactions are entirely mediated by the computer. Most systems are completely anonymous: there is no way of knowing who other people on the MU* may be in real life. Even users' email addresses are only known by the top-level users, who are generally called 'wizards.'
These systems can thus be seen at a number of different levels. At one level MU*s are purely escapist entertainment populated by Ellul's electronic nomads. But unlike other such forms of electronic entertainment, such as television, MU*s are highly interactive in nature and rely upon the creativity and energy of their users. Bruckman writes that according to Langdon Winner "'social activity is an ongoing process of world-making.' In MUDs, this is true in a literal sense." (Bruckman, 1993.)
MU*s can also be seen as a kind of theatre in which the players and the audience are one. Frequently people invent fictional characters on their favourite MU*, and move these characters through the systems as though they were marionettes. Another analogy might be the fanciful masks worn by the participants of a masked ball. Virtual online soap operas of romance, intrigue and betrayal by various characters, known as 'tinyplots,' are a staple of the more social MU*s. {4} The terminology used on MU*s is theatrical and very revealing. The human being at the keyboard often refers to him or herself as the 'player,' and his or her virtual puppet as the 'character.' {5} On some systems players even preface comments with 'IC,' for 'in-character,' or 'OOC,' for 'out-of-character,' to emphasize the difference when necessary.
Ironically, these games nearly universally attempt to construct a virtual geography of fantasy places-islands, forests, distant planets. Although entirely based in the placeless medium of cyberspace they usually rely on geographical metaphor, perhaps reflecting some basic need to tie even virtual experiences to some form of mental geography.
Many have written enthusiastically of such virtual worlds. They note that, for instance, socially isolated people can develop a greater sense of self-worth and self-identity in an online world. Physically disabled people for example, who might have great difficulty interacting with other people in real life (often referred to as 'IRL' on the MU*s) are offered exciting new opportunities for self-expression online. (Reid, 1994.) These systems can also be seen as tools for exploring the self, as a kind of personality simulation environment. They have even been held as tools for reconceptualizing our definitions of self. Turkle comments that online environments allow for "an extravagance of experimentation - with gender switching, age-flexibility, and all the rest made so easy - (and thus) experiences in cyberspace are challenging us to revisit the question of what we mean by identity." (Brody, 1996.) MU*s are also a popular venue for amateur programmers and writers to express their interests, as they can create the elaborate software and write the textual descriptions that constitute these fantasy universes.
These virtual environments have moved beyond the realm of the hobbyist into well-funded academic research. A number of researchers have focused on the participatory environment-building inherent in most MU*s, and the potential this may hold for education technology. Pavel Curtis of Xerox PARC - Palo Alto Research Center - (Curtis, 1992) and Amy Bruckman of MIT's Media Laboratory (Bruckman, 1993, 1996) are particularly well-known for their MU*-related work.
But others find the prospect of legions of individuals lost in their electronic online worlds very disturbing. It may seem strange to someone unfamiliar with the technology, but there is an addictive quality to the online world of MU*s, IRC and other forms of online entertainment. It is not uncommon for a person to log in, became engrossed in exploring virtual worlds or meeting virtual people and look up to find that hours have passed by. Alarmist articles concerning virtual widows and widowers are beginning to appear in the popular press. As one interview respondent for this thesis wryly remarked, "Marriages are made on the Internet . . . and marriages are lost on the Internet."
Given this very real online phenomenon it is not hard to imagine dystopic science fiction scenarios which portray a world of disembodied people; pale atrophied bodies locked away in isolated cells; eschewing the real world in favour of fantasy creations delivered electronically. Clifford Stoll, known for his accessible accounts of computer security problems (Stoll, 1989) writes:
Much of what happens over the networks is a metaphor-we chat without speaking, smile without grinning, and hug without touching . . . How sad-to dwell in a metaphor without living the experience. The only sensations are a glowing screen, the touch of a keyboard, and the sound of an occasional bleep. All synthetic. (Stoll, 1995, pp. 43-44.)
But online users are quick to point out that although their imagined worlds are virtual they are also interactive, self-defined and self-built. The creative energy sublimated in the construction of elaborate MU*s, both in terms of programming and sheer imagination, is undeniable. This could be seen as marginally more constructive than the equally mesmerizing world of television, which has become an accepted part in our society. Unlike television viewers, who are essentially the passive recipients of pre-packaged commercial entertainment, online users frequently do make their own entertainment in many regards. Barlow suggests that online communications is "a major step past sitting there and watching another kind of glass tube which comes at you and offers no communication or connection whatsoever." (Barlow, 1994b.)
2.5 The place of community networks.
Community networks can be seen as embodying some of the tensions between the local and the global in this respect. Most community networks deliberately attempt to use placeless online systems to help build a local community defined by geography. Information focus is locally oriented. Most community nets, for instance, maintain directories of local community organizations. Sometimes these directories are simply static catalogues of phone numbers and addresses, and sometimes they are directories of entire Web pages for each group. Community networks also often restrict telnet (direct connection) access to other Internet sites, frequently allowing users to connect only to other community networks or systems run by local public or university libraries. They do this so that they are not seen as simply cheap access to the Internet, which users could then use as an inexpensive way to connect to games and other online facilities.
In the area of online participation, community networks generally reject the use of anonymous nicknames, or 'handles,' and require users to sign on by their real names. Most frown upon MU*s and do not permit such games-oriented activity on their systems, {6} although some community networks do support online chat systems-local IRC or sometimes programs known as 'talkers' to complement email communications. They thus self-consciously reject the casting of their online systems as purely virtual worlds.
Many supporters of community networks also make the optimistic assertion that the networks can be used to bring fractured communities together. For example, Morino writes:
. . . we believe that the local community is where our toughest social problems - crime, inadequate education, underemployment - will be solved, by the grass-roots efforts of the people who have the most personal stake in their solution. It is here that community networking takes on such relevance in helping people solve problems and addressing the needs of their day-to-day lives. Clearly, community networking is an emerging phenomenon with the potential to effect profound societal transformation. (Morino, 1994.)
This view - that community networks should be used as a tool for helping to create a self-sustaining community, might be related to what McKnight calls "building (a) community's capacity." (Cayley, 1994.) This emphasis on promoting community self-reliance recognizes the tradition of Alinsky, but focuses more on positive efforts that help a community to regenerate itself. Alinsky, writing primarily in the 1960s, when local governments were generally rather better funded than they are now, advocated the vigorous demanding of action from those government agencies responsible. (Alinsky, 1971.)
On community self-reliance Telecommunities Canada's Garth Graham comments,
I don't have any doubts that the kind of connectivity (inherent in community networks) and the virtualization of a kind of community development process allows people to coalesce around issues. (The connectivity allows them) . . . to think about issues in different ways, to perceive things in different ways, to perceive more of things.
And that's a sort of self-organizing principle. It's not that they form some formal committee structure and that that formal committee structure defines a problem and then negotiates principles and action plans and strategies and stuff like that. It's because the density of connectivity exists and things happen within it; people behave differently. They know more about what's going on and they know more about the possible consequences of what's going on. That changes their behaviour in relationship with each other. That's what changes the whole fabric and texture of community. (Garth Graham, personal communication, 1996.)