Communitarianism

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COMMUNITARIANISM

Communitarianism is part of the neo romantic reaction to rationalism. It emphasizes moral and social values and the societal institutions that support them, especially community and its traditions, passions and beliefs, religion, and the habits of the heart. Communitarianism is not blind to facts and logic, the cool calculations of the rational mind, or the importance of science, technology, and economic progress. Nevertheless, it is concerned that such perspectives may override, if not ignore, other human considerations, to which communitarianism is attentive. For the same reasons, communitarianism seeks to balance concern for individual rights and liberty with concerns for the common good and community.

Definition and History

The term communitarian was first introduced in 1841, to mean "of, pertaining to, or characteristic of a community or communistic system; communitive." It was infrequently employed from then until the mid-twentieth century.

Several critics have argued that the concept of the community is of questionable value because it is so ill-defined. In The Myth of Community Studies, Margaret Stacey (1974) argues that the solution to this problem is to avoid the term altogether. In the same publication, Colin Bell and Howard Newby similarly point out, "There has never been a theory of community, nor even a satisfactory definition of what community is" (p. xliii).

Amitai Etzioni (1996) has nevertheless argued that community can be defined with reasonable precision. Community has two characteristics: first, a web of affect-laden relationships among a group of individuals, relationships that often crisscross and reinforce one another (as opposed to one-on-one relationships); and second, a measure of commitment to a set of shared history and identity—in short, a particular culture. David
E. Pearson stated, "To earn the appellation 'community,' it seems to me, groups must be able to exert moral suasion and extract a measure of compliance from their members. That is, communities are necessarily, indeed by definition, coercive as well as moral, threatening their members with the stick of sanctions if they stray, offering them the carrot of certainty and stability if they don't" (Pearson 1995, p. 47)

Among early sociologists whose work is focused on communitarian issues (though they did not draw on the term) are Ferdinand Tönnies (1855–1936), especially his comparison of the Gemeinschaft and Gessellschaft; Emile Durkheim (1858–1917), particularly his studies of the socially integrating role of values and the relations between the society and the person; and George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) in his work on the self. Other early relevant sociological works are those of Robert E. Park, William Kornhauser, and Robert Nisbet.

While the term communitarian was coined in the mid-nineteenth century, ideas that are essentially communitarian appear much earlier. They are found in the Old and New Testaments, Catholic theology (for example, the emphasis on the Church as a community), more recently in socialist doctrine (for example, writing about early communes and workers' solidarity), and finally subsidiarity—the principle that the lowest level of authority capable of addressing an issue is the one best able to handle it. In essence, moral judgments are best made at the community level rather than from the higher governing bodies.

Balancing Liberty with the Common Good

In the 1980s, communitarianism was largely advanced by political theorists Charles Taylor, Michael Sandel, and Michael Walzer. They criticized liberalism for overlooking that people can have a strong attachment to their societies. They lamented liberalism's focus on individualistic self-interest.

Since that time, two main forms of communitarianism have emerged. Authoritarian communitarians, who typically concern themselves with Asian culture, argue that to maintain social harmony, individual rights and political liberties must be curtailed. Some emphasize the importance of the state to maintain social order (for instance, leaders and champions of the regimes in Singapore and Malaysia), and some focus on strong social bonds, morality, and traditional culture (as in Japan). Some Asian communitarians also hold that the West's notion of liberty actually amounts to anarchy, that strong economic growth requires limiting freedoms, and that the West uses its idea of legal and political rights to chastise other cultures.

In 1990 a new school of communitarianism developed. Among its leading scholars are political theorist William A. Galston, legal scholar Mary Ann Glendon, political scientist Thomas Spragens, Jr., writer Alan Ehrenhalt, and sociologists Philip Selznick, Robert Bellah and his associates, and Amitai Etzioni. The work of these authors laid the foundations in 1990 for the second form of communitarianism: responsive (democratic) communitarianism.

Responsive communitarianism assumes that societies have multiple and not wholly compatible needs, in contrast to philosophies built on one core principle, such as liberty. In communities, there is an irrepressible tension between exclusion and inclusion, and between civility and piety. Thus community is not a restful idea, a realm of peace and harmony. On the contrary, community members must recognize and deal with competing principles. Responsive communitarianism assumes that a good society is based on a balance between liberty and social order, and between particularistic (communal) and society-wide values and bonds. This school stresses the responsibilities that people have to their families, kin, communities, and societies. These exist above and beyond the universal rights that all individuals command, which is the main focus of liberalism.

