The Long Tail of Community
When I started to think about Chris Anderson's book The Long Tail, I thought about the thousands of niches being created in philanthropy. In my post on that topic I posed the question "what is community to you?", I received responses that made me pause and reflect: "there is this long tail of community as well."
In our world --- Civil Society -- United Way---- we use the term community so often, yet it means different things to different individuals.
As individuals reflected on community, I heard comments such as:
In our world --- Civil Society -- United Way---- we use the term community so often, yet it means different things to different individuals.
As individuals reflected on community, I heard comments such as:
- "It's a tug between feeling smaller and bigger at the same time!"
- "I have a strong point of view that it takes collective interests and "niche" interests"
- "From casual networks on myspace to global activist groups like the One Campaign: www.one.org, to local issues like the Clean Downtown Initiative: www.cleandowntown.org, each can represent our idea of community and geography as rapidly as your mouse can click."
The volume and velocity of change is creating a "wobbling affect" for us when we think about our lives in community. This idea of feeling smaller and bigger at the same time is a powerful one: navigating that spectrum is creating a unique challenge for individuals and institutions.
I think the comment by 'anonymous' in the Long Tail of Philanthropy blog is the right insight facing our work: "one just wonders if the relationships are all a bunch of fragmented "choirs" -- or if they will come together for common purpose. "
Where in your community do you see the "coming together for common purpose?"
1 Comments:
Although my timely response may indicate otherwise, I was quite interested in this posting.
I had a conversation on this topic recently with some friends.
The discussion began around the difficulty many of us have making time to contribute to community service projects or non-profits as we get older, because of the increasing demands family and profession have on our time and resources.
We joked that our “worlds” continue to change, although in reality, our communities are changing.
We found that most of us had to give up volunteering or contributing to some agency or program, despite our passion for the cause or population served, because our priorities were reordered. The prominence those agencies or causes held in our individual community changed at some point.
I suggest that our community is defined by geography only when we confine ourselves to thoughts about the physical space around us. When we think of community as a group existing in the same area, it’s how we define the area we share that determines community.
For some folks, that shared area of interest may be childhood development, while others may share interests in technology or sports. Similarly, many individuals define community by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, physical ability and other factors that have less to do with geography than shared interest.
I recall one of the first focus group sessions in which I participated during the IST process. When the facilitator asked participants to think about an aspiration for the community, the first response he received was a request to “define community?”
That focus group was made up largely of longtime community developers and organizers.
Most of them seemed to define community by the area in which they lived or committed their time and energy to rebuilding. But collectively, they also shared an interest in seeing the entire region improve -- community by community.
And at the end of the day that’s what we have to do. Get more metro Detroiters to understand that the wellbeing of their respective “community,” however they choose to define it, is tied to those around them – in both the figurative and literal senses.
By R. Monts, at 6:18 PM
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