Liberty, Equality, and...Community in Appalachia
A thick sense of community has been in decline during the past half-century plus, and that's in part because we’ve come to treat community so abstractly.
APPALACHIA—Community is a theme that will feature prominently at Common Appalachian, so I wanted to touch on a few of the ways in which it embeds into the political and cultural landscape for me, and what I usually mean when I refer to community.
In short, a thick sense of community has been in decline for many of us during the past half-century plus (a few reasons briefly highlighted below), and a big part of that has to do with how we’ve come to treat the concept of community so abstractly.
Let’s dig in.
The Neglect of Community
Three principles derived from the French Revolution reside at the foundation of most American political projects: liberty, equality, and fraternity.
Core values of what has come to be known as liberalism in the Western Hemisphere (and Western Europe), each pillar of this triad has been challenged, undermined, valorized, and neglected at various times throughout history in the Blue Ridge, as well.
In contemporary conversations, I find it helpful to group these pillars into oft-used words people loosely associate with them for their rhetorical force:
Liberty: freedom, autonomy, independence, personal choice, free will, individual conscience, right to choose, self-government, sovereignty, and “live and let live.”
Equality: equity, justice, social justice, fairness, civil rights, equal opportunity, equality before the law, fair treatment, and tolerance.
Fraternity: brotherhood/sisterhood, family, fellowship, loyalty, affinity, social cohesion, community, solidarity, love and compassion, social capital, and cooperation.
In theory, the supposed fruitfulness of liberalism rests on the shoulders of a well-informed public that nurtures a shared fervor for liberty, equality, and fraternity. By holding these tenets in balance, much like a tripod, democratic communities are promised greater stability, prosperity, peace, and, ultimately, abundant opportunities for flourishing.
Sadly, much political and cultural discourse today centers around only the first two of these values, to the incredible detriment of Appalachians.
If we were to look within and beyond the hills and hollers of our region, it’s not uncommon to hear American politicians and pundits wax passionately about liberty and equality, with very few championing the communal. We hear about how people and policies “want to take away our freedoms,” or how fundamental it is that we have “equal rights.”
But what do we say about fraternity?
This particular use of the word fraternity, however, has gone out of vogue. Instead, I find community maintains many of the same connotations I appreciate, so that is the way I tend to frame the political commitment to solidarity, love, affinity, obligation, and cooperation I associate with the term.
But I’m often left wondering: Who is standing up for community? Do we even have a meaningful notion of community in our very online, mass-scale, and increasingly abstract lifestyles?
The Atomized Generation
Community is sometimes quantified by social scientists in the form of social capital, a concept popularized by Robert Putnam in his book Bowling Alone (2000), which details the dramatic decline (and potential revivial) of community in the United States since the 1960s. Social capital can be understood as the benefits we enjoy as a result of fostering strong relationships and networks of cooperation that help society function properly.
In summary, due to a variety of factors—including the not-so-mundane shift from front porches to back decks, atrophying participation in social clubs and organizations (people bowling alone rather than joining leagues, for instance), car culture and suburbanism, and the focal point of entertainment moving from public spaces to TVs in family living rooms (and now, to private handheld devices in secluded bedrooms), to name only a few— Putnam argues our sense of community has dwindled, and along with it so have the fruits we once reaped from social capital.
These trends have also contributed to what may be called “the Atomized Generation,” a cultural moment Willow Liana describes using the concept of atomization to articulate the contrast between hyper-individualism and a more communitarian mindset: “Atomization is the process by which larger units—compounds or cultures, molecules or families—are broken down into their subcomponents, their individuality gaining clarity as their relationships disintegrate.”
You get the picture.
She goes on to say, “Culturally, we lack the social technology which once would have bound us together. We are atomized in that our lives are less intertwined, but also in that we are less able to withstand close contact and the constraints it brings—this is seen in a breakdown of both romantic relationships as well as friendships.”
