Social Network Blog - y10

That is a great observation about Wellman overlooking the reasons why people are romanticizing the communities of the past, claiming that these neighborhood communities were somehow more authentic than our depersonalized urban existence today. I think this is a nostalgia that has been rehashed forever, used to decry urbanization,industrialization, and even capitalism. (and a political tool used ad nauseum by both sides)

"Are we really so ignorant about the past that we don’t recognize the problems with older types of communities or is it the case that the new communities that have replaced the old ones do not function in the same way at all, causing people to question the nature and purpose of these new types of communities?"

I don't know but that is a good question. Do these nostalgic proponents advocate a reversion to primitive social organizations? (I am sure they would love the chaos of informal medical practice or not eating for a couple of days because their trusted "neighborhood" grocer is out sick) Or is this sort of longing for the less complicated past an intrinsic trait, as Freud noted in Civilization and its Discontents, "the civilized have always longed to be uncivilized and attributed great virtues to them."

You pose some very interesting questions and observations. I think that the tendency to romanticize things of the past is something that people and societies are naturally inclined to do. People are resistant to change and it usually takes time for changes to take effect and be fully accepted. While many of us do have the tendency to think back to the “golden days” and yearn for that sense of community, Wellman does question why people have this perception of the past. He believes that “preindustrial communities were not as locally bounded as tradition maintained. Whenever scholars have looked for nonlocal ties, they have found far-ranging networks”. He uses Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility where the characters maintained far-flung kinships and friendship networks throughout South and Central England, but few ties with their neighbors as one of the many examples to illustrate his point. However, I believe that a central aspect of his article was to demonstrate that communities- old and new- aren’t necessarily better or worse. The nature and our definition of community is in flux and changes with society and our lives.

Also while I would agree that modern communities are much more complex, it is necessary to compare it with older communities to examine the changes over time. However, I do think that Wellman’s analysis of neighborhoods was a little narrow and could have included the different experiences of neighborhoods in different areas- cities, towns, suburbs, etc.

I really like your point that it would have been nice if Wellman had provided more evidence as to why we have these false views of the past. This wasn’t something that I particularly thought of during my reading of the article, but (now that you have mentioned it) I really think that this would have been an interesting route for Wellman to take. Although I do not think that it was entirely crucial to his argument, I agree that explanation of why we have these misconceptions would have definitely helped to strengthen his point. As far as your question about our nostalgia for past communities, I think that this probably boils down to the general idea that we tend to see the past through rose colored glasses. It seems like with communities, as with a lot of things about the past, we have blocked out a lot of the bad aspect and have only remembered the good. I don’t know if there is a definite way to prove why we tend to do this, and therefore it might be difficult to provide any evidence about this; however, I agree with you that Wellman should have touched on this more.

This looks like an interesting conversation brewing so I thought I'd put in my two cents. First off, I agree that you bring up a very important question and it would have been nice if Wellman had commented more. In my opinion I think that a common psychological phenomenon that you find is that people want what they can't have. So much of life is a balancing act and I feel that people are constantly questioning how they live their lives and interact with others. This ties into social networks because people who live in the present probably question whether their interaction style (of loose connections, and sparsely knit communitites) is really what's best for them. They instead probably feel sometimes that they'd just be better off being very close with their families and neighbors with whom they can have more supportive contacts and not have to worry about feeling so stressed and alone in the increasingly complex network of social contacts we have built. It's kind of like the argument that technology has been so great yet it makes everyone so much busier and allows people to work harder to the point of burning out. I think that often when people feel stressed they just wish they could get away and return to a time when it wasn't as easy to contact people all over and you just interacted with those close to you. While there might have been problems with these past societies (as you pointed out) I think that people always wish they could just have the best of both worlds and select the best elements from the past and combine them with the best of the present. Thus, I think it's fair to compare communities of the past and present but I feel that with change comes consequences and people fail to appreciate these.
I'm also quite intrigued by the question you brought up about the problems caused by instabilities in interest-based social networks. I question whether or not this is necessarily a bad thing or problematic. In Wellman's article he states that while fewer connections are made with those in close proximity many of the total interactions are with people of close proximity. (pg. 29) So maybe people are branching out in their interactions to keep up with their changing interests but keeping a steady core around them that they can always turn to for support. This would be interesting to study and could show that being able to have more network ties based on interests can be more beneficial than problematic.