Association and community.

Darwin has a thought-provoking post about chosen and unchosen communities, and their relationship to things like insurance.

One of the things I found most interesting about Marglin’s analysis was his distinction between "community" and "association". By his definition, community is not merely a place where one finds companionship, society and mutual aid, but also a group which one cannot leave without fairly serious cost. According to the old adage that you can chose your friends but you can’t choose your family, community is much more along the lines of family than friends.

An association may seem to have nearly all the same benefits as community: companionship, society and mutual aid. But an association is a group which one joins based on some sort of identified commonality and which one may leave at any time with fairly little cost.

Marglin argues that many structures which used to be communities in the past have become associations. While people used to experience serious costs if they left their occupations or neighborhoods, society and societal expectations have changed to make these relatively painless moves. Similarly, people now church shop with relative ease, while in the past leaving a church was a nearly unthinkable move.

Boy, this distinction has really clarified something in my mind.   I have an acquaintance, a woman, another mother at home with small children, who says when you talk to her that she’s very committed to finding a "community" or "tribe" of mutual support and friendship.  She has gone about it, though, in a way I’ve always characterized as community activism.  She is forever trying to found new mother’s connections, attachment-parenting support groups, homeschooling support groups and the like.  It seems every year she’s got some new support group running.  "What this woman needs isn’t a support group," I was telling another mom the other day.  "She needs a FRIEND." 

She’s mistaken "associations" (as defined above in Darwin’s quote) for "community."

Even if you choose a community rather than having it chosen for you by birth or social class, the essence of community is risk.  Risk of becoming attached.  Risk of being hurt by being left. 

There’s more in that post… read the whole thing.