[Air-l] community-company, and all that

[Barry Wellman]

Folks,
I've been lecturing computer science audiences for years about
the fallacy of Presentism: that there is no need to look to the dark
pre-Wired ages for any knowledge.

Never thought I'd have to lecture social scientists, even those interested
in the Internet.

Well over a century ago, Ferdinand Tonnies started the community-company
debate going with his book about gemeinschaft and gesellschaft. Not that I
agree with his either/or approach, but a huge amount of theorizing AND
scholarship has developed around this issue.

At the risk of offending some, here's my quick take:
a community is a set of (possibly bounded) extra-household relationships
that provide sociability, support and identity.
A company is a set of legally defined rights and duties organized around
an economic purpose.
It's pretty clear that you can have community within a company -- that's
what much ofindustrial relations and communities of practice literature is
about. But even with that, community doesn't become an identity with
company. They are 2 analytically separate things.
Could you have "company" within community. To really push things, my sense
is that's what the 'wages for housework' folks a decade+ ago tried to do,
and that's why it failed.
Happy Whatever Holiday You're Celebrating
 Barry (who's celebrating cleaning his office)
 ___________________________________________________________________

  Barry Wellman        Professor of Sociology       NetLab Director
  wellman at chass.utoronto.ca   http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman
  
  Centre for Urban & Community Studies        University of Toronto
  455 Spadina Avenue   Toronto Canada M5S 2G8   fax:+1-416-978-7162
 ___________________________________________________________________

On Sun, 23 Dec 2001 air-l-request at aoir.org wrote:

> Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2001 12:01:00 -0500 (EST)
> From: air-l-request at aoir.org
> Reply-To: air-l at aoir.org
> To: air-l at aoir.org
> Subject: Air-l digest, Vol 1 #248 - 1 msg
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
> Today's Topics:
> 
>    1. Re: Community versus Company (John Daly)
> 
> --__--__--
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2001 14:55:01 -0500
> From: John Daly <dalyj at erols.com>
> Organization: self employed
> To: air-l at aoir.org
> Subject: [Air-l] Re: Community versus Company
> Reply-To: air-l at aoir.org
> 
> This discussion has been informative. I am interested in groups of
> people interacting over the Internet the way we are interacting via this
> listserve. So let me ask some questions about terminology.
> 
> Are we who are subscribed to the AoIR listserve a "community".? If so,
> what are characteristics that allow us to be so categorized? If, as I
> suspect, we would be better described be a term other than "community",
> what collective noun would you suggest?
> 
> Does the fact that there is an "Association of Internet Researchers"
> make a difference"? What would be the correct collective noun for a
> similar group subscribed to a listserve if subscribers did not link also
> through a formal organization?
> 
> Communities seem to involve institutionalized relationships and
> practices among community members. What, if any are the key
> institutional relationships and practices involved in our group (other
> than the formalized ones of the AoIR)?
> 
> Finally, what are the institutional factors that make participation in
> this listserve more (or less) valuable to our professional work?
> 
> --
> John Daly
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --__--__--
> 
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> End of Air-l Digest
>