Community Networks
As my wife and I were preparing for our home study to be licensed to adopt, one of the tasks we needed to complete was a cultural plan. Essentially this is a document detailing how, if we were to be placed with a child of a different culture than ours, we would keep that child connected to their culture. Our cultural plan is several pages long and details how we intended to keep our child connected to their culture. We were fairly sure that we would be placed with an African American child, so the majority of our document deals with that possibility. This document boils down to how we planned to form a community or network of people that will help to keep our child in touch with their cultural community.
Plans are one thing and reality is an entirely other thing. I do not think that we have done as well as we intended when we wrote our cultural plan, but one thing we have done is make sure that all our boys are connected with a diverse community. When you think of a community it is primarily a network of people that interact with each other and trust each other.
I was fascinated with Castells’s concept of networked society for a couple reasons. Firstly I work with computer networks all day in my day job, so his adaption of it to social theory was fascinating. Secondly, and more importantly, it reminded me that there is a structure to how communities work. According to Elliott, Castells’s theory relies on three core features: communication infrastructures, nodes, and the managerial elite.1 I can agree with Castells on the need for a communication infrastructure and for there to be nodes or information sources, but he loses me on the managerial elite.
In a community there needs to be and agreed upon way that people communicate. Technology has made the task of communicating easier and in doing so it has made it so that it is easier for communities to be more geographically dispersed. Nonetheless within the community there needs to be an agreed upon set of communication standards. Secondly the concept of nodes or information sources is of vital importance. Whether it is a physical community bulletin board, a wiki page, a community reporter, or a Facebook group having a place where the community can get on the same page is necessary. These two concepts together allow for a natural organic growth of the community. The more diverse the community is the more structured the interaction between communication standards and information nodes needs to be. It is easy to lose the meaning of something if you are not familiar with what or how something is bing communicated.
It is the area of the managerial elite that I think his metaphor falls apart. In the case of business culture he may be onto something, but when trying to transfer his theory to a different situation the idea of the managerial elite seems to be less applicable. Firstly, this concept seemed vague and not well worked out to me, though that could be the way this book describes it and not necessarily a reflection upon Castells’s actual work. Secondly, this idea that there is a set of “super nodes” that float freely allowing the network to exist seems to betray the actual concept of a network. There are those who are able to better navigate the network, but the network can exist without them. Within some communities there are a few people who hold the whole thing together and without them the community would fall apart, but I do not think that is the same thing as what Castells is going for with this concept and it seems like more of a hierarchical system that he is trying to get away from. Like I said before, I think this concept can work in the world of telecommunications or financial services, but for traditional communities I do not think that it connects.
Within our community we have set up connection points for our boys to connect with their cultural heritage and the heritage of others. We are fortunate to attend a pretty diverse church, so much of the infrastructure of community is already set for us. Still there is work to be done to make sure communication lines are open and there is an up-to-date stream of information to and from our community. Using two of Castells’s points as a guide I think we will be able to optimize our community to serve us all better.
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1 Anthony Elliott. Contemporary Social Theory: An Introduction. (New York: Routledge, 2009),Elliott, 307-310, ProQuest Ebary.
About the Author
Sean Dean
An expat of the great state of Maine where the lobster is cheap and the winters are brutal I've settled in as a web developer in Tacoma, Washington. As a foster-adoptive parent of 3 beautiful boys, I have deep questions about the American church's response to the public health crisis that is our foster system.3 responses to “Community Networks”
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Sean,
Oh how I wished I understood communication networks half as well as you do! In the example you give of keeping your sons connected to their own culture, how do you accomplish this relationally across a diverse communications network? For me this is always the “I don’t know” point. That is, how does anyone relationally connect outside of face-to-face as often as possible? Even in our diverse medium-sized congregation we struggle to foster relational connection across the Houston area. Thanks again for your thoughts and perspective, H
Our kids by and large are growing up white while black. As a counterpoint to this we do have a diverse church community that helps us. We have a good friend who’s in his 80s and African American who serves as their “black grandpa”. We have a mix race couple that we’re very close with who we spend time with that helps our kids get a sense of normality about the fact that we’re white and they’re black. I try to expose them to positive roll models within the African American community. It’s really a hodgepodge, but hopefully one with significance for them.
Hi Sean. You are so special to have taken in three precious little guys from the foster care system. I, too, was a foster mom for a number of years. It was an amazing experience, but certainly not without challenges. I appreciate your cultural plan for your kiddos. Yet, just as you said, ‘plans are one thing and reality is an entirely other thing.’ We do the best with what we have to work with and what we have learned through our experiences. And you are not alone on this journey, my friend. Not only do you have an amazing Father guiding your path, but you also have your community, which, as you noted, is a network of people who interact with each other and provide a ‘family’ of trust for you to lean on. Blessings to you, Sean….