The Interactional Community: Emergent Fields of Collective Agency*

Social interaction is generally regarded as elemental to the notion of community. Within the broader discourse on community, the field‐interactional perspective is distinctive in its explicit focus on emergent social processes and community change dynamics. Wilkinson (1970) extended Kaufman’s (1959) early work on the interactional approach through an application of the social field concept to community action. In doing so, Wilkinson (1991) outlined several key linkages between social–symbolic interaction and community agency. Despite these promising beginnings, only a modicum of research has examined the theoretical or philosophical underpinnings of the interactional conception of community. This article explores the symbolic‐interactionist tenets undergirding the field‐interactional approach, most notably Mead’s (1934, 1938) discussion of generalized social attitudes and Blumer’s (1969a, 1969b) work on joint or collective action.     

Social Capital and Communities of Place1

Abstract This paper develops a framework for examining the questions: Does social capital make a difference for well being in communities of place? How might rural sociologists utilize social capital to further well being in communities? The author reviews social capital literature, contrasting rational choice and embeddedness perspectives. Opting for a marriage between embeddedness and conflict theory, he introduces entrepreneurial social infrastructure (ESI) as an alternative to social capital. ESI adds to social capital the notions of equality, inclusion, and agency. Research results are presented which support the embeddedness approach: community-level action (the community field) is not simply an aggregation of individual or organizational actions within the community; social capital and ESI contribute jointly and independently to community action. Examining economic development as a form of collective action, the author concludes?the following: a) ESI contributes to economic development, and b) inclusiveness (internal solidarity) is more closely related to community self-development while industrial recruitment is better predicted by strong external ties.     

Solidarity is in the heart,not in the field: joint Israeli–Palestinian peace movement organizations during the 2014 Gaza War

The social movement literature suggests that social movement organizations that work across difference and power asymmetry are dependent to some degree on shared and unified action in order to construct and sustain a sense of ‘we.’ Yet ironically, for two joint Israeli–Palestinian peace movement organizations, sustaining a cross-conflict collective identity during the 2014 Gaza War did not require unified action, but rather, independent action from the Israeli participants. This article makes the argument that in highly asymmetrical environments, and in particular, protracted conflict environments, unified visible action is not always required for maintaining a collective identity. Structural and cultural forces can impede the ability of activists to work across borders or conflict lines. In these situations, what may be required to sustain a collective identity that crosses over traditional community divides is the willingness of the group with more privilege and power to move forward in activity focused on their own community.     

Social Capital and Participation in Community Improvement Activities by Elderly Residents in Small Towns and Rural Communities*

Abstract This study critically reviews theoretical concepts and measurements of social capital and tests hypotheses that elaborate how four dimensions of social capital (informal social ties, formal social ties, trust, and norms of collective action) and sense of community are related to participation in community improvement activities for elderly residents in small towns and rural communities. Mail surveys of 2,802 elders in 99 small towns and rural communities in Iowa reveal that many elders are actively involved in their community. Social capital and sense of community are very important in predicting elderly participation in community improvement activities, but they relate differently to elderly community involvement. Formal ties and sense of community have much stronger relationships with community involvement than informal ties and norms of collective action. Generalized trust is not significantly related to elderly community involvement.     

"Sustainability" as a Dialogue of Values: Challenges to the Sociology of Development

Even in an increasingly polarized climate of global policy-making, the ideal of "sustainable development" retains currency across a remarkably broad swath of the political spectrum in debating alternative scenarios for the future. By adapting Weber's classic categories of value spheres and collective rationality, I distinguish contemporary approaches to operationalizing the concept of sustainability and elucidate the practical implications of each. For some, the social, ecological, and economic dimensions of sustainability are synergistic components of a single meaningful goal, pursued by either an overarching technique or a unifying ethic. In contrast to these unifying models, one may conclude that the dimensions of sustainable development invoke values that inevitably conflict in any complex social interaction to derive strategies for collective action. Framing the concept in such terms, as a dialogue of values , highlights the need to adapt social institutions to mediate value conflict at different scales, and points to opportunities for engaging development debates through applied research on comparative governance.     

