The Community Question: A Perspective from National Survey Data - The Case of the USA

Using data from NORC General Social Survey, 19 7 278, this study examines the three perspectives on the community question integrated and summarised by Wellman: 1 that community has been 'lost', 'saved', and 'liberated' in contemporary large cities. Frequency of spending a social evening with relatives, neighbours, and friends from outside the immediate neighbourhoods was construed as indicative of the strength of ties. A comparison among the urbanites, the suburbanites, and residents of small towns or rural areas was made to examine the hypotheses that the three different perspectives suggest. The results indicate partial support for the 'lost' perspective; none for the 'saved' perspective; and a complete support for the 'liberated' perspective. Implications of the findings and comparisons with other previous studies were discussed. In a recent study, Wellman2 presents an empirical test of three different schools of thought concerning the 'community question', which has set the agenda for much recent discussion and debate. The community question concerns the extent to which and the manner in which the organization and content of primary and interpersonal ties are affected by the large-scale division of labour associated with modern urban society. In what has become a massive sociological literature, Wellman discerns three basic points of view. The earliest, represented by the work of Tonnies, 3 Sorokin and Zimmerman, 4 Durkheim, s Weber, 6 Wirth, 7 and Nisbet, 8 considers urban society profoundly disruptive of communal solidarity. According to this 'community lost' interpretation, urbanites are 'limited members of multiple social networks, sparsely knit and loosely bounded'; their social ties are 'weak, narrowly defined and disorganised'; and they are bound to the city only by 'webs of secondary affiliations'. 9 On the other hand, the The British Joutnal of Sociology Volume 33 Number 4 December 1982 O R. K. P. 1982 0007 1315/82/3304-0579 1. 50