Liana believes that “society has changed significantly over the last several years, and many of the solutions that once held us together seem unfit to the new texture of the world, and the new challenges it brings.”
She observes people wrestling with this collection of problems in many ways. and, ultimately, she thinks atomization is “more complex than most realize, and we are in many ways culturally and psychologically unequipped to deal with it.”
There are many things to dissect from Putnam’s groundbreaking and incredibly rich book and Liana’s observations, but I want to focus on just one thing I believe contributes to a lot of our cultural and political problems.
A thicker and more concrete sense of community has been replaced by a hollowed-out and more abstract notion. Many of us lack a fructiferous sense of community. Instead, we’re failing to plant the seeds or tend to the fields where tangible community originates.
But what do I mean by community?
What Is Community?
We frequently talk about community when referring to a particular ethnic or religious group, such as evangelical Christians or Mexican Americans. Sometimes we cite fandoms as communities, such as Marvel fans or the Carolina Panthers fans. Elected officials will often refer to their municipality, county, and state as a community.
And, of course, we apply the label to social identities, such as the LGBTQ community.
Yes, these conceptions of community are meaningful (to certain degrees). Otherwise, nobody would use them. They speak to a cluster of commonalities, interests, traits, and experiences, however broadly and imperfectly.
Admittedly, these lean conceptions bear some resemblances to what I mean by community, but I believe each of these tends to be thinly constrained or overly abstract wherever they fall short of one fundamental feature of community.
Place.
Communities grow out of particular localities. The further we move away from the embodied and ecological, the more brittle and sterile our cultures tend to become. They are thickest and most animating when rooted in a specific geographic location.
The Appalachian author, poet, and essayist Wendell Berry vigorously articulates what it means for community to require particularity and place.
“By community,” he writes in his essay “Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community” (1993), “I mean the commonwealth and common interests, commonly understood, of people living together in a place and wishing to continue to do so. To put it another way, community is locally understood interdependence of local people, local culture, local economy, and local nature.”
Community is at its most meaningful and most fruitful when it is local. It must have a shared sense of place to genuinely thrive. A plant without fertile soil in which to protect its roots will die.
“Community, of course,” he continues, “is an idea that can extend itself beyond the local, but it only does so metaphorically. The idea of a national or global community is meaningless apart from the realization of local communities.”
Berry also speaks of community as a victim of forces I consider endemic to mass politics and mass culture (a common story across many Appalachian communities):
“Community life is by definition a life of cooperation and responsibility. Private life and public life, without the disciplines of community interest, necessarily gravitate toward competition and exploitation. . . . As our communities have disintegrated from external predation and internal disaffection, we have changed from a society whose ideal of justice was trust and fairness among people who knew each other into a society whose ideal of justice is public litigation, breeding distrust even among people who know each other.”
Notably, community isn’t solely the people around us, he notes. This is where stewardship of the natural world fits in.
In his 1993 essay “Conservation and Local Economy,” Berry says, “If we speak of a healthy community, we cannot be speaking of a community that is merely human. We are talking about a neighborhood of humans in a place, plus the place itself: its soil, its water, its air, and all the families and tribes of the nonhuman creatures that belong to it.”
We must care for and love our ecology just as we must tend to the hopes, sufferings, and interests of human community members—the folks we encounter in our third places, farmer’s markets, watering holes, parks, county meetings, town halls, and congregations.
I firmly believe liberty and equality are vital to a thriving Appalachia, but I am worried that the neglect of local community and apathy for solidarity with one another continues to make us more susceptible to the large-scale cultural forces and political machinery that leave us socially atomized, economically imperiled, and emotionally starved.
I know I’ve experienced it. I’m sure many of you have, as well.
But, if we can focus more of our hearts and minds on cultivating local community, in addition to liberty and equality, then we can better withstand the challenges we face in the twenty-first century.
After all, a three-legged chair can remain incredibly stable even while standing on uneven ground.