Individual Stress,Collective Trauma,and Social Capital in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill*

This article examines persistent social impacts of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill (EVOS) by focusing on the relationship between social capital and chronic individual stress and collective trauma, using Hobfoll’s (1988) conservation of resources model of stress as an organizing framework. Data are based on in‐depth personal interviews conducted 14 years after the disaster. Analyses focus on the ways in which stress‐related behaviors associated with loss and threat of loss of various forms of resources have affected social capital in the renewable resource community of Cordova, Alaska. Findings reveal lower levels of trust, disruptions in associations, weakened social connections and networks, altered social discourses, diminished feelings of good will, and violations of norms of reciprocity. Behaviors associated with long‐term stress related to the EVOS and to the associated protracted litigation are indicative of diminished social capital. This research highlights the critical importance of social capital as a collective resource and illustrates the ways in which decreased social capital can exacerbate individual stress and collective trauma.     

Environmental Controversies,Interactional Resources,and Rural Communities: Siting Versus Exposure Disputes1

Abstract Differences in the types of social conflict occuring in facility siting disputes and toxic contamination cases are compared. An ecological-symbolic perspective and the concept of strong and weak ties are used to interpret the nature of social conflict in two rural Pennsylvania communities and in cases in the literature. Overall, community solidarity appears likely to be enhanced in siting disputes and undermined in exposure situations. To explain this, two conflict paths are developed that move from the presence or absence of the hazard agent to individual perceptions, the generation of collective threat beliefs and the formation of strong ties, the emergence of alternative leadership and its relationship to official authorities, and finally the formation of weak ties. In each case, the type of community conflict results from the nature of the perceived environmental threat and the social process that threat sets in motion. Practical implications for rural community development are discussed.     

Three simple models of social capital and economic growth

This paper proposes three models of social capital and growth that incorporate different perspectives on the concept of social capital and the empirical evidence gathered to date. In these models, social capital impacts growth by assisting in the accumulation of human capital, by affecting financial development through its effects on collective trust and social norms, and by facilitating networking between firms that result in the creation and diffusion of business and technological innovations. We solve for the optimal allocation of resources channelled into the building of social capital, examine the models’ comparative statics and dynamics, and demonstrate how a tax and subsidy scheme may correct the resource under-allocation that results from the public good aspect of social capital creation. Observed differences in social capital across countries are explained by differences in government policies and the possibility of multiple equilibria and social capital poverty traps.     

Perceptions of Self and Collective Efficacy in Community Organization Theory and Practice

The concepts of learned helplessness and locus of control have been shown to be reliable predictors of both individual and group behaviors across a wide variety of social situations. Little effort, however, has been directed at understanding the variables associated with these constructs which influence the decision of a disempowered group to take social action when faced with adversity or challenge. This paper analyzes the concepts of perceived self and collective efficacy and discusses how these variables in individual and group behavior impact organizing. The concepts of perceived and collective efficacy are drawn from social learning theory and, within the paper, are hypothesized as the linch pin between various conflict theories. It is argued that once disenfranchised persons are recruited into social action organizations, a certain amount of resocialization must occur that transforms perceived helplessness or personal inefficacy into learned hopefulness with its associated motivation to take action. The role of group leadership in promoting collective efficacy is discussed.     

Individual Participation in Collective Action in the Context of a Caribbean Island State: Testing the Effects of Multiple Dimensions of Social Capital

This article presents the findings of a case study examining the relationship between social capital and individual participation in collective action on a Caribbean island recovering from devastation inflicted by Hurricanes Ivan and Emily. Using data drawn from 114 residential surveys on the island of Carriacou, Grenada, over the summer of 2006, we empirically test social capital as a predictor of individual participation in both formal and informal civic events. In addition, we further the theoretical development of the concept of social capital by independently testing the relationships between its multiple dimensions, specifically social networks; interpersonal trust; and norms of reciprocity. We find that associational membership and age are the two strongest predictors, while interpersonal trust, gender, and marital status are also significant. Our path analysis reveals that there is not a significant direct effect between associational membership and interpersonal trust, suggesting that the two dimensions may have independent, yet complementary, influences. This study sheds light on factors influencing citizen participation in “civic” forms of collective action in a developing region of the world, while demonstrating the multidimensional nature of social capital.     

