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| Civilizing the City: from my little hometown in Cordoba to skyscrapers in Manhattan |
 PRINTABLE VERSION |
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.
Bibliography
Bauman, Z. (2001). Seeking safety in an insecure world, Cambridge, Polity Press. Pg. 159.
Beck, Ulrich. (1992). Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London, Sage 2000. What is globalization? Cambridge, Polity Press.
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Maria Belen Avellaneda
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