While a carefully crafted balance between liberty and social order defines a generic concept of the good society, communitarians point out that the historical-social conditions of specific societies determine the rather different ways that a given society in a given era may need to change to attain the same balance. Thus, contemporary Japan requires much greater tolerance for individual rights, while in the American society excessive individualism needs to be curbed.

To achieve this balance, unlike laissez faire conservatives and welfare liberals who differ mainly with regard to the respective roles of the private sector and that of the state, communitarians are especially concerned with the third sector, that of civil society. They pay special attention to the ways that informal communal processes of persuasion and peer pressure foster social responsibilities for the common good.

Communitarians are also concerned with the relationship between the self and the community. Political theorists depict the self as "embedded," implying that the self is constrained by the community. Responsive communitarians stress that individuals who are well integrated into communities are better able to reason and act in responsible ways than are isolated individuals, but if social pressure to conform rises to high levels, it will undermine the individual self and therefore disrupt the balance.

This issue is reflected in questions that arise when associations of scientists and professions such as engineering address ethical and policy issues relevant to their work. Should the decisions involved, say whether or not to proceed with human cloning, be made by each scientist or by their informal communities or associations? And what role, if any, should the public and its elected representatives have in making these decisions? Closely related are similar questions such as to how to deal—and above all, who should deal—with instances of fraud in research, misappropriation of funds, and violations of security.

Communitarianism's Critics

Critics generally suggest that those who long for communities ignore the darker side of traditional communities. "In the new communitarian appeal to tradition, communities of 'mutual aid and memory,"' writes Linda McClain (1994), "there is a problematic inattention to the less attractive, unjust features of tradition" (p. 1029). Amy Gutmann (1985) pointedly remarks that communitarians "want us to live in Salem" (p. 319), a community of strong shared values that went so far as to accuse nonconformist members of witchcraft during the seventeenth century.

Communitarians counter that behind many of these criticisms lies an image of old, or total, communities, that are neither typical of modern society nor necessary for, or even compatible with, a communitarian society. Old communities (traditional villages) were geographically bounded and the only communities of which people were members. In effect, other than escaping into no-man's-land, often bandit territories, individuals had few opportunities for choosing their social attachments. In short, old communities had monopolistic power over their members.

New communities are often limited in scope and reach. Members of one residential community are often also members of other communities, for example work, ethnic, or religious ones. As a result, community members have multiple sources of attachments; if one community threatens to become overwhelming, individuals will tend to pull back and turn to another for their attachments. Thus, for example, if a person finds herself under high moral pressure at work to contribute to the United Way, to give blood, or to serve at a soup kitchen for the homeless, and these are lines of action she is not keen to follow, she may end up investing more of her energy in other communities—her writers' group, for instance, or her church. This multi-community membership protects the individuals from both moral oppression and ostracism.

Another criticism is that communities are authoritarian. Derek Phillips (1993), for instance, remarks, "[C]ommunitarian thinking ... obliterates individual autonomy entirely and dissolves the self into whatever roles are imposed by one's position in society" (p. 183). As the political scientist Robert Booth Fowler (1991) puts it, critics "see talk of community as interfering with the necessary breaking down of dominant forces and cultures" (p. 142). Some critics mean by this that communities are totalistic, a point already covered. Others mean that they are dominated by power elites or have one group that forces others to abide by the values of those in power.

Communitarians find that this criticism has merit but is misdirected. There are communities both past and present that have been or still are authoritarian. The medieval phrase Stadt Luft macht frei ("the air of the cities frees") captures what the farmers of traditional villages must have felt when they first moved into cities at the beginning of the industrial era. (Poor working conditions and slums aside, being away from the stricter social codes of their families and villages seems to have given them a sense of freedom, which in some cases led to anarchic behavior.) Totalitarian communities exist in contemporary societies, such as North Korea. However, most contemporary communities, especially in communitarian societies, are not authoritarian even when they are defined by geography. Also, the relative ease of mobility means that people often choose which community to join and within which to live. Agnostics will not move into a Hasidic community in Brooklyn, and prejudiced whites will not move into a neighborhood dominated by the Nation of Islam.

Science and technology help open up societies and they promote relatively empirical, rational approaches to the world. New communications technologies, such as the Internet and satellite dishes, help undermine authoritarian regimes. However, no one should assume that on their own, these devices are capable of delivering a truly democratic state—especially when such technological advances are not accompanied by a proper change in values, as has been seen in Russia, Singapore, and China in the early twenty-first century.