Toward a Social Theory of Resilience: Social Systems,Cultural Systems,and Collective Action in Transitioning Forest‐Based Communities

Impacts from post‐Fordist and poststaples economic transition in the Canadian natural resource sector have resulted in dramatic challenges to the livelihoods of many rural residents and the viability of many rural communities. This study seeks to understand community response to economic transition through a lens of social ecological resilience. This article puts forward Archer's theory of cultural morphogenesis as an analogous model of social ecological change that focuses attention on cultural systems, cultural elaboration, and collective action within an adaptive cycle of resilience. With case material from focused ethnographies of two forest‐dependent communities, we identify distinctive interactions between culture and agency over time that condition community response to change, and we make an analytical distinction between the social system and cultural system. These insights point to catalysts for collective action and adaptation within a resilient cultural realm that extend beyond institutional factors such as economic dependency or political opportunity. By integrating culture, we also deepen the social theory contribution to social‐ecological resilience.     

Overcoming a collective action frame in the remaking of an antinuclear opposition

Recent research on social movements considers collective action frames and collective identities to be resources or achievements of social movement activity because they symbolicly link individuals to a collective cause. This paper maintains that a collective action frame operates at a sociocultural level and can be redefined by groups external to a movement. Nuclear power proponents worked to suppress the first cycle of protest against nuclear plants by redefining the movements' collective identity, such that individuals were unable to recognize movement organizations as representative of their interests. Citizens within the Ten Mile Radius, a group opposed to the licensing of the Seabrook nuclear power plant, initiated a second cycle of protest by overcoming the collective action frame imposed on the movement. This case suggests that the articulation and the representation of dissent is constrained due to the inability of social movement groups to retain control over their own collective identity. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Eastern Sociological Society annual meeting, Baltimore, Maryland, April 1994.     

COLLECTIVE MOBILIZATION AND IDENTITY FROM THE UNDERGROUND: The Deployment of "Oppositional Capital" in the Harm Reduction Movement

Within social movement literature, the concept of collective identity is used to discuss the process through which political activists create in-group cohesion and distinguish themselves from society at large. Newer approaches to collective identity focus on the negotiation of boundaries as social movement agents interact with social structural forces. However, in their adoption of a perspective that holds identity as a process, these social movement studies neglect the more tangible cultural elements that actors manipulate when they express collective identity. This research project adopts a subcultural perspective in the Birmingham tradition to address the question of how social movement actors reapporpriate symbolic expressions of identity and what meaning systems they draw from that enable them to redefine "stigmatization" as "status" This article offers the concept of "oppositional capital" as a general framework for analyzing the symbolic work that social movement actors perform in their expressions of collective identity. For the purposes of analysis, the primary elements of oppositional symbolic expressions are divided into the four categories of distinction, antagonism, political activism, and popular cultural aesthetics. This article applies the concept of oppositional capital to representations of collective identity of a radical branch of political activism within the social movement of harm reduction. Specifically, it analyzes the zine, Junkphood to describe how actors within this social movement cohort are able to present their collective identity as part of an alternative status system by drawing from an economy of signs that are generally recognized as oppositional.     

“There Ain’t No Bond in Town Like There Used to Be”: The Destruction of Social Capital in the West Virginia Coalfields1

There is a paucity of research focusing on the circumstances that cause or contribute to a decline in social capital within communities. Furthermore, relatively few researchers employ qualitative methods in their studies of social capital, despite the multidimensional and many‐layered nature of this concept, characteristics that make social capital well suited for qualitative analysis. To address these two gaps in social capital research, I explore the mechanisms that have led to a depletion of social capital in the southern coal‐producing region of West Virginia. I examine whether the coal industry, which has caused bitter conflicts among residents over environmental degradation and union loyalties, has also undermined social capital in the region. My principal data include 40 semi‐structured, face‐to‐face interviews with randomly selected individuals in a coal‐mining town and a demographically similar non‐coal‐mining town in West Virginia. I analyze the experiences of residents in each town, assessing the qualitative differences in community and personal life associated with social capital. I find that the loss of social capital in the coal‐mining community has arisen through a combination of depopulation and the community‐wide conflict that arose when an anti‐union coal company bought out the union coal mine at which many in the community worked, challenging the union identity so engrained in this region.     

