Communities of fate v communities of choice.

Article from the Guardian. Extracts below. Relevant in the discussions about notions of community

The chosen
Stuart Jeffries

Our friendships have become a rare constant in a dislocated world

The Guardian 26th Nov 2005

Read the whole article at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5342223-103390,00.html

.....Fifty years ago, Vernon points out, people relied on their local neighbourhood. Now our ties are looser and we can roam colleges, jobs, cyberspace, lovers, rather than being tied to what have been called communities of fate. Now we live in communities of choice, where we can not only select our closest spiritual partners, but negotiate how close or how distant our relationships should be. We live in looser, more creative and as a result happier times. Or so goes the argument


.....
Pahl, whose research will appear shortly in a book called Rethinking Friendship: Hidden Solidarities Today, is trying to map the complicated terrain of modern friendship. He suggests seven types of friendship, four more than Aristotle. But then modern Britain is a more complex place than ancient Greece. They are:

1 A friend-like community, where a person depends more on friends than family, with close friends at the centre of the network, and more casual ones and relatives further way.

2 A friend-enveloped community, with close relatives (spouse and offspring) at the centre, and a larger group of friends around the family.

3 A family-like community in which family members outnumber friends.

4 Family-dependent - family outnumber friends.

5 Partner-focused, in which a couple keep friends and relatives at a distance.

6 Neighbourhood-focused, often formed by older people in close neighbourhood communities.

7 Professional-dependent, again often formed by older people whose most important friends are carers or social workers.

Across these types the average number of friends is 18. The survey by Pahl and his co-author, Liz Spencer, indicates family structures and neighbourhood ties may not be eroding quite so fast as some have suggested. Communities of fate have not yet been replaced by communities of choice. It also indicates that we might be members of different friendship communities at different times of our lives.

The survey suggests friendly solidarity has not been completely destroyed by selfish consumerism. Friendship has mutated rather than died, and become more instrumental than our utopian thinkers imagined it to be at best.