Contemporary Issues

Communitarians have developed several specific concepts and policies that draw on their philosophy. They favor shoring up families, not traditional-authoritarian ones but peer marriages (in which mothers and fathers have equal rights and responsibilities). They fostered schools that provide character education rather than merely teach, but avoid religious indoctrinization. They developed notions of community justice, in which offenders, victims, and members of the community work together to find appropriate punishments and meaningful reconciliation. Communitarians favored devolution of state power, and the formation of communities of communities (within national societies and among nations), among many other policies.

Following the growing popularity of the concept of civic society, Etzioni (1999) argues that contemporary civic society is insufficient because it tends to be morally neutral on all matters other than the attributes that citizens need to make themselves into effective members of a civic society, for instance, the ability to think critically. In contrast, a good society seeks to promote a core of substantive values, and thus views some voluntary associations and social activities as more virtuous than others.

In the same vein, communitarians argue that while everyone's right to free speech should be respected, some speech—seen from the community's viewpoint is morally highly offensive and when children are exposed, damaging. For instance, the (legal) right to speak does not render verbal expressions of hate (morally) right.

Science has long been associated with rational thinking and in turn with secularism. Indeed, historically, science has often been considered antithetical to religion. However, communitarians are concerned with the moral fabric of society and they find religion one source of moral values. A communitarian may prefer to divide the issues people face among those that are subject to rational or scientific analysis and those that belong to a different sphere, reserved for belief. These include questions such as is there a god, why people are cast in this world born to die, what people owe their children and members of their community, among others.

Closely related is the question of a proper balance between the two sectors. Since the enlightenment, the sector of rationality (and within it science and technology) has increased dramatically in western societies. Communitarians ask whether in the process resources and time dedicated to the family, social and public life, culture, and spiritual and religious activities have been neglected.

While sociologists made numerous contributions to altered communitarian thinking, in turn communitarian philosophy has challenged sociology to face issues raised by cross-cultural moral judgments. Sociologists tend to treat all values as conceptually equal; thus, sociologists refer to racist Nazi beliefs and those of free societies by the same "neutral" term, calling both values. Communitarians instead use the term virtue to indicate that some values have a high moral standing because they are compatible with the good society, while other values are not and hence they are "aberrant" rather than virtuous.

AMITAI ETZIONI

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bell, Daniel A. (2000). East Meets West: Human Rights and Democracy in East Asia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Is liberal democracy universal? Daniel Bell explores this question with a look at Asian societies. Bell criticizes the "Asian values" perspectives, but finds that drawing on East Asian cultural traditions can create a model for political institutions that differs substantially from western-style democracy.

Bellah, Robert Neelly, ed. (1996). Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Argues that democratic communities must focus on forces that humanize markets and government administrative powers.

Etzioni, Amitai. (1996). The New Golden Rule. New York: Basic Books. A foundational work of new communitarian theory. This book argues for the need to balance freedom with morality, and automony with community. It paves the way for a social order largely based on moral suasion rather than coercion.

Etzioni, Amitai. (1999). The Limits of Privacy. New York: Basic Books. An exploration of the right to privacy and the potentially negative impact it can have on public health and safety. Suggests criteria when privacy ought to yield and when it needs to be further extended. Case studies include sex offenders; HIV testing; medical records; ID cards; and encrypted communications.

Fowler, Robert Booth. (1991). The Dance with Community: The Contemporary Debate in American Political Thought. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.

Glendon, Mary Ann. (1993). Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse. New York: Free Press. Contends that the rise of the language of rights in Western discourse has stifled real discussion, debate, and even the liberties that it seeks to protect.

Gutmann, Amy. (1985). "Communitarian Critics of Liberalism" Philosophy And Public Affairs 14 (3): 308–322.

Kornhauser, William. (1959). The Politics of Mass Society. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.

McClain, Linda C. (1994). "Rights and Irresponsibility" Duke Law Journal 43 (5): 989.

Nisbet, Robert. (1962). Community and Power. New York: Oxford University Press.

Pearson, David E. (1995). "Community and Sociology" Society 32 (5): 44–50.

Phillips, Derek L. (1993). Looking Backward: A Critical Appraisal of Communitarian Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Sandel, Michael. (1998). Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Liberal societies try to avoid imposing value judgements on their members so that each individual is free to pursue the principles that meet with their interpretation of the good life. But do such principles exist? Sandel critiques this form of democratic liberalism.

Stacey, Margaret. (1974). "The Myth of Community Studies" In Sociology of Community: A Collection of Readings, ed. Colin Bell and Howard Newby. London: Frank Cass & Co.