Unlocking the Talents‐in‐Waiting: Case Study Analysis of Chinese and Indian High‐Skilled Migrants in South Australia

Nations across the world and through time have used skilled migration mechanisms to boost economic growth and workforce competitiveness. However, effectively using these talents from abroad and transforming this collective human capital into valuable social capital is an on‐going challenge. This study applies a case study analysis of skilled migrants from China and India in South Australia and finds that there are multiple barriers to the successful integration of skilled migrants. These barriers tend to block the effective utilization of migrants’ skills and reduce the ability to advance social capital in the community. The study concludes by putting forward various policy recommendations to overcome these obstacles and outlines ideas for an effective application of a skilled migrant programme.     

ENTREPRENEURIAL SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE AND LOCALLY INITIATED ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN THE NONMETROPOLITAN UNITED STATES

A community embeddedness perspective hypothesizes that nonmetropolitan localities high on entrepreneurial social infrastructure (ESI) are more successful at implementing economic development projects than those lacking ESI. ESI is a format for converting social capital into organizational forms that facilitate collective action. Logistic regression revealed that localities with projects were more likely to have an unbiased newspaper, multiple contributions by financial institutions to community projects, and more external linkages, Project communities place more emphasis on citizen involvement through civic organizations than through local government. Community-based patterns of interactions and organization are associated with successful collective economic development action.     

Farmers' Contribution to Agricultural Social Capital: Evidence from Southern Spain

Social capital is the whole set of shared norms, values, attitudes, and beliefs that promote cooperation among individuals within the community and that has proved to be a key factor in explaining development processes. This article aims to provide an analytically reliable notion of social capital within the farming sector and a methodological tool for empirically measuring how social capital is accumulated at the farmer level. The theoretical framework proposed is based on the multidimensionality of the complex concept of social capital. Thus, to develop a comprehensive index for social capital, we identify three dimensions of the concept, structural, relational, and cognitive social capital, each one also comprising several subdimensions. This integrative approach permits creation of a composite indicator of the agricultural social capital accumulated at the farmer level, further identifying socioeconomic factors that influence its accumulation at that level. We empirically apply this methodological approach to farmers in Andalusia in southern Spain as a case study. This research provides an interesting starting point for informing policymakers about social capital and helping them implement the necessary programs to facilitate sustainable development in the agricultural sector.     

Training Bodies,Building Status: Negotiating Gender and Age Differences in the U.S. Fitness Industry

What role does the body play in facilitating interaction across status differences? Whereas previous scholarly work has focused on “roles” and “specialized knowledge,” I investigate how bodies, appearances, and physical abilities are also consequential in these exchanges through the concept of “bodily capital.” Coined by Bourdieu, bodily capital provides a way to understand why individuals invest time, energy, and resources into their bodies, and what they expect to receive in return. As a concept, bodily capital is necessarily broad as it encompasses a variety of forms, including athletic prowess, attractiveness, physique, muscle tone/strength, agility, and other modes of embodiment. Because the body is integral to a variety of status distinction-making processes, individuals invest in and exchange bodily capital to increase their relative status in specific fields. Drawing on interviews with 26 personal trainers and 25 clients, as well as more than one year of participant observation, I find that trainers and clients use bodily capital to negotiate gender and age differences, either by re-arranging interactional power dynamics or resisting stereotypes. The type of bodily capital that allows for such negotiations to take place, however, is the hegemonic thin-toned ideal—a classed and largely raced form of bodily capital that has purchase in the U.S. fitness industry. Although individuals in the study were able to use this form of capital to enable successful cross-status interactions, doing so reified the dominance of middle-class, white bodily aesthetics. Thus, while bodily capital may challenge some status hierarchies, it reinforces others.     

