I was born in Cordoba, Argentina, under the rule of a military dictatorship responsible for human rights violations and a war against Great Britain. Subsequently, fragile democratic institutions were reinstated. My parents, my sister and I resided with our extended family. My grandparents had a big house where we lived together.
In our little neighborhood everyone used to know each other. The sense of security was everywhere because all the families were trustworthy. There was a park in the middle of our hometown with a church in the main corner. No one could avoid Sunday prayers because everyone would have noticed it. In Drucker’s words, community was compulsory in many aspects and, undoubtedly, Cordoba was a very traditional place to live in.
Due to an economic crisis that led to social turmoil, my parents moved to Buenos Aires seeking better opportunities. The change was enormous. The dimensions of everything were different: taller buildings, bigger schools, a greater sense of freedom and, naturally, less contact. I lived in Buenos Aires with my nuclear family for many years. During that period, I remember having profound links within a small group, while the number of people around me was higher. In simple words: greater quantity, lower quality. However, since I attended the same school all my life, my close friends turned out to be part of my own family.
Like many Argentineans, I have seen my country take the path of most other developing states, struggling to survive while applying pendulum-like policies that allow for only brief periods of stability. The lack of guiding principles and honest policy-makers has not only affected the domestic situation, but has also produced questionable courses of action vis-à-vis other nations. This situation, particularly after the economic debacle of 2001, caused great emigration to more developed regions like North America and Western Europe. In fact, I traveled abroad to study in New York, where I have been living for the last 3 months.
From my little hometown in Cordoba to skyscrapers in Manhattan, I have traveled miles in both distance and experience. The dimensions of everything have changed again. I am in the “Big Apple” and feel smaller than ever. The first days were amusing, but soon I realized that I was not a tourist, and that I had to live in an unfamiliar place with people I barely knew. A great sense of loneliness invaded me.
In cities like New York time is money, so there is not enough space for collective concerns, chatting or friendship. Crowded streets, fast movement, and lack of order increase robberies and crimes, and create a more insecure environment. The contrasts are also remarkable. On the one hand opulent buildings and stores, and on the other hand homeless and insane people lie in the streets. It is one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, and at the same time Manhattan is divided into ethnic ghettos.
In this era, when most people live in urban societies, what are the ways to avoid moral and social anomie? Is there any way to civilize the city? For Peter F. Drucker the solution is to develop a non-profit sector that will enhance communities within the city. However, how we should do it is not thoroughly clear. Furthermore, these communities must be constructive to the society as a whole and act as tools to create unity in diversity. For that reason the role of the private and public sectors is vital in contributing to community building.
It would be a serious mistake for policy-makers from complex societies that are not culturally homogeneous to stimulate the construction of communities that, in the long term, could divide the social blend into irreconcilable pieces. When different sectors of society work to accomplish the same goal, both unity and diversity are preserved.
In order to have a realistic approach to facing these challenges, it is essential to elucidate what it is understood by the term “community” or “Gemeinshaft”. Etymologically, the word comes from the Latin term “communitatus”, where “com” means together; “muni” means links or shared defense; and “tatus” means small. Therefore, it can be said that a community refers to a relatively small group of people that share common values, interests and identities which make them live together in a safe environment.
Communities are necessary in societies because they reduce moral decline and social anarchy. Additionally, they are crucial to fulfilling individual physiological needs like the sense of belonging, care, solidarity or trust. As Aristotle recognized many years ago, men are zoon politikons and cannot survive alone. For that reason it is not surprising that the loss of community connections and cohesion in modern times has ascended to the top of many national-civic agendas. More than ever, the active participation of people in communities and the construction of a culture of citizenship and civic responsibility are needed.
Since it is through the process of socialization that individuals internalize behavioral patterns and rules to live in harmony with others, socialization agents are crucial when building or strengthening communities. Five agents may illustrate clearly how they contribute when cooperating: Family, Education, the Private Sector, Government, and the Non-profit Sector.
Family is a primary socialization agent, and it is the place where our strongest values are embedded. Creating a sense of community and awareness in children is the first step in the genuine construction of communities. The value of solidarity is initially learned by following the example of parents. Usually, in families where parents participate actively in communitarian affairs, children tend to imitate their models.
Schools are the first formal socialization agent, where children learn how to interact with peers and adults. The importance of team spirit and fellowship is learned at school. Specifically, students learn that they can not carry on alone and that working with others is a positive for the “parts and the whole”. When educational institutions create programs where children and youth are involved in their community through philanthropic events, they are contributing to the development of more responsible future generations.
During adulthood, work may act to strengthen the participation of individuals in their communities. For example, many companies have developed specific departments related to Corporate Social Responsibility and instill the value of community in their employees by promoting volunteering, fundraising and payroll giving. The private sector can also contribute through the implementation of sustainable community projects.
The role of businesses in society goes far beyond charity by investing in the community’s social progress. In the last years, many companies have understood that they can not ignore the social environment in which they operate. Latin America, where governments nationalized companies and poor populations assaulted and took over factories, might demonstrate the risk that businesses suffer when destructive communities enclose them. Nowadays, corporations account for their social, economic and environmental impacts. They work at different levels, from local communities to international affairs, to enhance sustainable development and empowering citizenship.
The Government is in charge of playing a leading role in creating standards and rules for the appropriate coordination of the different communities within a society to promote unity. It is the Government’s job to stimulate, regulate and monitor companies and organizations that provide public goods to develop the communities in which they are situated. Besides, in democratic nations, the political system must be able to accommodate the demands of communitarian leaders when making laws and policies.
This previous contributions of families, schools, the private sector and the government are the basis for the work of the non-profit sector in building communities. The non-profit or “third sector” is comprised of a variety of organizations whose primary objective is to serve public benefit by supporting issues of public concern. Generally, these institutions are composed of volunteers and are independent from formal structures of government:
“Communities as we know them would not exist without volunteers…Without volunteering our cities would be wastelands, devoid of nearly all that is humane… Recreational, education, and health services would be pared to the bone and many would simply die off without volunteers; the arts and cultural dimensions of community that enrich our lives and our spirits would surely fail to exist; faith-based communities would wither; disaster services, including firefighting, paramedic services, and search and rescue teams in many small communities would be skeletal at best, non-existent at worst; the political system would fail without all those… the hospice and adult literacy movements would lose their essential volunteer workers without volunteer advocates, the environmental lobby, the social justice movement, civil rights, and most other activist agendas would simply cease to exist."
It is time to recognize that any sector by itself cannot be responsible for the required social change in our urban life. Only the joint contribution and leadership of different sectors will provide us the opportunity to achieve a better lifestyle for this generation and for generations to come. The synergies derived from better networks among individuals, groups, businesses, organizations and governments will generate more the conscious, participatory and accommodative populations needed to ensure unity in our heterogeneous world.
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