Dimensions of Community Attachment and Their Relationship to Well‐Being in the Amenity‐Rich Rural West*

Abstract This research had two primary objectives: 1) to broaden the sociological construct of community attachment to incorporate both social and natural environment dimensions of attachment, and 2) to examine how variations in attachment relate to two dimensions of well‐being in natural amenity‐rich rural communities. The specific dimensions of well‐being measured are two important factors identified in previous research—collective action and perceptions of open communication. Factor analysis of fourteen measures of attachment indicated social attachment and attachment to the natural environment are distinct dimensions of the broader concept of community attachment. Participation in collective action and perceptions of open communication within a respondent's community explained only a small portion of the variance in levels of both social and natural environment attachment. Religious affiliation and length of residence were strongly associated with social attachment, supporting findings from previous empirical work. However, length of residence and religious affiliation were not statistically associated with levels of attachment to the natural environment, further reinforcing the distinction between the two dimensions of attachment.     

The social capital crash in the periphery:: An analysis of the current predicament in sub-Saharan Africa

Purpose: The current literature on social capital, especially among sociologists and political scientists, is characterized by a focus on its “civic” nature and consequently on the role that virtuous behavior plays in fostering democracy and national development. Robert Putnam’s book on the significance of the civic tradition in understanding Italy’s political history has set the tone for a new genre of literature on development. It is now being replicated, for example in the international development community, where the search for answers to the question of what explains a society’s progress continues. Efforts to operationalize social capital in order to achieve quantitative measures of its impact are also made in these circles.The notion that social capital is made up of a common currency of civicness, however, is both ethnocentric and misleading for policy or governance purposes. Social capital being manifest in the presence of trust and the existence of social networks and operationalized in collective action, which implies the confidence in sharing information and risks with others, may arise for reasons other than those associated with solving public problems arising from the competitive private interests of autonomous individuals, which is the prevailing assumption of the rational choice-based theory that now dominates the literature. There are at least three other reasons for the formation of social capital if the concern is analyzing its role in developing country contexts. The first is class solidarity growing out of a common sense of being exploited. This has historically been viewed as a cause for collective action. The second is the “moral economy” argument put forward by James Scott: people whose traditional values are being threatened by modernization get together to defend these values. The third is cooperation that emanates from the presence of strong communal ties, which help foster the development of a para-public realm, often in conflict with the norms underpinning the civic public realm. In short, there are several competing currencies of social capital that influence people’s readiness to engage in collective action.Which of these types of collective action people prefer and the extent to which they engage in any one of them is very much determined by the history of previous efforts to form social capital. Whether these efforts were successful or not will have an impact on the strategies that individuals choose next time around. Investments in social capital, therefore, are driven by the same considerations that influence behavior and choice in the financial marketplace. Social capital is based on the notion that something is being obtained in return for a gesture of goodwill. It takes a reciprocal effort to sustain it. If mutuality is lost, so is the trust that was being built with the initial act of goodwill. Trust, once destroyed, is difficult to rebuild; hence the significance not only of forming such capital, but also its ruin. Above all, social capital is by nature exclusive, i.e. it cannot incorporate everybody. It is often being fostered in the context of conflict. In short, social capital is not easily engineered by outsiders. It has to grow organically from the social dynamics that characterizes society.The purpose of this paper is to provide an alternative explanation of the societal predicament of sub-Saharan African countries to those that have relied primarily on economic and/or structural variables. Using social capital as the dependent variable, it examines what forces produce social capital, what type of it prevails, and which group in society is more inclined towards one type rather than others. Empirical data were collected in Tanzania in 1990 from four different groups—commercial farmers, village farmers, peri-urban entrepreneurs and women groups—all of which are viewed as important players outside the state.Methods: The study shows that commercial farmers are the only group of respondents who display a civic approach towards solving problems facing them. They are driven to collective action by a genuine concern with policy issues and the need to deal with them in a rational fashion. They demonstrate an internal strength that is unparalleled in the other groups. Women groups show great internal solidarity, but their motive for joint action is largely driven by moral economy considerations, that is, the desire to protect or enhance traditional values. Moreover, their activities tend to be confined to very elementary livelihood issues and thus have little impact on the nature of the public realm. Village farmers, and to a lesser extent, peri-urban entrepreneurs, are primarily motivated by communal considerations, but unlike the other two groups, they display much less trust in each other. There is a serious crisis of confidence in the value of collective action among both village farmers and peri-urban entrepreneurs, but this does not mean that they are transcending communal loyalties in favor of some other type of collective action. On the contrary, they refrain from any collective action and prefer to act on their own to solve problems, many of which cannot be dealt with on such a basis.In explaining this loss in social capital that is so prevalent among groups that could play a crucial role in national development it is necessary to understand the political legacy that they are coping with. Policies that took away the spirit of self-reliance and self-help that was so prominent before and at independence among groups at both national and local levels by emphasizing the need for a centralized control of resource allocation and thus the preemption of voluntary action are according to respondents largely responsible for the destruction of social capital in Tanzania. The loss in Tanzania is a double one. It is not only the formal institutions which have collapsed but so have the informal networks that in many other countries may serve as a substitute to facilitate collective action. It is clear that the loss of trust in the Tanzanian countryside and its urban fringes has produced a general decline in social capital both at the micro and macro level. Individuals do not trust their neighbors to engage in solving many problems that are of a common nature. They instead rely on their own limited resources, typically what may be possible to mobilize within a narrow family setting. These resources are typically inadequate and problems of a common and public nature in the field of health, education and infrastructure remain unsolved. At the societal level there is a more generalized loss of social capital, which expresses itself in terms of a broad suspicion towards government as well as other modernizing institutions. Religious institutions which are often viewed as alternative trustworthy institutions and thus potentially of value for local development purposes have lost much of their public role. Instead, people flock to the “new” churches, often evangelical or prophetic institutions where salvation is being sought in an escapist manner. In sum, the negative externalities produced by the loss of trust in institutions and among people in Tanzania are very serious and are likely to be at the root of the country’s predicament as the only country in the world which without experiencing war, epidemics or a financial crash has plunged from being economically relatively well-off to being one of the world’s five poorest nations.Results: This study has important policy implications for what kind of “interventions” outside agencies or domestic actors in Tanzania may take. It is clear that the only group with enough internal strength to make a difference are the commercial farmers, who articulate a very “civic” outlook and reflect the type of rational calculations that we associate with game theoretic reasoning. Even if augmented with other members of the middle class, however, this group is quite small and it is difficult to see that it can carry the burdens of their country on their shoulders alone. Furthermore, if they were to become politically more active, they may easily be tainted by the “patrimonial” type of politics that still dominates Tanzania (and many other countries). Nonetheless, the commercial farmers have a potentially important contribution to make to economic development in the country. The marginalization of women means that human and social capital in the country is being wasted or misused. Greater efforts must be made to enhance the access that women have to public resources and to participation in public affairs.The loss of trust in both formal and informal institutions means that Tanzania poses an interesting challenge in terms of where to start rebuilding social capital. Accepting that it will not be an easy task, it may be that the weakness of informal networks provides an opportunity for giving priority attention to building up formal institutions that can make a difference. The judiciary is a case in point. Its upper echelons are already quite reliable and trusted, but its lower level judges are still easily corrupted and often operating in a manner that is detrimental to the cause of rule of law. To ensure a fairer resource allocation it may also be necessary to consider establishing alternative mechanisms to those controlled by the executive, because government operations tend to be based solely on patronage considerations. The model of autonomous development funds that is now being promoted in various African countries that supplement government expenditures is of special relevance in the current situation in countries like Tanzania.Conclusion: In conclusion, this paper draws attention to the need for acknowledging that games that people play are not only explained in conventional prisoner dilemma terms but need to be extended to consideration of games where the basis for choice is not only cognition but affection. Games based on affection tend to be exclusively zero-sum games, which ruin social capital much more quickly than cognitive games that offer the prospect of a positive-sum end to the game. Much of Africa’s societal predicament, therefore, can be explained with reference not only to social capital in general terms but also to the particular type of social capital that prevails and the type of “game” it gives rise to as people interact to deal with issues facing them as common problems. Especially problematic in Africa is that affective games are very inefficient in resolving disputes within groups or organizations. The notion of tit-for-tat that can be turned into a positive-sum game in the context of cognition-based or rational types of prisoners’ dilemma situations typically leads to either confrontation or withdrawal in the case of affective games. The tit-for-tat remains a pure zero-sum game where “retreat-for-tat” is often preferred as a way of avoiding embarrassment. As political scientists and sociologists are striving to strengthen the theoretical core of their respective disciplines, the presence of games that are played on a different bases than those conventionally modeled in game theory provides a challenge that at least those who are interested in comparative studies cannot escape.